“Overload started with a real desire to create a new competitive mode,” explains Design Director Matt Scronce. “Of course we’ve got the favorites – Team Deathmatch, Domination, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed – but the team really wanted to push on a Call of Duty competitive mode. Treyarch has a long-standing support and pedigree with the competitive community, and it started with how we can make a new mode work with the competitive players across the community and the Call of Duty League on supporting that. How can we make it the best? That’s where it started.”
As I learned during our discussion around this new mode, when the team sits down to start working on the creation of a competitive mode like Overload, it starts by establishing a different set of governing rules as opposed to making something that will have a wide-ranging appeal. They’re looking at establishing factors like how it can encourage team play, and how it can utilize new gameplay mechanics like Active Camo or the Overclock system, for example. It also comes down to which community they’re trying to serve – in this case, it was to give the competitive community something new.
As Scronce tells me, the initial pitch for Overload was to create a new, objective-based competitive mode, something that could be played 6v6 but scaled down to 4v4 for Call of Duty League. It also needed to have an objective in the map that can be picked up and carried, and this came from inspiration from previous modes that they’ve done like Capture the Flag, Uplink, Search and Destroy, and Sabotage.
“We looked at all of them, ranging back to… 2007? We looked at everything we’ve done, because we’ve done a lot,” adds Scronce. “And we can see what worked here, what didn’t work there, and what do we think we can add to make it kind of fresh and work with Black Ops 7? Obviously, we’ve got the next-level Omnimovement and wall jumps. And some of our new 2035 era of gear, guns, and gadgets – we’ve talked a lot about how those can fit and make sense in Overload.”
