While plenty of games are shown off every year, the industry still has some BIG titles reserved for the final half of our trip around the sun, culminating in a fourth quarter where the biggest players around go for broke as they attempt to grab some of that sweet silly season revenue.

Will 2018 end with Activision making enough cash to purchase the moon when Call of Duty Black Ops IIII launches? Probably! This year however, Call of Duty is changing its approach, ditching the single-player and doubling down on multiplayer.

At E3 2018, I got the chance to briefly grill game designer Matt Scronce and senior producer Yale Miller for some answers regarding Blackout, and what exactly Treyarch is aiming for with this ambitious entry into a highly competitive genre with this year's edition of Call of Duty Black Ops IIII.

Activision and developer Treyarch are going all in on online services this year. If Call of Duty isn’t going to spend obscene amounts of cash on providing a narrative structure, then fans are well within their rights to expect a tighter and even more polished multiplayer offering.

Call of Duty Black Ops IIII may be ditching single-player this year in favour of a more tightened-up multiplayer, zombies and battle royale experience, but at least one traditional component is going to remain inside of Treyarch’s signature series: Nuketown!

For the first time ever, Call of Duty is skipping its bombastic weekend mode campaign, as developer Treyarch focuses all of its attention on its other gameplay options such as solo stories starring the multiplayer specialists.

Revealed last night at the Black Ops IIII event in sunny Los Angeles, developer Treyarch’s take on the battle royale mode is called Blackout. All the action that you’d expect of Call of Duty, spread across a wide map, characters and plenty of weapons. Well, minus the massive player count, because Treyarch is undecided yet on just how many players it’ll allow into any given session of Blackout.

In an industry that is constantly in flux, constantly changing, Call of Duty has managed to cement itself as an annual favourite. It’s Dinner For One with guns, a traditional buffet of action that shows no signs of slowing down. Over the years, everyone knew exactly what to expect from Activision’s money-making franchise: A weekend of story, sixty frames of action at any given time and plenty of multiplayer to keep your thumbs busy. This year, things are different.