The Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 beta kicked off this week, and as part of the pre-beta fanfare, Brittany Pirello, senior producer on Black Ops 7, explained that the maps in this game have the “classic three-lane design style” during the Call of Duty NEXT 2025 livestream. If you’re a newer face to the series, that may not mean much, though. The three-lane map design philosophy in Call of Duty harks back to a bygone era, when the game was much simpler at its core, and you can find out just how accurate that claim is if you know how to play the Black Ops 7 beta.
However, if you ask a Call of Duty veteran what some of the most iconic maps in the series are, they’d probably name at least some of the following: Crash, Highrise, Terminal, Firing Range, Summit, Raid, Hijacked, Standoff… the list goes on. All of these maps have one key thing in common: They’re from older games in the series, when the majority of maps followed that three-lane design philosophy.
At its core, a three-lane map means that upon spawning as a team, the player has three paths in front of them. These connect one team’s spawn location to the other. The lanes will usually have additional paths to connect to each other along the way, such as alleyways, ladders, and climbable ledges, so they’re not just three closed-off highways. This principle breaks maps down into sections and ultimately makes them easier to understand. Especially in the early days, when every map is new and you feel like a lost K-9 unit.
For the last decade or so though, Call of Duty games have abandoned this philosophy. This has resulted in far fewer fan-favorite maps, and considerably more complaints about the map roster each year. The reasoning behind this is unclear, but an educated guess would place the blame on the increased speed and movement capabilities players have. Call of Duty was never a hyper-realistic simulation, but gameplay used to be more methodical and cautious than it is today.
I’m not here to argue either for or against the pace of more recent installments in the series, but this approach — especially when Call of Duty introduced jetpacks and was no longer “boots on the ground” — meant verticality was the best way to keep maps interesting. A two-story building no longer requires a staircase when you can fly through the bedroom window or wallrun on a nearby fence. And when you’re making maps taller, sticking to a three-lane design philosophy becomes a hell of a lot more difficult.
The beauty of three-lane maps is that they’ve often catered to most playstyles. Take Crossfire, from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, for example. If you want to run ‘n’ gun with an SMG or shotgun, you have storefronts on either side of the main street to push through. Fancy using a mid-range weapon like an assault rifle or LMG? Quite a few of these stores have balconies and windows for you to shoot across the street with. Sniping more your style? Head to either end of the street and pick off the foes foolish enough to try to cross in front of your eyes.
On the other hand, maps that don’t follow this format are often only suited to one or two types of player. When everything is compact and the only distance is vertical, you’ll have a lobby full of mostly SMGs, and vice versa if a map doesn’t feature enough tight spaces. Older maps that were far too big — Derail, Seelow, or Wasteland, for example — were prone to suffering from this. They may have had a three-lane philosophy at heart, but it doesn’t pay off when a map is predominantly barren.
Treyarch has announced that Black Ops 7 is returning to a three-lane philosophy, but what does that look like in a modern Call of Duty world? 2025’s instalment may not have jetpacks but it does have a refined omnimovement system (introduced in Black Ops 6), wall jumps (which can be chained up to three times in a row), and an increased base movement speed (in lieu of tactical sprint, which is getting the boot).
Wall jumping is the standout part of this that makes me pessimistic about a return to the “classic Treyarch three-lane style” they detailed in a blog post, because that means maps need to give players a reason to wall jump, which comes in the form of more verticality. However, the fact that Treyarch is being so transparent in this regard is a good sign. Pirello, quoted at the top of this article, continued her statement by saying:
“We’ve got our classic three-lane design style for Treyarch, clear definition, good path clarity, and really controlling those lines of sight. You can also see that all of the space is crafted for the wall jump; you can traverse places faster without mantling, get into some really cool power positions, and there’s a few must-jumps (gaps you can only clear by wall jumping) we use sparingly. We really wanted to make it feel like anything that looks like you can jump on it, you can.”
Miles Leslie, associate creative director on Black Ops 7, followed that up by explaining that the maps in this game have that “classic feel” that you’d find in older Black Ops games, and that there’s “a lot to love for old-timers.” Provided we can keep up with the kids these days and how they fly around corners like they’ve got the zoomies, of course.
Map design is such an important thing to nail when it comes to any first-person shooters, and Call of Duty has struggled with it for some time. There are six maps available in the current beta, but with 16 in total at the game’s launch, including three returning Black Ops 2 favorites in Raid, Hijacked, and Express, the future bodes well for Black Ops 7 being a return to form.
