After multiple leaks and a few weeks of chasing down in-game secret bunkers, Activision has finally unveiled Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War, a direct sequel to 2010’s original Black Ops game.
Characters from the first game like Frank Woods, Alex Mason, and Jason Hudson are making a return, and so is Zombies mode. Multiplayer details are still vague, but we’ve learned a lot about the campaign. Here’s everything we know so far about Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War.
When does Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War release?
Activision has confirmed that Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War is releasing on November 13 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Versions for PS5 and Xbox Series X are on the way too, but those are marked for “Holiday 2020” until we know when those consoles are coming out.
After dancing around a proper reveal with an in-game Warzone event and online ARG, Activision has finally fully unveiled Cold War with a bombastic campaign trailer. The campaign follows returning BLOPS characters Frank Woods, Alex Mason, and Jason Hudson hunting a deep-cover Soviet spy codenamed Perseus. This time around, the effort is led by a new character, CIA specialist Russell Adler.
Multiplayer will support crossplay and cross-gen
No matter where you’re playing Cold War, you’ll be able to play with your friends. This time, that even includes friends playing on an older generation of consoles. Players on PS4 and Xbox One can play with Xbox Series X and PS5 players. And everyone can also play with PC, though be wary of our mouse dexterity.
Cold War’s campaign will have character customization and multiple endings
For the first time in a Call of Duty game, you can customize your silent protagonist at the beginning of the game. The player can fill in details in their redacted file for their skin tone, gender, military background, and physiological traits. Besides male and female, you can also choose to leave your gender “Classified”, which will use gender-neutral pronouns throughout the campaign.
The character’s military background has no effect on gameplay, but psychological traits double as perks—Paranoid is a permanent boost to ADS time, Violent Tendencies is a damage buff, etc.
Cold War’s campaign will also have moments of player choice and multiple endings. How many endings? Raven Software wouldn’t say, but it doesn’t want to bog down the story with too many, so it’s probably more than two and fewer than ten.
We saw a few campaign missions
Morgan got a hands-off preview of Cold War’s campaign and came away less excited than expected. One missions showed Frank Woods and the player infiltrating a Soviet training course built to look like an American city block. That mission was your classic bombastic CoD action, but another mission in the shoes of a Soviet double agent in the KGB headquarters started much quieter, almost like a tiny Hitman level with non-linear objectives.
The third mission he saw took place in 1968 during the Vietnam War. It’s hard to tell without context, but it seems like some sort of mind-heist into the character’s head to extract some important Soviet secrets.
What’s the deal with ‘The Red Door’?
If you missed the news, something called The Red Door, which is reportedly Call of Duty 2020, quietly appeared on the Microsoft Store without an announcement. The listing reveals that The Red Door is a shooter from Activision, and it’s approximately 81.65GB, which is in the right ball park for a CoD game. It also features this brief description:
“There is more than one truth. If you go looking for answers, be ready to question everything and accept that nothing will ever be the same. The Red Door awaits, do you dare step through it?”
SerialStation recently posted a PlayStation serial number entry for a game with the same name, alongside a Content-ID that included “COD2020INTALPHA1” in the listing. So, The Red Door now has an attachment to both Sony and Microsoft’s stores in some fashion.
How Warzone links to Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War
In an interview with GamerGen, Infinity Ward’s narrative director Taylor Kurosaki mentioned that Warzone will connect the different Call of Duty series. When questioned about Warzone’s future, Kurosaki had this to say:
“We’re in kind of uncharted territories here. Call of Duty has been on a very regular cadence for many many years, and Warzone has made us rethink exactly how best to release new content and how to integrate it. Call of Duty is a genre in itself, there are different branches in the Call of Duty tree, but they’re all connected in some ways. Warzone will be the through line that connects all of the different various sub-franchises of Call of Duty. It’s going to be really cool to see how the different sub-franchises sort of come in and out of focus, but Warzone will be the one constant.”
Considering Warzone’s popularity, there’s no surprise that Infinity Ward wants it to remain as the major constant in the Call of Duty universe. We’ve already received hints that Warzone is gearing up for the Cold War, too.
How did Raven get Robert Redford?
Oh wait, sorry, that’s CIA specialist Russell Adler, not legendary actor Robert Redford. My bad, an easy mistake.