This might be the latest announcement of a Call of Duty game in the franchises’ history, but then again, it has been a strange year.
Activision has finally announced that the new Call of Duty game is Call of Duty Black Ops – Cold War with a brilliant teaser trailer that gives some insight into the game’s setting and story.
The man on the screen is Yuri Bezmenov, a real-life defector from the Soviet Union. He spent some time in India before rejecting the KGB’s suppression of intellectuals in his home country.
As well as Yuri, the trailer also focuses on the mysterious “Perseus”. This was allegedly a Soviet spy who infiltrated various Western intelligence agencies to disrupt the Nuclear Arms race.
With the eerily contemporary message of Demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization of “Big Brother” government control in the United States, there’s no doubt that Black Ops: Cold War is going heavy on the story.
Other hints include the mention of Verdansk. This is the name of Call of Duty Warzone‘s main map and was also mentioned in Modern Warfare.
Activision has already stated that the new Call of Duty game would likely be linked in some way to Warzone. The free-to-play Battle Royale has over 75 million downloads and Activision won’t want to end that cash cow.
The teaser coincided with a multi-day ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that involved a bunch of code-breaking activities. These lead them to rooms spread out across the Warzone map.
How the two games will be linked isn’t 100% clear. In fact, the trailer doesn’t even give a hint about whether or not the game will be truly next-gen or built to run on current-gen consoles.
The game is being worked on by both Treyarch and Raven Software. Treyarch worked on the previous Black Ops game set during the Cold War period to great success. “THE NUMBERS, MASON!” is still probably a personal favorite.
Lastly, both Raven Software and Treyarch have tweeted in the past that they are working together, specifically on “this year’s Call of Duty.” This means the game might ship later this year so as not to break the tradition of an annual CoD.
The full reveal for Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War happens on August 26th – expect a full trailer and even some gameplay.