All the news about the ‘Call of Duty’ video game series you’re going to hear in the next few months will be about Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare, and quite rightly so. As we’ve seen from the commercials and demonstrations, the new ‘Modern Warfare’ title is a reboot of the series, stripping away the science-fiction elements which had drawn the ire of so many players and returning the franchise to the gritty, unpleasant, and serious side of war. Some publications even expect it to fall foul of censors and morality campaigners when it’s released because of its controversial content, but there can be little doubt that it will sell in the millions when it’s released toward the end of October.
The Call of Duty series of games is probably the most famous and most widely-known outside of the classics, such as ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ and ‘Super Mario.’ Within the next twelve months, it will join both of those video game franchises by making an appearance on the big screen as a movie. There’s even a mobile slots game based on ‘Call of Duty,’ meaning it joins one of a very small number of video games which have made it to the casino. ‘Street Fighter’ and ‘Tomb Raider’ also have official mobile slots games based around them. When video games appear as mobile slots on website such as Kong Casino, it indicates that they have an appeal beyond the usual demographic of video game enthusiasts. That means everything to do with the game is big news – and so we’ve already started paying attention to what’s planned for next year!
In among all of the ‘Modern Warfare’ excitement, take the time to keep an eye out for the fifth ‘Black Ops’ game, which is coming out in 2020. When the news leaked in May that next year’s Call of Duty game had been canned, and the next ‘Black Ops’ game was being brought forward in its place, it was something of a surprise. ‘Black Ops 4’ was only released last year, and the cycle between different entries in the ‘Call of Duty’ series is usually longer than this.
In the case of the ‘Black Ops’ games, it was thought that Activision would have more work to do than usual because of the largely-negative reaction that the 2018 game received. The lack of a single-player campaign suggested that Activision had badly misunderstood what players wanted from the games, and so it would make sense for them to go back to the drawing board and re-think their strategy. Instead, they’ve accelerated their plans to fill the gap – but the latest rumors we’ve heard suggest that what we’re going to get in 2020 may turn out to be a hybrid of ‘Black Ops’ and the abandoned 2020 game.
Although Activision is notoriously reluctant to confirm anything too far in advance of a game’s launch, it was generally understood that the 2020 game would have been based around the Vietnam War. Now, we’re hearing that the new ‘Black Ops’ game will pick that aspect of the game up – but take it much further. In what would have to be a vast and expansive theater of conflict, Black Ops 5 will apparently showcase not only Vietnam, but also the entirety of the Cold War.
The news comes from a Twitter user who goes by the name of ‘LongSensationYT,’ and although any non-official source ought to be viewed with suspicion, this particular individual has been correct in the past about specific details when it comes to the ‘Call of Duty’ series. They were right about the new ‘Modern Warfare’ game dropping the numerals after the title, and so there’s no reason to doubt their word about the Cold War setting for next year’s game.
In keeping with the ‘back to basics’ formula of the new ‘Modern Warfare,’ the user says that Activision is considering simply calling next year’s game ‘Black Ops’ rather than ‘Black Ops 5,’ and therefore rebooting both series within twelve months of each other. Included in the campaign modes will be the entire Vietnam War, the entire Korean War, and several skirmishes between the two. If that does turn out to be the case, it could be construed as the developer’s way of apologizing for the lack of a campaign mode in last year’s release.
Neither Vietnam nor the Cold War would be new ground for ‘Call of Duty’ – both have been visited before – but the franchise has never gone to the 1950s environment of the Korean War. As the series has been running out of real wars to base itself around – hence the inclusion of various fantasy elements in recent years – it would make sense to find a new window of time to slot a game into if they wanted to create something new while sticking to the more ‘realistic’ approach of ‘Modern Warfare.’
Treyarch will be in charge of the game’s development, backed up by both Raven and Sledgehammer. It was thought – but never confirmed – that disagreements between Sledgehammer and Raven were the cause of the originally-planned 2020 game’s cancellation. Treyarch will be tasked with having oversight (and the final say) on the game’s development, with the two smaller studios effectively working to instruction.
Given the fact that the next generation of gaming consoles are on the horizon – and a whole new idea of streaming video games is on its way thanks to Google Stadia – it’s likely that whatever ‘Call of Duty’ game is released in 2020 will turn out to be the final one to appear on the current generation of hardware. We’re sure that Activision will want to go out with a bang, and so we have high expectations for the next ‘Black Ops’ release. In the meantime, we’ll try to put those thoughts to the back of our minds and brace ourselves for the latest ‘Modern Warfare.’ We’ve been promised blood, guts, gore, and a level of violence that will make even the most hardened gamers shudder. We shouldn’t be excited about that – but we make no apologies for admitting that we are!
