Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War officially confirmed

We’ve suspected for quite some time that this year’s entry in the Call of Duty series was going to be a Black Ops reboot of some kind. We’ve heard the rumors, we’ve seen leaks, and we’ve tasted the Doritos. But today, it’s confirmed, as the official youtube channel for Call of Duty has posted the first official trailer for the game, titled “Know Your History”.

This trailer doesn’t show any gameplay footage and doesn’t really give much of a suggestion for how the actual game will play, but it does effectively set the mood, and communicate the tone and broad narrative themes we can expect to explore in the game. It’s titled “Know Your History”, and like many other games in the Call of Duty series, it’s going to be using events from history as the basis for the game’s premise and plot. We don’t necessarily look to Call of Duty for complete authenticity, where it’s perhaps closer to a Hollywood blockbuster depiction of historical events, rather than anything you’d get from a well-produced history book, but drawing on real-world historical events does help inject some tension and drama into proceedings.

The main emphasis of the trailer is archive footage of an interview with Russian defector, Yuri Bezmenov. He famously split from the KGB and defected to the West in the 80s. This interview explores a wide range of subjects, but the trailer focuses in on his discussion of Russian tactics during the Cold War era. You can check out the entire interview here if you’d like to get some more context on this trailer and perhaps the game as a whole.

It’s still Call of Duty, so we very much expect the moment to moment gameplay to focus on a war fought with guns and grenades, but the suggestion of this trailer is that the context for the traditional armed combat is going to be a backdrop of a war that’s also fought with information. These broader geopolitical elements have always been a part of Call of Duty, but we’d be very interested to see the series lean harder into them.

I’m sure we’re still going to get the shock and awe marketing campaign we would usually associate with Call of Duty between now and the release of Black Ops: Cold War. We know for sure that there will be a full reveal of the game next week, as they’re planning a reveal event on the 26th. This is usually where we’ll get to see a first look at the game in action, learn a bit more about the various different settings, modes and features the game will include, and here details about the planned release date. This is pretty late in the year to be first hearing about a new Call of Duty game, where they’re working on a later schedule than they usually do. Perhaps this delay compared to previous years is because they’ve also been busy working on Warzones, perhaps it’s because this is likely to be the first Call of Duty for next-generation Xbox and Playstation consoles, or perhaps COVID-19 related issues have been a challenge for the teams working on the game.

We’ll be here to bring you all the details of the reveal when it happens on the 26th, so stick with WePC for all the big upcoming news on Call of Duty.