It’s strange to be writing this post so late in the year. See, with Call of Duty essentially becoming an annualised franchise, there’s a schedule that publisher Activision tends to stick to. Tease a game in June, announce it in July and then hype everyone up for it until it eventually drops at the end of October or early November. Yet, as is the standard set by 2020, everything’s been pretty weird this year. There was no teaser in June. A month went past and there was still no teaser, let alone an announcement. Now, as August is nearing its end, we finally have something tangible to set our expectations. Better late than never, I guess.
The teaser trailer confirms that this year’s Call of Duty is subtitled “Black Ops: Cold War” meaning that the full name of the game is “Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War” which is a ridiculously silly. Yet the teaser trailer itself is actually…really good. Focusing on real-life events and using footage of an interview with Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov who outlines the how Russia was attempting to subvert American hegemony across both the country and globe with a strategy called “Active Measures”.
Bezmenov discusses the process of, “Demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization” which was the strategy allegedly used by “Perseus”, Soviet spy that infiltrated key American positions and was never exposed or discovered. In fact, we don’t even know if there was such a spy as Perseus but that hasn’t stopped the allegations that they were working their shady magic from the wings.
The thing that piques my interest is the “Inspired by actual events” frame because I’m all for some factual exploration of history but this is Call of Duty, so it’s more likely that the word “inspired” is doing some seriously heavy lifting in that context.
The trailer concludes by revealing that the game will be formally revealed on 26 August which, considering the rumoured October release window, doesn’t really give Activision a great deal of time. One just has to assume that Treyarch and Raven Software have been on the grind for the last while to hit such a release that’s just around the corner.
(Source: PC Gamer)
