Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War Announced, Gameplay Reveal to Happen in Warzone

This year’s Call of Duty game has finally been announced. As previously rumored, the game is called Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War. The title, which is being developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, was confirmed in a teaser trailer ahead of a bigger world reveal set for Aug. 26. The reveal will happen within Verdansk, the massive map where the Call of Duty Warzone battle royale game is set, according to GameSpot.

Check out the teaser below:

The trailer mostly revolves around KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, a former Soviet journalist who famously warned the world of a Soviet spy tasked with infiltrating Western intelligence in order to win the nuclear arms race at the height of the Cold War. A major part of the plan? A decades-long operation to destabilize the United States from within.

The trailer flashes through moments of unrest in American history, including the Vietnam War and the civil rights protests. As the trailer explains, the spy, codenamed “Perseus,” was never caught and his identity remains a mystery decades later. It’s possible the game could revolve around finding this mysterious Perseus or the teaser is just an overture for the deeper Cold War themes at play in the game.

Coming just months before the 2020 election and a day after even the Republican-controlled Senate published a report that confirmed that Russia worked to undermine American democracy during the 2016 presidential election, it’ll be interesting to see whether Activision and Treyarch stand by the game’s obvious political allegory. Bezmenov’s warning of the potential decay of American democratic systems over time certainly hits different at the moment.

The setting and subject of this year’s Call of Duty game have been an open secret for some time. First scooped by vetted Call of Duty leaker Okami, Eurogamer later confirmed the game’s title and Cold War focus. The official confirmation from Activision comes just days after an ARG released by the publisher fueled speculation and sent fans on a mad scramble to uncover the nature of the new game.

So what do we know about the game beyond the U.S. vs. Russia conflict itself? Very little. While waiting for the reveal, we took a look at what pieces of Cold War history could show up in the game. Treyarch has previously set Cold War-era games in Vietnam, Russia, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua. It remains to be seen if Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War will revisit these locations in new ways.

We’ll know for sure when Verdansk world reveal takes place on Aug. 26.