For months, going back as far as late 2019, there have been both rumours and purported leaks about Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. One of the earliest, which emerged shortly after the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, was that the next game would be a similar “soft reboot” for the Black Ops series. We know now that this was inaccurate; Black Ops Cold War is in fact a direct sequel to the original Black Ops game.
The Story of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
“Taking place after the events of the original story,” explains Activision; “Black Ops Cold War reunites players with legendary operatives Alex Mason, Frank Woods, and Jason Hudson as they’re pulled into a high-stakes conspiracy. Joined by a new cast of characters and faced with threats from the past, players will uncover a subversive plot with devastating global implications.”
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War takes place in 1981 and follows directly from the original Black Ops game. The game’s single-player campaign was actually developed primarily by Raven Software, while Treyarch have handled all of the other elements. According to Activision, this campaign will feature; “an array of badass munitions, including fan-favourite classic firearms and prototypical weaponry from the Cold War era.”
At present, we don’t know much about what the events of the Black Ops Cold War story will cover. However, a leaked list of the game’s story missions indicates that the plot will take players from Vietnam to Russia and Germany, as well as a brief foray to Nicaragua; a small nation which nonetheless played a major role in the Cold War. Indeed, the game takes place in 1981; the same year that Ronald Reagan began covertly supplying arms to the Contra rebels in the country’s revolutionary war. This support eventually led to the Iran-Contra Affair; a major political scandal which resulted in the indictment on criminal charges of a dozen US officials.