Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has finally been announced. Expanding on earlier entries in the series, the title is leaning further into giving players more freedom to choose how they want to play. This time around, you get to create your own character and define some of their attributes. Some levels will be less linear than in previous games and certain scenarios even feature dialogue options. This level of freedom extends all the way to the end of the game, as Activision has confirmed that the choices you make in the game will lead to one of multiple endings.
Raven Software’s Dan Vondrak says the team had the idea for multiple endings at the start of development. Deciding there would be multiple endings later in the process might have led to some issues, he said. The team got help from Batman movie writer David Goyer, who also worked on the original Black Ops, and the story aims to pay homage to the first game and the sequel Black Ops 2, which also had multiple endings. These endings were determined based on a few choices you made throughout the game, which could see characters live or die and even prompted an appearance from talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
“When we started creating the story, we had multiple endings in mind right away. And that really helped. I think if you try to add those later, or if they just don’t fit the story you’re telling, then you shouldn’t add them,” Vondrak said. “But we knew right away that we wanted to do that. I absolutely loved the idea that we could [have a] little bit of homage to Black Ops 2 by having these [multiple endings].”
“I think even if Black Ops 2 didn’t have it, it would make perfect sense for our game to have it. But I loved that this game was trying to say, here’s all these great pieces of the entire Black Ops series that we loved, and we can kind of pay homage to those different pieces,” Vondrak added. “Some stories work well with multiple endings, and some stories don’t, and this one was built from the ground up with that in mind.”
Activision is mainly talking about Cold War’s single-player campaign for now. On September 9, Activision will reveal Cold War’s multiplayer mode and detail the Warzone integration further. Details about the fan-favorite Zombies mode, too, are coming at some point in the future. All of Treyarch’s games since World at War have included the mode, when it was first offered as a secret after the campaign’s credits.
Black Ops Cold War releases on November 13 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The game will also launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X later in the year when those consoles arrive. The upgrade will only be free with editions above the standard one, costing $70 and up.
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