Insider Tom Henderson provided some details on this year’s Call of Duty, but also on the direction the franchise will take. Needless to say, it’s going to make a lot of noise.
Every year, Activision lines its pockets with Call of Duty and its multiplayers. In 2022, the license has allowed it to raise a total of more than 30 billion dollars and it is not about to stop. However, players are still as attached to single-player campaigns as they are generally considered to be of fairly good quality, but generally too short. For Call of Duty 2024, Activision had a genius idea to overcome this problem (or not).
Call of Duty would go open world
This is news that is likely to cause a lot of noise within the community. The very well informed Tom Henderson regularly shares his indiscretions on the Call of Duty license and its future episodes. However, no one could have expected the direction that is currently being considered for the future of the license. The 2024 installment, which would actually be Black Ops Gulf War, would fully embrace the open world for its main campaign. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 had already taken a first step in this direction with a few missions in much more open areas than usual and which were clearly poorly received. The players did not like this first attempt at all, which broke the rhythm of the game without offering side missions to give consistency.
So how will Raven Software attempt to move from the thrill corridor to the open world with Call of Duty Black Ops Gulf War? According to Henderson’s sources, unlike COD MW3, the campaign for this 2024 episode would have been built from scratch to move in this direction. By that, mean that it will not recycle unlike its predecessor. The missions would be more like what a Far Cry might offer. Concretely, players and their squad would navigate in open worlds where they can use a whole bunch of vehicles to cross them or use a fast travel system to go from one point to another instantly. Still according to the same sources, this Call of Duty 2024 would still retain some linear missions like the old ones.
Worrying news
Few other details have been revealed, except that this more open approach could set the tone for the future of the license. The 2025 episode (called Saturn internally) would follow the same direction, separating its maps into different biomes or locations. At least that’s how it was. pitched internally, but things have plenty of time to change between now and its release, especially since no lead developer has yet been assigned to it. We obviously won’t be able to say the same about this next Call of Duty Black Ops, scheduled for October 2024.
Without getting too carried away, we can say in advance that the new direction that is emerging for the license will not be to everyone’s taste. If Black Ops are renowned for their quality of writing, the campaign is this time entrusted to Raven Software, better known for its work on multiplayer and single player. Conversely, Treyarch Games, which manages to stand out in this regard, would here be in charge of multiplayer and zombies mode. Go figure. Suffice to say that on paper, this does not bode well, especially after a very poor Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.