We got a bumper showing of Call of Duty 7 at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live.
Campaign
Starting with the new campaign, starring Milo Ventimiglia as David Mason, you’ll take on high-stakes missions set in locations as varied as the neon-lit rooftops of Japan to the Mediterranean coast, and even into the deepest corners of the human psyche. Players will also experience Avalon, an expansive city whose secrets ripple across the campaign.
What makes this special is that you can now bring along 3 pals with you into the campaign. With a campaign of this scale, Treyarch and Raven are ensuring players are rewarded in fresh new ways as they explore the campaign narrative. As you progress the story, you’ll earn new abilities to deploy in the endgame, where you’ll reach new levels of power to survive overwhelming odds in a brand-new replayable experience at the end of the campaign.
The experience earned in the campaign now carries over to multiplayer, Zombies or even COD: Warzone, along with your weapon levels, camo unlocks and more. This makes sense, considering the introduction of the new endgame at the end of the campaign.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer in Black Ops 7 launches with 16 6v6 maps and two 20v20 maps, all set in 2035, imagining the world of Black Ops 2 10 years on.
Expect in-world technological improvements to all the weapons available across Multiplayer — and therefore available in Co-Op Campaign and Zombies — with 30 new weapons at launch, including 16 that players will see in a Call of Duty for the very first time. Fans of COD multiplayer will be pleased to learn that Weapon Prestige makes a return after last being seen in 2018. You’ll get to share Weapon Builds with friends for the first time (which I expect will be very popular during the first few months as everyone gets used to the meta), and there’ll be a variety of new perks, weapon attachments, equipment, Field Upgrades, and Scorestreaks.
One of these new Scorestreaks is the appropriately-named Rhino, a “bipedal death machine that drops from the sky, slams into the ground with enough force to crater the pavement and unleashes its heavy weapons in a player-controlled third-person rampage of precision and destruction.”
Your Scorestreaks, Field Upgrades and Equipment can now be upgraded using the new Overclocked system. We’ve got a few examples of how that might look:
Cluster Grenade: a Lethal that scatters a group of smaller explosives when the main projectile detonates. Overclock it and you’re awarded the following upgrades:
- First Overclock: Controllable Fuse: Adds the ability to cook the fuse over time.
- Second Overclock: Tighter Packing: Adds one additional mini grenade to the projectile.
Drone Pod: Launch a Drone Pod and it deploys to the skies, expelling autonomous aerial drones which seek out enemies. Overclock it and you’re awarded the following upgrades:
- First Overclock: Quick Launcher: This rapidly increases the speed at which drones are launched.
- Second Overclock: Radar Link: Leaves a minimap icon at each drone’s detonation point.
Zombies
Round-based zombies returns, and you’ll explore a vast and foreboding landscape and visit a series of eerie and forgotten locations offering a multitude of threats, secrets, and storylines with horrors around almost every corner.
Survival Maps are coming back for the first time since Black Ops 2, delivering a focused, unfiltered round-based Zombies experience at individual locations throughout the launch map. There are no quests, other than you and your squad surviving against the relentless undead for as long as you can. Omnimovement enhancements and combat roll are all now in Zombies, while Tac Sprint has been removed by default.
For those that prefer their Zombies mode a little more “top down”, Dead Ops Arcade 4 is confirmed. This top-down, twin-stick Zombies shooter is packed with power-ups, traps, and relentless waves of enemies, and is going to be a chaotic experience for you and up to 3 pals.
Beta
Mark your calendars for the worldwide Multiplayer reveal at Call of Duty: NEXT on Tuesday, September 30th, following which you’ll be able to play Black Ops 7 yourself when the Beta starts on all platforms on October 2nd.
Call of Duty Black Ops 7 releases on November 14 on PC, Xbox and Playstation. You can read the full briefing over on the Call of Duty blog.
