Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s Integration into Call of Duty: Warzone Seems Messy and Confusing

Yesterday, Activision announced its plans for how it’ll will be handling integrating their upcoming release Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War into Call of Duty: Warzone, their extremely popular, free-to-play offshoot of last year’s game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

If this already sounds confusing, buckle up.

This is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, not to be confused with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Remastered.

In October 2019, Activision developer Infinity Ward released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a reboot of the 2007 game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Not only did it serve as a reboot for the story of Modern Warfare, it also marked the largest technical upgrade to the series in over a decade. Infinity Ward updated the game’s engine, leading to visuals, sound design, and game feel that were all leaps and bounds over the series’ previous entries. All of this work paid off, as Modern Warfare (2019) broke several sales records, and won a number of awards for its sound design, soundtrack, and multiplayer.

This is Call of Duty: Warzone, Activision’s free-to-play battle royale. Not to be confused with Activision’s free to play mobile game, Call of Duty: Mobile, or Activsion’s free to play Chinese-market-exclusive, Call of Duty: Online.

On March 10th 2020, Activision released Call of Duty: Warzone, a free-to-play battle royale game built in Modern Warfare’s engine, and integrated into the game. While Warzone is technically part of Modern Warfare (2019), players aren’t required to own Modern Warfare (2019) to play Warzone. The free-to-play model helped Warzone become a quick success, and within one month of release, Warzone had reached over 50 million players.

All things considered, it has been an incredibly successful year for Call of Duty. With a full game released to financial and critical success, and a free-to-play offering that became one of the biggest games of the year, Call of Duty is arguably in the best state it’s ever been in.

That could potentially change, however.

This year’s game, Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War is set to release next week, on November 13th. Back in 2019, Jason Schreier at Kotaku reported that development on 2020’s Call of Duty game had not been going smoothly. Treyarch, an internal developer at Activision, had been suddenly tasked with leading the Call of Duty game for release in 2020. This was instead of the assumed 2021 release that would have lined up with the series’ three developer, three-year development cycle that Activision has been following for the last half-decade or so. Treyarch was going to have to make an entirely new game in just two years.

And this is Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Not to be confused with Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Call of Duty: Black Ops III or Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Simple.

After an alpha test and a beta test, it seems the consensus on Black Ops: Cold War is that it is a step back from 2019’s Modern Warfare. The graphics look more dated, the game feel isn’t as solid or punchy, and the sound design has taken a noticeable step back.

Oh everyone’s favourite Call of Duty characters can finally team up. Like Sunglasses and Women here!

All of this has led up to yesterday’s announcement of how Black Ops: Cold War will integrate into the existing game Warzone. According to Activision, player level and battle pass progression will carry over between Modern Warfare, Warzone, and Black Ops: Cold War. Additionally, player customized weapons can be brought from both Cold War and Modern Warfare to be used in Warzone. However, weapons from Modern Warfare cannot be used in Cold War and vice versa.

Considering the flak MW took for how certain aspects appeared to come in very hot last year, it is mighty concerning that things only seem to be getting worse.

This presents a unique challenge for developers. Black Ops Cold War does not use the same game engine as Modern Warfare and Warzone, which means that in order for weapons to be brought over to Warzone, they must be integrated into a different game engine. This means that instead of balancing weapons once, for only one game, they need to be balanced separately for Warzone and Cold War multiplayer. Additionally, because Cold War and Warzone use different game engines, the way the weapons feel and behave in Cold War will not necessarily be the same in Warzone. This is without mentioning that this work will presumably be done by at least two different studios that are already strained working from home.

All of this is shaping up to be an absolute mess. Current Warzone players are confused and not really optimistic. Personally, I thought Modern Warfare (2019) was incredible, and along with many other players would have been content to play the game for a whole extra year provided Activision was willing to continue supporting it while Treyarch took an extra year to work on Cold War. Instead, Activision’s insistence on and absolute commitment to a yearly release schedule for Call of Duty has led to a confusing and messy situation for developers and players alike. This just seems like a headache all around. Warzone was incredibly successful and Activision doesn't want to let it go yet (which is completely understandable), but the Cold War integration, along with the Cold War game itself based on early impressions, feels incredibly rushed. We’ll know for sure when the game releases later this week on November 13th.