Lord help me, I do this every time. Every time. They announce a new Call of Duty game, I couldn’t care less about it, I watch the trailer and I walk away from it thinking, “Shit…that looks really good.” Beyond the completely ridiculous name of Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, a title that feels like it has one less colon than it needs, the teaser digs into some real historical events that I’m sure Call of Duty will try and portray to the best of its ability in between the cacophony of gunfights and explosions that totally 100% happened. Factual events are cool, but who doesn’t like a touch of spice on their history chips?
The trailer itself is suitably cryptic, focusing on real-life Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov and “Perseus”, supposedly an actual Soviet spy that snuck into the US government and began a process of subversion to assist Russia in winning the Cold War. The snippets of the interview with Bezmenov, as PC Gamer very accurately points out, draw some startlingly similar parallels to modern-day international politics. He lays out the steps to the plan as, “Demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization”. Spooooooooky!
I have to imagine it was a marked decision to use that footage as the tagline for the trailer is, “Know your history or be doomed to repeat it”, which just hits a little too on the nose for my liking but sure, I suppose the point of marketing isn’t to be subtle. The trailer concludes by announcing an actual reveal of the game on 26 August, which will be next Wednesday. Leaving it rather late if they’re expected to hit that rumoured October release window, but at least we finally have some solid dates to work with.
Last Updated: August 20, 2020
