Cognition Dissemination: The Black Ops Cold War Confusion
Activision finally revealed Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War this week after days of teases, considerably late compared to CoD titles from previous years. It’s true that the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the schedules of every developer off kilter, but the game is still scheduled to release at the usual time in mid-November. This leaves them considerably less time to promote it before its release in two-and-a-half months, but who am I kidding here? It’s Call of Duty. Being concerned about this game selling would be worse than being worried about Fallout 4’s sales when Bethesda gave themselves only five months to advertise it.
I’m not that interested in this game. The only CoD title I’ve played extensively is the first Modern Warfare, all I needed to tell me this franchise wasn’t my type. I’ve heard about the good campaigns in some titles like Future Warfare are, but these games take a long time to go on sale, let alone get price drops. I’m not paying full price to play the campaign, and I have less than zero interest in the multiplayer. What I personally find more interesting is everything else happening around this particular game, already a mixture of confusing and mind-boggling.
The game is called “Black Ops Cold War” because it takes place during the Cold War, an intense period that involved a frightening stare-down between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from 1947-1991. This is why it was treated as a big reveal that former president Ronald Reagan will be present. The big question here will be how he’ll be treated in the story, given how polarizing a figure he was to say the least. Plenty of people, mostly conservatives, continue to honor him in spite of the disasters he oversaw, including letting a not-insignificant population of Americans suffer and die as part of the AIDS epidemic and ramping up the War on Drugs that helped lead to the mass incarceration crisis.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Activision isn’t giving concrete answers as to how he’ll be portrayed from a political perspective. Members of the press submitted questions to Activision for the reveal, but several of them were watered down for the answers. Take the Reagan-related one from the Washington Post’s Gene Park, who specifically asked how Reagan would be portrayed here. It was rephrased into a question asking what research they did for Reagan’s portrayal, which he did not ask for. This is a company that seriously got Oliver North, a war criminal and later president of the National Rifle Association, for Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s campaign, so I have no faith they’ll address any critiques of Reagan here. Have fun doing war crimes for the 40th president of the US.
Another point of confusion involves exactly how upgrading to the next-generation console version will work. Most developers and publishers are providing free next-gen versions for their games, but you know some developers have to make this more complicated than it should be. Activision will be yet another one of the publishers jacking up the price for the standard editions of their games from $59.99 to $69.99 for the next-gen versions, which already solidifies how expensive playing games on next-gen consoles will be before we even know the hardware prices.
The process of upgrading the game will be needlessly and hilariously confusing. Anyone who purchases the PlayStation 4 version can upgrade to the PlayStation 5 one, for presumably $10 extra thanks to being priced higher. Upgrading from the physical version will require the PS4 game being in the PS5 console, though the digital version will unsurprisingly be required for the disc drive-deprived PS5 variant. The PS4 version will be playable on PS5 (like all PS4 games releasing these days), though without the next-gen performance upgrades. This is enough, but we’re not at the confusing parts yet.
The Xbox console upgrade plans are the biggest mess. The official FAQ states that those who buy the Xbox One version will not be able to upgrade to the Xbox Series X (or Xbox Series S, which they still haven’t announced) one. From the sound of it, anyone who wants to upgrade to the XSX/S version will have to buy that version upfront, which will also be playable on XB1. This will not be helped by how closely the physical cases for the Xbox One and general Xbox versions resemble each other outside only a couple of differences. Otherwise, anyone who buys the XB1 version and wants to later play it on XSX/S will have to buy it again. Ridiculous. Perhaps they’ll modify the plan if enough people complain, but given how much money each CoD game makes, strongly emphasize “perhaps.”
My guess is that Activision and the development teams at Treyarch and Raven Software will never address how Reagan will be portrayed, even after the game’s release, leaving players to draw their own conclusions. I have no faith that it will be critical of him in any way, and most CoD players will be fine with it. Notice how the “keep politics out of my games!” clowns are eerily silent about this. There’s a bigger chance of them doing damage control by modifying the next-gen upgrade plans, but that’s not guaranteed either. We’ll see what happens.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
