After weeks of leaks and rumours, Activision formally announced Call of Duty: Vanguard earlier this week with a brief teaser. Now, they’ve officially unveiled the game in full, providing new details on its campaign and multiplayer offerings, as well as how it’s going to integrate with the free-to-play battle royale title Call of Duty: Warzone. Watch its announcement trailer below.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is set during the Second World War, and its campaign will focus on the origins of the Special Forces. There will be four playable protagonists, who will go on to become the first ever Special Forces Operatives- Private Lucas Riggs, Sergeant Arthur Kingsley, Lieutenant Wade Jackson, and Lieutenant Polina Petrova. The campaign is described as “an interweaving story of multinational heroes that formed Task Force One.” Players will experience World War 2 theaters from across the world, including the Eastern and Western Fronts of Europe, the Pacific, and North America.
On the multiplayer front, the game will launch with a total of 20 maps- less than the 24 the leaks claimed, but still the most a Call of Duty game has ever launched with. 16 of these, as the leaks said, will be core maps, with the other four being dedicated to a new mode called Champion Hill. Champion Hill is, according to Activision, “the next generation” of Modern Warfare (2019)’s 2v2 Gunfight mode, and is described as “quick-action, close-quarters, small-squad combat in which eight teams compete in a series of head-to-head matchups where the last team standing wins.”
There’s also Zombies, which is being developed by Treyarch, which is something else that has been mentioned in previous leaks. It will continue the Dark Aether storyline and will focus on “the unspeakable horrors of the precursor to Black Ops Cold War Zombies.”
Call of Duty: Warzone integration is also confirmed, as you’d expect. Integration will happen later this year, at which point Warzone will also get a brand-new map. All of your progress will carry over, while Warzone’s progression and loadouts will also continue to be supported with Modern Warfare and Black Ops Cold War. Additionally, Call of Duty: Warzone will also get a new PC anti-cheat system when the new map launches, which is a good thing- cheating has been a big problem in Warzone for a while now, and rumours have indicated that it would indeed be getting a new anti-cheat system soon.
Finally, cross-play and cross-progression are all confirmed for Vanguard, unsurprisingly. A multiplayer open beta has also been confirmed, though it doesn’t yet have a release date. Additional details on the game’s multiplayer and Zombies offerings will also be arriving in the coming weeks.
Call of Duty: Vanguard launches on November 5 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Activision Blizzard currently finds itself in the midst of a lawsuit, having been accused of widespread sexual harassment of and discrimination against employees, and the company’s been under fire even from its employees. CEO Bobby Kotick has said that those engaging in such activities are going to be held accountable for their actions, and in the wake of the controversial lawsuit, several high-level Blizzard Entertainment employees have been let go. You can read more about the situation through here.
