The days are getting longer and temperatures are rising, which means it must be time to talk about the next Call of Duty. Activision is going back to the well with Black Ops 7 this year—a deviation from the CoD release pattern that hasn’t gone unnoticed or without concern—but Treyarch and Raven are zagging away from the Gulf War antics of last year’s Blops 6. Instead, we’re going back to the future (again).
While I quietly mourn the Infinity Ward game we’re not getting this year, I look forward to seeing Call of Duty’s latest interpretation of future warfare. Early leaks indicate we might be boosting through the air like it’s 2014 again, now empowered by Omnimovement. Here’s what we know about Blops 7 so far, including our best guess at the timing of its gameplay reveal this Summer.
Black Ops 7 release info
Activision hasn’t said jack squat about Black Ops 7’s release date, but that’s probably because it doesn’t have to. Call of Duty has come out every Fall, without fail, for the last 20 years. Sometimes they launch in November, but more recently, Activision has preferred the end of October.
The trailer
Watch On
That’s trailer, singular. This one 3-minute reveal of Black Ops 7 is the extent of what Activision has officially shown of the game. Shown during Xbox’s June showcase, the CG trailer’s sanitized color palette, holograms, and non-gun-wielding robot briefly fooled most of the audience into thinking Microsoft was announcing an original new series, but alas, it was an obligatory Call of Duty reveal.
Back to the future (again)
“The year is 2035 and the world is on the brink of chaos, ravaged by violent conflict and psychological warfare following the events of the fan-favorite titles Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 6,” reads the Black Ops 7 Steam page.
That’s right, we’re going back to the future (but maybe not the flavor of future you’re asking for). As the description indicates, Blops 7 is picking up the ball with David Mason, son of Alex “The Numbers” Mason. David Mason last appeared in 2012’s Black Ops 2, a game now old enough to pluck the nostalgic strings of the late Xbox 360 era.
It’s unclear if this 2035 story will have any material ties to the ’90s antics of Blops 6, but history tells us not to expect much in terms of connective tissue. Maybe Frank Woods will show up? Did he die in Blops 2? High school was a long time ago.
Playtest leak
Late last month, someone at Activision HQ tripped and hit a button that accidentally pushed early Blops 7 promo material onto the live CoD app. Fans got a glimpse of in-game messages highlighting playtimes and modes meant for a playtest later this year. Here’s what we learned:
- TDM, Domination, and Hardpoint will be in the playtest (it’d be weirder if they weren’t)
- There’s also a new mode, Overload: Two teams of 6 players each fight to control a neutral EMP device that must be delivered to the enemy HQ for score. Reach the score limit and claim victory by delivering multiple EMP devices!
- Skirmish is a new 20v20 mode: Two teams of 20 fight to complete objectives across a large map. Capture points of interest, destroy payloads, and transmit valuable data to score. Use your wingsuit to flank and reach objectives before your enemy. The first team to reach the score limit wins!
Those modes sound pretty typical of CoD, but what’s that about wingsuits? Is this the first mention of the feature Activision will eventually build Blops 7’s marketing around, similar to Blops 6’s Omnimovement? Sounds like that Skirmish mode will be facing off against the new Battlefield.
When will we see gameplay?
When will we see gameplay?
The most likely venue will be Call of Duty Next, a dedicated CoD event where Activision tends to fully spill the beans on the new game. Usually held in late summer, CoD Next slaps a bunch of YouTubers and streamers in a room to play the new game live a few days ahead of an online playtest while developers get interviewed about new features. Unless Microsoft is shifting things around this year, expect Blops 7’s big gameplay reveal sometime in August.
Are jetpacks making a comeback?
So Blops 7 is a direct sequel to Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 6, but there’s reason to believe it’ll adopt the movement mechanics of Blops 3 and 4—a twisted web of callbacks.
Folks have taken notice of the metal backpacks characters appear to be wearing in those leaked screenshots, and yep, they do look like jetpacks. If you were as checked out of CoD as I was back then, the series went wild with various interpretations of jetpacks, double jumps, and wallrunning mechanics between 2014 and 2016.
Black Ops 3, which Blops 7 is most likely to be inspired by, let players to boost or momentarily hover in any direction and wallrun on certain walls. At the time, these were controversial changes seen as a mismatch for CoD implemented purely as a reaction to Titanfall, but like the forgettable Blops 2 campaign, it’s been just long enough since CoD last experimented with verticality that some see its potential return as a nostalgia boon. Considering a guy is diving sideways 15 feet off the ground in one of those screenshots, I’m curious how jetpacks would mix with Omnimovement.
Campaign co-op is a lock
Neat. This is another Blops-ism that hasn’t been revisited in nearly a decade. Maybe that’s because I don’t know anybody who ever engaged with co-op campaigns in CoD—I was more of a Spec Ops guy—but you won’t catch me complaining about it.
Yes, Zombies is back too
It’s a Blops game, so Activision went ahead and confirmed Zombies is making the cut. Never been my thing, but last year’s version was my favorite in a while thanks to its sandboxy maps.
Wait, another Black Ops so soon?
By far the strangest aspect of Black Ops 7 is its timing. We just got Black Ops 6 last year, which makes this the second time in a row that Call of Duty has sequelized the previous year’s game instead of following its usual pattern.
That pattern would typically dictate that it’s Infinity Ward’s turn to dazzle us with the next Modern Warfare, but instead we’re getting another Blops helmed by Treyarch (which tends to focus on multiplayer and Zombies) and Raven Software (which has made the last few Blops campaigns).
There are obvious red flags here. The last time this happened was 2023’s Modern Warfare 3, a sequel that reporting indicated was thrown together by Sledgehammer after Activision delayed Black Ops 6 a year. Because Activision wasn’t about to skip an opportunity to release something for $70 in 2023, it pushed out a disjointed, shallow, and noticeably barren CoD that earned the series’ worst reviews in history. Assuming it wasn’t always the plan to double-dip on Blops in 2024 and 2025, we could be watching history repeat itself.
Black Ops 7? More like Call of Duty 22
No seriously. If we’re only counting mainline games, Black Ops 7 is Call of Duty 22. Let that sink in, then expunge it from your aging body and let it wash over you.
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