It seems like the Call Of Duty has been in a little bit of turmoil this week. News broke this week that Sledgehammer, the studio behind Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and Call Of Duty: WWII, were having serious issues trying to develop the next COD with Raven Software. Activision had grouped Sledgehammer and Raven together to work on the 2020 edition of Call Of Duty, and much like two middle school rivals being forced to work together on a science project, the teams could not get along, which has reportedly led to the game being taken away and given to longtime COD developer, Treyarch Studios.
As a result of this move, it looks like the game will now become Call Of Duty: Black Ops 5. The game will also apparently see the much sought after return of a single player campaign.
Treyarch cut the single player campaign out of Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4, deciding to focus instead on the popular Blackout battle royale mode. This was a pretty controversial decision at the time, considering that the Black Ops series had always had pretty intense and interesting story modes. The stories of the first and second Black Ops games could perhaps even be called the best stories that the Call Of Duty series ever told.
The COD that Sledgehammer and Raven were begrudgingly working on was set to have a single player campaign already, and it sounds like Treyarch is planning on repurposing what they’ve created into something that will better fit the Black Ops series. The campaign was also supposed to set during the Cold War, but it’s not yet known whether or not that will be still be the case with Black Ops 5. Black Ops 4 takes place in the not so distant future, so going back to the Cold War would be a pretty decent leap backwards in time.
However, heading back in time could possibly allow us to have another adventure with crazy old Frank Woods in the prime of his life, which would probably be just fine.
It’s an interesting turn of events for sure, seeing as how the Call Of Duty series has been on a pretty predictable schedule for some time. The COD series has been on a rotating three-year cycle with its developers for years now, with Treyarch, Infinity Ward, and Sledgehammer all releasing a new Call Of Duty in that order. That cycle is now broken, and Treyarch will now only have two years to create a new Black Ops.
That being said, Sledgehammer and Raven are expected to remain on the project to support Treyarch. Plus, their work is going to be used in the new game, so it’s not like Treyarch is necessarily starting from scratch. Treyarch should probably be able to keep the other two studios from bickering with each other, and there’s probably a good chance that the Blackout mode will return in some capacity.
It’ll be nice to have a single player COD campaign once again, especially in the Black Ops universe where things have always been pretty crazy. Of course, we’re likely to get a single player campaign this year as well, considering the COD game for 2019 has been very heavily rumoured to be Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and the Modern Warfare series has also usually had some pretty high-stakes story modes.
Still, it would be nice to have another trippy, weird Black Ops story, and hopefully that’s what we’re going to get from Treyarch in 2020.