Some Thoughts on Call of Duty

  This is a quick snap reaction to some thoughts I've been having following the big COD event today. I will be posting this as a video tomorrow afternoon so look out for that!

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        Today was an interesting time for the yearly gaming calendar: the annual reveal of the next call of duty. I think this is certainly something that a lot of people have come to expect and will just kinda wave off as just business as usual. Naturally I’m one who is pretty well positioned to fit into that camp and was prepared to do so before heading into this event. Now to those who have fortunately remained out of the loop, cod(call of duty) has started to reveal their next year’s game through in-game events via warzone. Warzone has probably been one of gaming’s biggest successes in recent years. It has somehow kept cod relevant in the modern age and kept the profits high despite it becoming a very contentious topic for taking away resources and time that could’ve gone into the 6v6 multiplayer that we all know that cod is famous for. As someone who has never really enjoyed Battle Royale as a genre, I am definitely a little on the fence about how I feel putting such a huge emphasis on this mode for marketing is, but I know I’m just part of a section of the cod player base and they can really just go and do whatever they want. Not like I really have the power in me to change anything considering I’m just rambling about whatever topics I want to in these posts.


Regardless, I can’t deny just how much hype was indeed generated by the event. Cod hit a pretty high number of viewers and almost all of the content creators I knew played cod came out of wherever they had been hiding on my feeds to experience this event. To infinity ward’s credit, it was actually a very well done event. It brings the current season’s story arc to a very nice close and very deftly sets up the stakes for the next game. Makarov was able to infiltrate shadow company and steal the gas that we worked so hard to retrieve. I think a funny little jab I’d like to make at their narrative team is just how silly the premise was. This is the same gas that we’ve been dealing with since modern warfare 2019. It’s crazy just how much of this stuff there is. Also, Graves seems to have a pretty bad track record with transporting weapons. In the Modern Warfare 2 campaign, he loses the missiles that become the focus of the story and now once again he loses the very deadly gas. I’m just curious as to how these guys got past Shadow? How loose is their vetting process? When did they sneak in? What about the pilots or the other shadow company squads? A lot of people went into Al-Mazrah and you’re going to tell me two dudes was all it took to reclaim all of the Russian gas? Don’t know why General Shepherd keeps this guy on his payroll, not the most reliable if you ask me. They even worked hard to try to redeem Graves this season. The guy who enjoyed carpet bombing a random village in Mexico a little too much. He turned out to not be the worst person, he was willing to put in the work to stop this whether it was for selfish or selfless reasons. I wonder if we can go for a third time in the next game. It’s definitely a little too much high level narrative criticism to give to a game like Call of Duty. We all know the game’s main draw is the semi-realism and the insane set pieces that happen while playing. To that end, the event was very fun and enjoyable. PvE has been something that modern warfare 2 has really impressed me with. I’ve played through all of the co-op missions as well as the raids now and I have been genuinely enjoying them. They’re fun, challenging, and creative which are words that I would’ve never thought to be attributing to call of duty pve modes since the original modern warfare trilogy co-op missions. So hats off to infinity ward for that and I can only hope that Sledgehammer will continue their great work in the next call of duty game.


Speaking of that, I did want to bring up the fact that we are indeed getting another call of duty game this year. Early last year, there were a lot of rumors that this year we would be taking a break from the yearly call of duty release cycle. That we would get a dlc for Modern Warfare 2 to supplement the experience rather than a full on game. I would have actually preferred that to just getting a new game this year. I know I’m not the only one because a new game sorta means that everything you’ve done in the current year’s game just goes bye bye. Even with the carry over system where all the skins and weapons will move from modern warfare two into modern warfare three I can’t help but feel so much work that was done for the maps, campaign, raids, and warzone will all sorta be left behind in favor of whatever content will be coming in for the next game. Not to say I’m someone who will be losing stuff, I only bought one bundle in modern warfare 2 and it was the cdl starter pack with the black/white skins so it’s honestly whatever for me. I just hate how I felt after warzone 1.0 because I did spend an unreasonable amount of money on that group of games and I hate how many people have probably already spent an unreasonable amount of money on this one. They will probably continue to spend it only for warzone 3.0 to take all of it away and bring everyone back to square one. It’s a bit of a gross system that we all know is intentionally designed to siphon off as much money as possible from the player base until we have no more left to give.


So where does that leave me in all of this? On one hand we have a pretty well put together experience that exceeds my personal expectations for anything that could come out of this franchise while also having it in the back of my head that this overdelivery is probably a ploy to get people to buy in with however much money their willing to spend on a fleeting experience designed to get their money with the limited time it has. I will definitely be buying next year’s cod. The campaign alone is definitely enough to convince me that it will be worth the money. I do not intend to spend any more money after that unless there is something truly special to be found in the next game. I encourage you to do the same and not feel like buying a yearly release is something you NEED to do to get the proper enjoyment out of your gaming career.

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