Black Ops 7’ Really Wants You To Play The Campaign

Black Ops 7

Credit: Activision

Activision and Treyarch revealed a ton of new details about this year’s upcoming Call Of Duty today at Gamescom. I attended a preview event earlier this month and got to see an even more detailed presentation about what’s coming to Black Ops 7.

I also was able to speak with developers and got a little bit of hands-on time with the game’s multiplayer and Zombies modes, though I’ll have to save my gameplay impressions for another time.

One of the things that really stood out to me about Black Ops 7 is just how badly the developers seem to want to get players to actually play – and finish – the campaign. I almost typed “single-player campaign” just now, but this is actually a co-op campaign. You can still play it solo, but you can also play with up to a four-person squad, or with just two or three people. Play with friends or utilize online matchmaking, or just play by yourself. The game will automatically scale difficulty based on how many players are in the squad, which is certainly new for Call Of Duty.

Beyond co-op, which should make the campaign more fun for people who normally just play multiplayer, are a bunch of other incentives. For the first time, there will be a full suite of Campaign camos and mastery camos for all the Black Ops 7 guns. This means that completionists who grind camos in multiplayer, Warzone and Zombies will now need to grind camos in the campaign.

Fortunately, that doesn’t mean playing the campaign itself over and over again. There’s a brand new end-game (aptly titled Endgame) for players to wingsuit into, after they complete the campaign. Now, once you’ve finished the final mission, you’ll be able to squad up with teammates and play an open-world mode on the Avalon map. This Endgame mode sounds a bit like the DMZ from Modern Warfare II. Up to 32 players drop into Avalon and fight their way through increasingly difficult portions of the map, leveling up as they progress. Apparently, finishing the hardest missions Avalon has to offer will require multiple deployments, though if you’re wiped out you lose all your upgrades.

The campaign, and Endgame, will feature some fun bells and whistles like grappling hook traversal and wingsuits. These movement upgrades will be available in the 20v20 multiplayer Skirmish mode as well, though not in core 6v6 modes. Leveling guns is now global as well, so all progress made in all modes, from campaign/Endgame to MP and Warzone and Zombies, contributes to leveling up your arsenal.

Black Ops 7’s campaign is a direct sequel to 2012’s Black Ops II, picking back up in 2035. There are many familiar faces, though chief protagonist David Mason is now played by Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes, This Is Us). Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead) returns as Mike Harper and Kiernan Shipka (Twisters, Sabrina) plays the enigmatic Emma Kagan, CEO of the almost certainly nefarious tech giant, The Guild. Oh, and somehow Raul Menendez – villain of Black Ops II, who very much dies in that game – returns.

From what I’ve seen of the campaign, it looks pretty wild. Most Black Ops campaigns are trippy, but this one looks like it takes place as much in psychedelic mindscapes as it does in the real world. One mission includes giant machetes as tall as skyscrapers crashing into the ground around you as you battle your way through phantom-like enemies. The campaign takes you to Japan, the Mediterranean nation of Avalon, the jungles of South America and more, though how many of these locations are real remains to be seen.

I’m also curious to see if Avalon is just a location for Endgame and some multiplayer maps, or if we’re getting an Avalon Warzone map as well. Hopefully we find out more soon.

Black Ops 7 releases on November 14th on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and PC via Battle.net and Steam. I’m a little surprised that we’re still getting these on last-gen systems. Still no word on whether Nintendo Switch 2 will be getting a Call Of Duty title anytime soon.