Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will offer features that have never before been seen in previous Call of Duty games. One of the most surprising new features is the ability for players to customize their character for the game’s campaign mode.
While past Call of Duty games gave players customization options in multiplayer, Black Ops Cold War is the first in the series to allow players to customize their player for the campaign. The new feature is a sign of developers Treyarch and Raven Software’s efforts to provide a more personalized experience for Call of Duty fans. Players will create and customize their own protagonist, who will join returning fan-favorite characters Frank Woods, Alex Mason, and Jason Hudson for a campaign set in the early 1980s.
Players choose their character’s name, psychological profile, gender, and background, including small details such as where their character was born. The character customization menu is modeled after a CIA dossier and gives players the choice to redact part of their character’s identity and background.
Raven Software’s Senior Creative Director Dan Vondrake said that players can also choose to play as a gender neural character by selecting the “they” pronoun in the character customization menu. In an immersive touch, players can even choose to keep the gender of their character classified by redacting it on their dossier. Whichever gender they choose will determine the voice of their character, which will be heard in voice-overs and cut scenes throughout the campaign. Black Ops Cold War's recent trailer revealed that the campaign will take player to several Cold War-inspired locations, including East Berlin, Vietnam and a secret Soviet headquarters.
Besides the psychological profile, which will grant players small gameplay bonuses, the customization options are purely cosmetic and will not affect the progression of the campaign. What will affect the campaign are the choices that players make. Black Ops Cold War’s campaign is intended to make players feel the weight of their decisions. Choices such as choosing to bribe, poison or sneak past a guard will impact the outcome of the game’s ending. While it is confirmed that Black Ops Cold War will feature multiple endings, the exact number is not known.
The new feature is sure to please fans who were disappointed that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 lacked a campaign. While Call of Duty games are mostly known for competitive and fast-paced multiplayer matches, several fans still yearned for a cinematic single player experience. Multiple endings likely means branching story paths, which will likely give Black Ops Cold War’s campaign more replay value than any previous Call of Duty title.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War launches November 13 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions also in development.
