In early August, just days before a major Black Ops 7 preview event in Los Angeles, former Blizzard president and Microsoft executive Mike Ybarra called the Call of Duty franchise “lazy”. Posting on X, the veteran exec wrote that EA’s upcoming Battlefield 6 would “boot stomp” CoD this year and force the team to make “better FPS games”. And with Splitgate 2 head Ian Proulx mocking Call of Duty in his Summer Game Fest presentation just two months ago, it seems the blockbuster series has become the butt of an industry joke about endless franchises.
It’s not the only flak the 20-year-old brand has drawn. Though it sells millions of copies with each new release (Black Ops 6 was the bestselling game of 2024), accusations of predatory monetisation, pay-to-win skins, swarms of in-game bugs, and the recent use of AI to create in-game, paid-for content have understandably irked many players.
As if to address these criticisms, one thing is immediately clear: Call of Duty Black Ops 7 has a lot going on. The latest instalment from Treyarch, which drops this November, features a mind-bending campaign starring Hollywood actors such as Milo Ventimiglia (This is Us), Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina); the ability to play four-person co-op across every mode;the return of beloved twin-stick minigame Dead Ops Arcade; and a brand-new 20-player mode called Skirmish, with large dedicated maps, wingsuits and vehicles. Lazy? Far from it.
The narrative blends covert warfare, psyops and tech industry paranoia … Black Ops 7. Photograph: Activision
Produced in tandem with last year’s Black Ops 6, number 7 is a pseudo-sequel to the beloved 2012 title Black Ops II, with Ventimiglia playing David Mason, that game’s steadfast main character. Set in 2035, it’s crammed with hi-tech war machines – think swarms of deployable minidrones, a Boston Dynamics-type attack dog known as the DAWG, and a futuristic UI, designed to resemble an augmented reality display. Mason heads up a four-person squad of highly trained military operatives. For the first time since Black Ops II, you’ll be able to play through the campaign with up to three friends.
In keeping with the Black Ops ouvré, the narrative blends covert warfare, psyops and tech industry paranoia. Returning series villain Raul Menendez has developed a new drug that inflicts hallucinations on all who breathe it in. During a demo playthrough, we see giant machetes fall from the sky while Los Angeles’s 405 highway bends up towards the heavens like a Hot Wheels track (which feels somewhat reminiscent of the Scarecrow nightmare moments in Batman: Arkham Asylum). And while players often rush through the campaign to jump into multiplayer, this time the team has added a new never-ending “endgame” feature, perhaps inspired by the MMORPG genre, to make it more appealing. Once you complete the linear narrative, you gain access to a massive open-world map set in the fictitious city of Avalon. Here, you can use personalised abilities and unlock new loadouts to complete regularly updated challenges. “It will redefine campaign in Call of Duty,” says design director Kevin Drew.
Commute to work in a wingsuit … Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Photograph: Activision
We also know that a new, connected progression system means that playing the campaign will earn you XP, level up your guns, and progress the battle pass for the first time ever, which could encourage players to dabble in every available game mode – and especially this original take on campaign. “The word connected came up a lot,” says director of production Yale Miller. “I think as soon as you’re with friends, it’s easier to jump into a campaign. Solo, it’s like, ‘What’s going on, I haven’t played a Call of Duty campaign, what am I doing?’ But jumping in with a friend to play is just a very different experience.”
Of course, Black Ops 7’s quest to be bigger and bolder than its predecessors extends to its Zombies mode, which features the largest round-based map the team has ever made. Pulling inspiration from Black Ops II’s TranZit map, the latest take on the undead shoot fest is a departure from recent zombie instalments where, in general, players have gone off alone and done what they wanted. This time, teams have to work together against the hordes, using vehicles and bumping into alternative versions of the original protagonists, Richtofen, Belinski, Masaki and Dempsey.
Plus, the team is bringing back the beloved game-within-a-game Dead Ops Arcade, a classic twin-stick arcade blaster embedded within Zombies. It’s something of a passion project for the studio. “Dave King, our CTO [chief technology officer], is wildly passionate about it for lots of reasons,” says Miller. “He and a skunk work group [a small, experimental department within a company] of engineers did the very first versions of [Dead Ops]. There’s a ton of love for classic arcade machines here … More than half the studio has been here for around 10 years, so there are a lot of people who have been part of that experience of getting to do Dead Ops.”
In terms of the online experience, there are 16 multiplayer maps at launch, a bevy of upgradeable weapons (including 16 guns entirely new to the Call of Duty franchise), and a new weapon build sharing function, so you can send friends your killer loadout for the new Peacekeeper M1 hybrid SMG/AR or the ferocious Echo 12 shotgun. Building on the omnimovement system of Black Ops 6, there’s a new wall-jump ability, giving you more vertical possibilities, as well as a grapple hook. Among the new abilities, a favourite is the Drone Charmer option, which lets you send out a drone army to track down opponents, the attack dogs from Call of Duty: World At War.
Is Black Ops 7 a double middle finger at those who have accused the series of laziness? “I don’t think it’s the double middle finger,” Matt Scronce says. “I came from the community. I was being flown out by Treyarch in 2007 to preview DLC for World at War, so I was born into it. Throughout my career, I’ve kept players’ perspectives in my heart, so I understand. When it comes down to it, I’m just thrilled to still be a part of that conversation … if they’re not talking about which game is better, then you’ve fallen off, right? It’s always a question of what we can do to push the envelope and do the unexpected.”
The annual Call of Duty releases may not upend the industry’s status quo or redefine a beloved genre, but there’s no denying the value in Black Ops 7, the obvious bang for your buck in purchasing one game and getting three experiences that can be played with friends. Its holistic take on the modern FPS will probably keep it relevant, whatever Battlefield brings to the table.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is released on PC, PS5 and Xbox on 14 November
