This year’s Call of Duty returns to World War II, according to new reports partly verified by Eurogamer.
Modern Warzone reported that this year’s new Call of Duty is in development at Sledgehammer Games, maker of the well-received Call of Duty: WW2 of 2017, and is due to be released in late 2021. Eurogamer sources have indicated that this is indeed true.
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Modern Warzone also reports that this game is codenamed Call of Duty WW2: Vanguard, and reports that the name will be changed in the future. While this may indeed be the case, Eurogamer understands that Activision’s current plan is to keep the Vanguard subtitle for the final version.
Modern Warzone also reports “the whole game takes place in an alternative timeline where 1945 was not the end of World War II”, and takes place in the 1950s. Eurogamer understands that this detail is not right, and Vanguard has a traditional scenario of the second world war.
Call of Duty games tend to leak before they are officially announced, and Eurogamer has verified Call of Duty leaks in each of the past five years. The headline this time around, however, is the return of Call of Duty to World War II. Vanguard will be just the second World War Call of Duty launched in the last decade, and comes after a Modern Warfare set in the present day, and a Black Ops Cold War set in the 1980s.
An open question is whether Vanguard is set to integrate with Warzone. Black Ops Cold War was announced within Warzone, and its integration into the Battle Royale, while suffering from significant problems, clearly boosted the sales of the Treyarch sniper.
With Warzone set for a cataclysmic nuclear event powered by zombies in the near future, which is supposed to initiate a significant change in the 80’s-themed map for Verdansk, the question is this: Warzone is set for a WW2-themed change in the future, too?
Activision has not yet commented directly on the latest reports, but has confirmed plans to launch a new Call of Duty game in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Speaking in February, Activision’s chief financial officer, Dennis Durkin, said: “We will benefit from an entire year of Warzone by driving updates to our premium content and incremental investment in players in the game, and we have a substantial opportunity to continue migrating the community to Black Ops Cold War, as well as another strong premium launch planned for the fourth quarter of 2021. “
It appears that Activision does not expect Call of Duty WW2: Vanguard to sell as many copies as Black Ops Cold War, however. “From our perspective, we are conservatively taking on the lowest Call of Duty premium units year on year,” continued Durkin.
Sledgehammer and current war zone custody, Raven Software, were working together on the Call of Duty 2020 before Treyarch was summoned to lead the development of what became Black Ops Cold War just two years after the launch of Black Ops 4. This broke the traditional three-year development cycle Activision had established with Infinity Ward, Treyarch and Sledgehammer. Warzone’s explosive popularity has, of course, changed Activision’s thinking, with it now leading the charge of Call of Duty on PC and consoles.