A new report claims that Activision’s upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will merge the franchise’s famous multiplayer with the game’s single-player campaign by having the final mission take place in a 32-player online match.
In June, Xbox and Activision officially revealed Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 as the next entry in the uber-popular shooter series. The game’s first teaser trailer offered up some glimpses of its future-based campaign as well as a brief look at multiplayer and Zombies, two Call of Duty staples at this point. We also know the game will feature a campaign that can be played solo or with up to three other players in co-op. That’s not a first for the series, but it isn’t common. What would be a first is that, reportedly, Black Ops 7‘s campaign will end in a climactic mission set inside a multiplayer match.
On August 14, as reported by Insider Gaming, sources told the outlet that Black Ops 7‘s campaign will feature 12 missions, and the final one will integrate the campaign into a 32-player multiplayer experience. The mission will take place in the map “Avalon,” which has been rumored for a bit now to be a battle royale location, but is actually the setting of this odd campaign experiment.
Insider Gaming says that the final mission sounds a lot like it will be an extraction-based experience with players needing to complete objectives before exiting the level and, presumably, finishing the game’s final campaign mission, though we’ll have to wait and see just what this all looks like in practice. While I’m always happy to see Call of Duty trying new things and shaking up the formula, I’m not a big fan of locking the game’s final mission behind an internet requirement. Will people be unable to play the last mission in 20-30 years when the servers are dead? Hopefully there’s a backup plan for offline folks.
The merging of campaign and multiplayer like this is reportedly part of a larger push in Black Ops 7 to merge the game’s various modes and offer players full progression across every part of the upcoming shooter, with the idea being that regardless of where you play, even in campaign, you can level up weapons, characters, and the battle pass. That’s a neat idea that seems inspired by Fortnite’s universal progression and XP system, which Epic implemented last year.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 doesn’t have a release date yet, but Xbox and Activision will show off the game’s multiplayer later this month at Gamescom, and that seems like a fine time to announce a launch date. If the past is prologue, I’d expect you’ll be playing Black Ops 7 in October or November.
