UPDATE 19/8: After a week of teasers and Ciphers, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is now confirmed to be revealed worldwide on August 26.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is set to be the annual Call of Duty game for 2020. Except, we still don’t know much about it. Warzone looks set to stick around, concreting itself within the franchise. However, that hasn’t stopped the rumours swirling on the next instalment. From leaked Doritos packaging to interviews, there has been a lot of information leaked throughout this year.
Here is everything we know about the next game, Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War.
When is the Release Date?
Call of Duty 2020 has not been officially announced yet, so we don’t have a confirmed release date. Twitter has been circulating with a leaked image of a Doritos’ 2XP promotion for Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War. The promotion is shown to run between October 5th 2020 to January 31, indicating an October release window.
Previous Call of Duty games have also had promotions for early October with the game releasing that same month. Modern Warfare’s Mountain Dew promotion began in early October ahead of a late October release.
Traditionally, Call of duty games release in early November, but Black Ops 4 and Modern Warfare have broken that trend. Instead, opting for an October release, making an October Call of Duty release all the more likely.
UPDATE 19/8: Call of Duty has now confirmed a worldwide reveal date of August 26.
What is the Red Door?
If you missed the news, The Red Door has appeared on the Microsoft Store. It is listed as a shooter by Activision Publishing Inc. and comes with a brief cryptic message:
“There is more than one truth. If you go looking for answers, be ready to question everything and accept that nothing will ever be the same. The Red Door awaits, do you dare step through it?”
According to SerialStation, the PlayStation Network (PSN) serial numbers for the Red Door have also been confirmed to match up to Cod2020 in both the European and American stores. It is also suggested that the red door is a prominent reference to the black ops series. Call of Duty: Black Ops III’s reveal trailer was showcased with Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones. The opening line in the song mentions a red door. Could this be the same Red Door? Only time will tell.
The Discovery of the Pawn Takes Pawn Website
At the beginning of August, Activation sent a number of different boxes to a variety of news outlets. The boxes were to be open on August 10, 2020, 12 PM EDT. Each box contained a slide projector with 10 slides and a manifest. The manifest told the news outlets to “immediately distribute the provided intelligence to your operatives in the field.“
After the internet got a hold of the information from the slides, they discovered it was related to a chess game in 1972 between Boris Spassky and Robert James Fischer. Combing the information from the chest game and a story Treyarch posted to their Instagram, the phrase ‘pawn takes pawn’ was identified. Shortly after, the website http://pawntakespawn.com/tv was discovered.
The website features a TV, a VCR player, a phone and some chess pieces. It also has video cassettes with mysterious messages and a sticky note with different links leading you pages with puzzling images.
Warzone References
With the introduction of bunkers into Warzone, we have seen more and more references to the next Call of Duty game. In an interview with GamerGen, Infinity Ward’s narrative director Taylor Kurosaki stated that Warzone will be the connection between the different Call of Duty games.
“We’re in kind of uncharted territories here. Call of Duty has been on a very regular cadence for many many years, and Warzone has made us rethink exactly how best to release new content and how to integrate it. Call of Duty is a genre in itself, there are different branches in the Call of Duty tree, but they’re all connected in some ways. Warzone will be the through line that connects all of the different various sub-franchises of Call of Duty. It’s going to be really cool to see how the different sub-franchises sort of come in and out of focus, but Warzone will be the one constant.”
The tapes on pawntakespawn also have referenced the Warzone bunkers. The latest cassette flashed a code and coordinates relating to bunker 3. Inside the bunker, there were another set ciphers that needed to be solved.
After the bunker was opened, the website was updated. Crossing out DAY TWO and revealing DAY THREE on the EMC2 sticky note.
UPDATE 17/8: Day Three has since been crossed out revealing DAY 4. On August 17, another VHS tape was released with references to numbers and another code. The code was deciphered to be another set of coordinates to a shack in Warzone. The small shack is located behind the Prison and inside, players found, another set ciphers that needed to be solved as well as the frame of an RC-XD.
UPDATE 18/8: Day four has been crossed out and replaced with day 5. VHS Tape 4 has appeared with more references to numbers and another code that needed to be deciphered. The code pointed players to yet another bunker in Warzone. Inside the bunker was an elevator, more ciphers to solve, several wheels of an RC-XD and some batteries. Another pawn was knocked over on the EMC2 sticky note.
No information has yet to be updated regarding this, so now we are up to date.
We will continue to update this as new information comes to light.