A pivotal final cutscene has been unlocked in Call of Duty: Warzone, and it seemingly wraps up an ongoing storyline surrounding a nuke. Since the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, battle royale mode Warzone has served to begin to merge several of the franchise's separate brands into one whole. This hasn't gone down well with players in terms of weapon balancing, but the story hooks that bring several major baddies from across Call of Duty history together into one complicated web of lore is exactly the type of storytelling that fandom thrives on in 2020.
However, Warzone isn't just a multiplayer mode. Much like Apex Legends, Fortnite, and other big names in the genre, Warzone aims to tell a continuing story over multiple seasons that will keep players coming back month after month. The mode started alongside last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, so there's been plenty of build-up throughout all of 2020. The main Modern Warfare operatives have hunted down Victor Zakhaev, a secondary villain from the original Modern Warfare in the Xbox 360 era that also popped up in Cold War's campaign for a brief cameo.
YouTuber Geeky Pastimes put together an excellent guide for players looking to experience the final bit of the Warzone story as quickly as possible. Unlocking the cutscene involves grabbing bits of intel during gameplay, some of which are as small as a gold coin. The intel locations are only hinted at via photos of the map, and thusly scattered across every region. Players must collect the items one at a time, so it would take a dedicated soldier to collect them all without a guide. There have been a number of these challenges throughout Warzone's life, each leading to a little in-game progression on the ongoing story.
As for the cutscene itself, it depicts Captain Price and his team catching up with Zakhaev and stopping him from launching a nuclear missile and "sticking a knife in the neck of history." It's a direct continuation of the story told in last year's Modern Warfare, which features Victor along with his father in an altered retelling of 2007's version of events. Of course, the story of a battle royale goes ever onward, so the characters are sure to fit in a statement that things aren't done as they rush off to their next mission and a new ongoing narrative.
For those who have been playing Call of Duty since 2007, it may be a strange feeling to see campaign loose ends tied up in cutscenes that are hidden within Call of Duty: Warzone. Considering the massive success of the battle royale mode within Call of Duty can other games like it, this may become the norm going forward for the franchise's acclaimed campaigns. Give players a reason to play the single-player and then funnel them into the mode that matters with hints of some other satisfying payoff. It's a dangerous game, but any games journalist worth their salt knows not to count out Activision's juggernaut at this point.
Source: Geeky Pastimes/YouTube