The upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will pioneer Fireteam, a brand new game mode that has the potential to bring a unique and somewhat untested experience to its playlist roster. The franchise itself has held onto and evolved its various game modes over the years, retaining classics like Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Search and Destroy, as well as expanding by introducing Gunfight, and successfully throwing embracing the rise of battle royale games.
Spec Ops mode became something of a sleeper hit in conjunction with Call of Duty: Warzone. The Spec Ops missions offered some truly exciting cooperative gameplay, giving four-player squads access to expansive sections of the Verdansk map, all while navigating diverse sets of objectives and providing lore tied to the game's single-player campaign. The result definitely took a back seat to the standard multiplayer and battle royale modes, but created intense, teamwork-oriented moments for many players willing to give it a shot.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will release soon on November 13th, 2020, and it appears as though Treyarch is looking to build upon the Spec Ops model by introducing Fireteam. According to a video from GamersPrey - clipping a section of the recent Call of Duty multiplayer reveal stream - Fireteam will offer large maps and 40-player servers. The count breaks down into 10 teams made up of four-player squads, with each squad vying to complete a set of multi-phase objectives. Footage from the trailer indeed shows teams running around and driving a number of different vehicles while fighting off other player teams.
The trailer didn't delve too deeply into the full scope of what Fireteam will entail, and only shared footage and details from an iteration called Dirty Bomb. In this scenario, teams must find caches of uranium stashed within the map and transport them to pre-determined dirty bomb locations. Once the bombs go off, teams will then have to strategically navigate through a newly irradiated map. On top of tanks, helicopters, buggies, and motorcycles racing across the landscape, Treyarch's Studio Design Director, David Vonderhaar, explained that "the action won't just affect you, but the environment you battle in." Whether this indicates something along the lines of destructible environments or shifts in map conditions forcing teams to think more critically is anyone's guess.
This new addition to the franchise's game modes may not be something totally original, but seems to create an intersection of already successful gameplay mechanics that no one has really seen before. The potential for teamwork and narrative gameplay definitely lends itself to the Spec Ops model. On the other hand, the high player count, multiplayer component, and possibility of losing navigable map space are things that we've come to expect from battle royale modes like Warzone. There is still plenty of time before Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's release, and though there is precious little to know about Fireteam at this point, here's hoping we'll learn more about Treyarch's ambitious new mode in the coming weeks.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on November 13th, 2020.
Source: GamersPrey/Youtube