Call of Duty to transition to ‘open world’ campaigns

While Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launched with a widely praised multiplayer mode, its single-player campaign left a lot to be desired. The campaign ditched the structured missions of previous COD campaigns and instead opted for ‘open world missions'. Now, it appears that this will not be a one-off occurrence. 

If you are the type of person that would play through the cinematic Call of Duty campaign each year, you may be disappointed in future releases. According to Insider Gaming, Activision is going to 'embrace' open world COD campaigns moving forward, starting with Black Ops Gulf War.

Apparently, some linear missions will be integrated, so perhaps the developers will look towards something like Halo Infinite, which did have a nice mix of open-world/linear missions through its single-player campaign, although this did also lead to a lot of very similar looking levels, so differentiation will be key.

The report states that the new open world campaign will play out more like a Far Cry game, rather than a typical Call of Duty single-player experience. Players will be able to use vehicles and fast travel to get around the map and you'll have a squad with you, so you won't be wandering the open world completely alone.

We'll no doubt see more leaks on this in the months ahead, with Black Ops Gulf War planned to release in late 2024.

KitGuru Says: We've known that Activision has wanted to stop producing expensive cinematic COD campaigns for a while. It is one of the primary reasons Black Ops 4 was multiplayer-only. Now, I worry we're heading towards a future where the campaign is included as a token addition, and the lack of interest from players will then be used to kill off COD's campaign mode once and for all. 

Become a Patron!