The next game in the Call of Duty franchise will return to the Black Ops brand, and will reportedly be set in the Gulf War of the early Nineties.
The Gulf War was a short but bloody conflict involving a coalition of 42 member states fighting against Iraq between 1990 and 1991.
As per the unconfirmed reports from Windows Central, the newest game in the multi-million-selling franchise will focus more on “traditional” military combat, a return to the franchise’s roots, at least compared to the focus on high-tech gadgetry of recent Modern Warfare games in bestselling series.
In terms of its story, there will reportedly be a strong focus on the CIA and the leak suggests that the game may land around autumn or early winter, roughly comparable to when the games have historically been released.
Though an official name for the new release has yet to be decided as per the reports, Black Ops: Gulf War is currently looking like the most probable name for the project, which is supposedly currently being developed under the name “Cerebus”.
The reports also suggest that publisher Activision has plans to reward dedicated gamers, and we have weeks of early access to the game’s Zombie mode.
We’ve seen other major studios reward pre-orders with early access schemes over the past year.
To give just one example, Bethesda offered UK gamers who pre-ordered open-world sci-fi RPG Starfield access to the game a full five days before its official release.
Though the latest reports are still as of yet unconfirmed, we’ve seen rumblings of Call of Duty heading to the Gulf earlier this year.
Early last year, American actor Luke Charles Stafford posted on his Facebook account according to Insider Gaming that the Call of Duty series will be heading to the Middle East, with a soldier named Ratcliffe.
Some commentators have pointed out that the name Ratcliffe could point to the real life of British Army soldier Peter Ratcliffe, a member of SAS who served in the Gulf War and in Northern Ireland and wrote about his experiences in the popular memoir Eye of the Storm, published in 2000.