Does Black Ops 7 Signal the End of Single-Player Call of Duty?

Without a shadiness of a doubt, Call of Duty is chiefly a multiplayer game. Following the meteoric emergence of the archetypal Modern Warfare’s PvP, the bid has go an manufacture behemoth, and its occurrence is wholly down to its online modes. And yet, twelvemonth aft year, Activision has dedicated a important magnitude of currency to backing elaborate single-player campaigns. As idiosyncratic who grew up connected the likes of Half-Life and Halo, these campaigns are the crushed I’ve travel backmost to Call of Duty twelvemonth in, twelvemonth out. Sure, it’s been a rocky relationship, but it’s been worthy enduring for the truly bully ones – similar past year’s fantastically orchestrated Black Ops 6, with its conveyor loop of breathtaking ngo concepts.

But this twelvemonth is different. Black Ops 7 specifically brands its communicative mode arsenic a “co-op campaign,” and has been designed astir a four-person squad. As our reappraisal points out, it is simply a importantly worse acquisition solo, to the constituent we could ne'er urge playing it alone. And truthful the full Call of Duty bundle this twelvemonth is multiplayer, a information that has maine wondering astir the aboriginal of the series. Has it yet fixed successful to the penning connected the wall? Is COD single-player over?

Co-op enactment does not ever spell the decease of solo play. Halo and Gears of War person some built legacies connected campaigns that enactment some equally. But successful Black Ops 7, developers Raven Software and Treyarch haven’t made a classical Call of Duty run that tin beryllium played with a mates of buddies. The ngo operation is fundamentally antithetic from the series’ accepted template. There are nary of the scripted cinematic moments that person defined Call of Duty’s reputation, nor the experimental concepts that characterised past year’s campaign. Instead, the full ngo excavation is geared astir simplistic corridor shooting and slug sponge brag fights – scenarios that are casual to orchestrate with aggregate players who are perchance much funny successful chatting than engaging with a plotline. Perhaps understandably, trying to enactment aggregate players crossed thing arsenic delicately railroaded arsenic Modern Warfare’s iconic stealth affair, All Ghillied Up, oregon arsenic attention-dependent arsenic past year’s societal espionage-flavoured Most Wanted, was considered a formation of fancy.

As a result, a large woody of Call of Duty’s foundational run DNA has been replaced. And by that I don’t conscionable mean the summation of online infrastructure that eliminates the series’ atmospherically captious AI-controlled squadmate characters, and enforces nary pausing and being kicked aft a play of inactivity. No, I mean the instauration of force types with healthbars and, successful the lawsuit of the caller Endgame mode that caps disconnected the story, harm numbers. The accomplishment of colour-coded, tiered weaponry that’s recovered successful boxes, not connected corpses, efficaciously turns guns into loot, and the open-world Avalon, often visited crossed the run earlier becoming your location for the Endgame, is peppered with small-scale objectives and activities, akin to Warzone’s conflict royale map. Or a Destiny planet. Or a Helldivers world.

In fact, portion determination are 11 missions that pb into it, Endgame feels similar the existent “point” of this campaign, much truthful than story, characters, oregon level concepts. This 32-player PvE mode volition beryllium supported passim Black Ops 7’s lifetime, fundamentally turning it into an evolving, not-quite-live-service mode… 1 that, eventually, volition beryllium wholly divorced from its archetypal run packaging. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Activision already has plans to let players to skip the missions wholly and get consecutive into Avalon. In a caller speech with IGN, Black Ops 7’s subordinate originative director, Miles Leslie, revealed that connected “day one, we privation to marque definite that radical advancement into [Endgame] naturally. We privation them to get done that story, recognize the world, the abilities, the characters. [But] what we've talked astir is, astatine immoderate point, and we haven't figured retired conscionable yet, erstwhile does it unlock it for everyone?”

It’s wide that Black Ops 7 is simply a caller breed of Call of Duty campaign, 1 foremost designed astir co-op multiplayer trends, alternatively than simply inviting different players to beryllium progressive successful a accepted communicative shooter. From my perspective, it’s a overmuch little absorbing direction, but it’s undoubtedly a motion of the times. Just 5 percent of PlayStation players person unlocked the PS5 run completion trophy of past year’s Black Ops 6, and that lone rises to 8 percent if you spell backmost to 2022’s Modern Warfare 2. Rewind adjacent arsenic acold arsenic 2019’s Modern Warfare reboot, arguably the past 1 that was universally agreed to beryllium a must-play, and conscionable 12.6% person the contention trophy. These stats intelligibly amusement that the immense bulk of Call of Duty’s assemblage simply isn’t funny successful playing alone, adjacent for conscionable the fistful of hours required to wide these abbreviated campaigns. And with the budgets demanded, nary wonderment Activision has been investigating other, much multiplayer-focused alternatives… and nary wonderment it’s landed connected thing that feels similar a mish-mash of Destiny, Borderlands, Left 4 Dead, and Warzone – games that person secured millions of players implicit the years, and broadly talk to “modern” tastes that person been much wide engineered by the likes of the ever online, ever societal Fortnite.

Of course, this isn’t the archetypal clip that Call of Duty has attempted to spell all-in connected multiplayer. In fact, it’s been thing of involvement for Black Ops workplace Treyarch for astir its full COD career, starting with 2008’s World astatine War, wherever the run had (somewhat tacked-on) co-op support. A fewer years later, the workplace would marque a bolder effort with Black Ops 3, but that came with its ain mistakes – a bid of missions designed to beryllium played successful immoderate bid you wanted, akin to choosing multiplayer maps, meant the communicative lacked propulsion, coherence, and meaning. For its adjacent game, it chose to scrap the run entirely, redirecting single-player resources towards Blackout, Call of Duty’s archetypal stab astatine conflict royale. This made Black Ops 4 the archetypal and truthful acold lone purely multiplayer Call of Duty bundle – 1 I’m doubtful Activision volition ever instrumentality to, but thing that I deliberation did awesome inevitable shifts successful improvement priorities.

We tin spot the colossal power of multiplayer successful different aspects of Call of Duty’s run design, too. 2023’s disastrous Modern Warfare 3 didn’t person co-op, but it did afloat thin into the sensibilities of conflict royale, tooling galore of its missions to let for the benignant of gameplay that those trained connected Warzone would instinctively use. That went arsenic acold arsenic adjacent utilizing full sections of the Verdansk representation arsenic locations wrong the campaign, an thought Black Ops 7 has since pilfered with its usage of Black Ops 6’s Skyline multiplayer representation successful the process extremity of its campaign.

The infamously squashed improvement timeframe of Modern Warfare 3 is apt the astir important origin to blasted for its “multiplayer recycled arsenic single-player” feel, but I deliberation there’s much to it. It wasn’t conscionable that conflict royale assets were determination and acceptable to beryllium Frankensteined together… it was besides that Warzone was colossally much fashionable and much wide understood than the old-fashioned communicative campaign. And you tin spot that reasoning successful Black Ops 7, albeit from a caller angle. Its run is designed astir the interactions of a multiplayer shooter, not a cinematic story, and the effect of that is simply a mode you tin technically play alone, but 1 wherever the operation and balancing simply don’t marque consciousness for it. And so, for the archetypal clip since Black Ops 4, Call of Duty is arguably a multiplayer crippled successful its entirety.

But is this the aboriginal of Call of Duty? Will accepted campaigns beryllium replaced by roughly-story-shaped co-op modes? It’s intolerable to tell, since the bid zigs and zags with yearly frequency. 12 months ago, we were fixed Call of Duty’s astir ambitious instrumentality connected its accepted single-player template since 2017’s Infinite Warfare, and yet the precise aforesaid developers who made Black Ops 6 created this year’s chaotic near turn. In 2026, we’ll presumably get Infinity Ward’s adjacent project, which could conscionable arsenic easy beryllium a re-try of Modern Warfare 3’s Warzone-tinted experimentation arsenic overmuch arsenic it could beryllium an emulation of the 2019 MW reboot oregon thing other entirely. But arsenic overmuch arsenic the aboriginal is intolerable to see, the contiguous paints a wide picture: Activision is assessing what Call of Duty means for the modern generation.

For years now, Call of Duty has been a trifecta of single-player, multiplayer, and co-op, expressed done its campaign, online, and zombies/spec-ops modes. And erstwhile you spot the resources that went into Black Ops 6’s spectacular campaign, lone for it to beryllium completed by hardly anyone who bought it, you person to beryllium amazed astatine (and adjacent respect) Activision’s historical dedication to big-budget single-player. But returns tin lone diminish for truthful long. The triple-A run shooter is an endangered species, with hardly a Doom oregon a Wolfenstein to slope connected regularly, and often, Call of Duty is the lone 1 of its benignant to get each year. It’s wide that Activision knows the epoch of the communicative FPS is practically over, and that it’s spending wealth connected thing hardly immoderate of its mammoth assemblage wants. And truthful things change. That started with multiplayer elements repackaged arsenic single-player content, and it’ll precise apt spell overmuch further than campaigns reimagined arsenic multiplayer – you tin present play Call of Duty wholly successful 3rd person, conscionable successful lawsuit you thought immoderate things were invulnerable to the power of Fortnite and Sony’s first-party titans.

While significant, imperishable alteration whitethorn not travel adjacent year, oregon adjacent the twelvemonth after, I deliberation this year’s run is simply a motion of things to come. At this point, erstwhile Call of Duty is simply a Game Pass tentpole and needs to request engagement period aft period to rotation up never-ending subscriptions, wherefore wouldn’t you crook your formerly five-hour-and-forget campaigns into a mini Destiny?

Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.