This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS forCall of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign.
The golden age ofCall of Dutysaw campaigns that were filled with bombastic action set pieces, high-stakes story beats, beautifully-crafted settings, shocking betrayals, returning characters, and plenty of twists and turns.Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign tries its very best to hearken back to this golden age of theCall of Dutyfranchise.
Coming in at around 8–10 hours,Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign has its fair share of dramatic twists, plenty of over-the-top vehicle chases and intense firefights, a world-ending MacGuffin, and some cameos from past games, all of which combine to makeBlack Ops 6’s campaign one of the best in franchise history. ButCall of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign isn’t perfect, with it suffering from an issue that’s plagued the franchise since 2019.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s Ending Falls Into a Familiar Pitfall
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s Ending Leaves The Door Wide Open
After secret missions in Iraq, chases through a Kuwaiti airport in a tank, and mind-bending levels set inside the main antagonist’s brain,Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaigncomes to a climactic end when Frank Woods and the rest of his team of rogue CIA agents put an end to The Pantheon organization’s plan to release a bioweapon in the US Capitol building.
Following this fairly cut-and-dry ending, players are treated to a final cutscene that showsWoods, Marshall, and Adlermeeting up with their former CIA boss, Daniel Livingstone. Livingstone tells the team that he needs their help to fight an emerging war, a new kind of conflict in which the enemy’s goal isn’t clear. The first step of their new mission is to head back to Avalon and find out everything they can about Pantheon.Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign then ends on a cliffhanger, with a mysterious figure having broken into Livingstone’s office at the CIA.
ThoughBlack Ops 6’s main story technically comes to a conclusion, its final moments leave the door wide open for a continuation of the narrative. And ifBlack Ops 6follows in its predecessors' footsteps, that continuation is going to happen inCall of Duty: Warzone.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign cliffhanger isn’t nearly as bad asModern Warfare 3’s, which left all of its plot threads hanging.
The Recent Problem With Call of Duty’s Campaign Endings
From the earliest days ofCall of Duty: Warzone’s 2020 launch, its developers have tried to integrate story content into the battle royale, often using seasonal cinematic cutscenes and in-game events to tell the major events of a chapter. While it’s great to get story content in a battle royale, the subject matter has often been a point of controversy among some fans.
It began with Ghost’s appearance inCall of Duty: Warzonein May 2020, marking the character’s debut in theModern Warfarereboot timeline. Then it was Alex Keller’s resurrection from the dead followingModern Warfare(2019)’s ending. And more recently, Phillip Graves was also given the resurrection treatment, bringing the antagonist back from the dead a year after his boss fight inModern Warfare 2.
These major events have only appeared inCall of Duty: Warzone, even though they tie in directly with the events oftheModern Warfarereboot series. If any fan misses these vital story moments because they don’t playWarzone, they’re left in the dark, which can be quite confusing when previously-dead characters like Alex and Graves pop up inModern Warfare 3. WhileWarzoneplayers deserve good story content, that content shouldn’t revolve around plot points directly related to ongoingCall of Dutycampaign narratives.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
WHERE TO PLAY
Forced to go rogue. Hunted from within. This is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.Developed by Treyarch and Raven, Black Ops 6 is a spy action thriller set in the early 90s, a period of transition and upheaval in global politics, characterized by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the United States as a single superpower. With a mind-bending narrative, and unbound by the rules of engagement, this is signature Black Ops.The Black Ops 6 Campaign provides dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay that includes a variety of play spaces with blockbuster set pieces and action-packed moments, high-stakes heists, and cloak-and-dagger spy activity.In a best-in-class Multiplayer experience, players will test their skills across 16 new maps at launch, including 12 core 6v6 maps and 4 Strike maps that can be played 2v2 or 6v6.Black Ops 6 also marks the epic return of Round-Based Zombies, the fan-favorite mode where players will take down hordes of the undead in two brand-new maps at launch. Post-launch, players can look forward to even more exciting maps and groundbreaking experiences dropping into both Multiplayer and Zombies.
