Call of Duty in 2021: Rumours, Leaks, New title, Warzone, Cold War, more

Games Call Of Duty
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From Activision launching the free to play Call of Duty: Warzone, Modern Warfare becoming the best selling Call of Duty of all time, to the release of Cold War, 2020 shaped up to be a pretty big year for the franchise.

As we head into 2021, we wanted to share our expectations and speculation around what’s to come from the Call of Duty world.

We’re expecting the new Call of Duty 2021 game, new seasons of content for Black Ops Cold War & Warzone, new content for Call of Duty: Mobile, and potential Modern Warfare content to come.

Let’s go through what we expect in 2021 from the Call of Duty world.

Speculation: Call of Duty 2021

Well of course, we all know there’s a new Call of Duty game coming in the fall. But the speculation, and mystery, around the title is which studio is developing it.

Call of Duty was on a pretty set 3 year development cycle starting in 2014 with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Sledgehammer Games was added to the rotation alongside Infinity Ward and Treyarch to give the teams an extra year to release their latest Call of Duty title.

This cycle, was of course, up-ended in 2020 when Sledgehammer Games’ was no longer the lead on the title (as revealed in May 2019), and Activision put Treyarch in charge. Treyarch released Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in Nov. 2020 with a less than 2 year development cycle with Raven Software as the co-developer.

This leaves the big question: which team is on the 2021 Call of Duty game?

Sledgehammer Games has been rebuilding their studio extensively over the last four years in the shadows. The team lost a large portion of the employees in 2018 when Activision removed studio co-founders Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey.

SHG revealed on Twitter that they have hired over 150 new people in 2020 alone, and the team is working on multiple projects. They have been credited as a support studio for Modern Warfare, Warzone, and Black Ops Cold War. But now, it begs to ask: are they ready for the spotlight again? Is this team ready, with a full premium Call of Duty experience, for 2021? That could certainly be the case. What could their game be: Advanced Warfare 2? Vietnam War related? Future game?

The other potential possibility is Infinity Ward makes the 2021 Call of Duty in a shortened two year development cycle, but that seems a little less plausible because the team worked a lot on Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare’s post launch season, alongside Raven. It seems more likely Infinity Ward will take the 3 years to get ready, but we could be in for surprise.

Confirmed: New Black Ops Cold War Content

There’s definitely going to be new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War content coming throughout 2021, with new seasons with new Battle Passes and more. Treyarch has been advertising the post launch season as the ‘biggest Black Ops year yet.’

New seasons will arrive with new Battle Passes, new MP maps & modes, new Gunfight experiences, new weapons, and more for players to experience. There’s also the new Zombies maps that fans have been waiting. All of the content will be free, aside from the paid tiers of the Battle Pass & Store bundles.

Zombies fans have new map experiences to look forward to, with the Dark Aether story continuing. One of the things that’s not clear is how many new Zombies maps will release in 2021. In years past, the Season Pass (or Black Ops Pass) gave fans the number of post launch Zombies maps to expect: 4. Will 4 be the standard even with free Zombies maps? That remains yet to be seen.

Confirmed : New Warzone Content

Call of Duty: Warzone continues to be incredibly successful for Activision with over 80 million players since its launch in March 2020.

2021 will see more content for Warzone, with its integration with Black Ops Cold War. New seasons will bring new Battle Pass & cosmetic content for Warzone players.

There’ll be updated weapon rotations and balancing as Raven Software looks to balance out the Modern Warfare & Black Ops weapons together in this world.

Beyond the usual expected content, there’s also rumors suggesting a new, large map for Warzone could be coming. Back in June of this year, YouTuber TheXclusiveAce posted a video highlighting some zones of the Warzone map he got from a source. That map, which is rumored to be set in Russia (or mountains in that region), has yet to be officially confirmed.

There’s no timeframe for when this new map will debut, but there are hopes for a potential release in the first half of the year.

Confirmed : New Call of Duty: Mobile Content

Call of Duty: Mobile is also another successful, and now established, pillar of the Call of Duty world for Activision.

The mobile game has seen over 300 million downloads since its October 2019 launch, and recently launched in China, which will expand Activision’s Call of Duty audience significantly.

We can expect to see more Call of Duty: Mobile Seasons as the year goes on. The Call of Duty: Mobile development team has been releasing new seasons of content on an almost monthly basis, with new Battle Pass, MP maps, and more in tow.

There’s also the possibility of expanded esports support for Call of Duty: Mobile. The game hosted its first Championship events, online, in 2020 with a partnership with SONY. Call of Duty: Mobile’s esports is expanding in regions like India.

As always, check back to CharlieIntel for the latest news on Call of Duty: Mobile and follow our COD Mobile Twitter account for updates.

Speculation: New Modern Warfare Content

Will there be new Modern Warfare get new content in 2021? Well, that’s a little up in the air.

We’re hoping to see some new Modern Warfare content throughout the year as the game still has an established fan base. Players are enjoying Modern Warfare’s mechanics and engine and continue to do so. Many fans have been upset recently over the game turning into a big advertisement for Black Ops Cold War, and have been asking Infinity Ward to bring more content.

While there’s no official announcements yet, an Infinity Ward developer on Twitter stated back in the end of November that there’s new content ready for the title, but he’s not sure when it’s set to go live.

In addition, recent data mining from the game’s files have hinted at new content for Modern Warfare. Data miners found new Store bundles for the game, including a Soap Operator Pack as well as another new Operator “Sparks.”

Data mining in the past also identified a variety of unreleased MP maps, Gunfight maps, and more, but there’s no clarity on if the studio officially plans to release those.

Speculation: Call of Duty: Warzone on Mobile

Our last speculation for a potential release in 2021: Activision expanding Call of Duty with more mobile titles. With the incredible success of Call of Duty: Mobile in 2020, we wouldn’t be surprised to see more mobile titles from Activision.

One of the mobile titles that could be possible is Warzone releasing on Mobile. An Activision job listing in 2020 revealed that they are hiring a team to build Warzone features and more into a mobile experience. The listing stated that they were looking for someone to “ harvest, adapt and deliver the essential features from Warzone console and PC into their best mobile instantiation. “

The job listing was removed and later replaced with the listing saying a new “Mobile FPS” title. The company has numerous job listings open for Mobile developers, so it remains to be seen if Warzone (or a potential other Call of Duty experience) for mobile will be ready in 2021.

So there you have it. This is all of what we expect to be released from the Call of Duty franchise in 2021. As always, stay tuned to CharlieIntel.com for the latest news as all of this unfolds throughout the year.

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A new rumor about the upcoming Call of Duty 2021 game has surfaced which claims to leak the setting of the new title.

The newest Call of Duty title is set to be released during Q4 of this year from Activision.

Known leaker Victor_Z posted a couple of tweets overnight suggesting some details on the setting for the 2021 Call of Duty game. In his tweets, he states that the 2021 game will be set during World War II era.

His tweet included a hammer emoji, probably in reference to Sledgehammer Games as the game’s development studio, and the WWII cover art.

A user asked him if he meant to say that it would be ‘WW3’ style game instead, but Victor_Z responded again saying WWII.

A “WW3” game, which some people have suggested, would not make sense really seeing as ‘WW3’ style game would be similar to that of the story behind Modern Warfare franchise.

Of course, this is just a rumor for now and not confirmed by Activision, so take it with a grain of salt. However, the leak, Victor_Z has known to accurately leak information in gaming, including Call of Duty. He accurately stated that the Black Ops Cold War reveal trailer back in August would include a 10 second MP preview, amongst other information he has shared in the past.

Sledgehammer Games’ last title was Call of Duty: WWII back in 2017, which focused on the European front of the war. There’s still some moments and conflicts of WWII that can be explored by Sledgehammer Games if this rumor is in fact true.

Activision has not announced any details about the 2021 Call of Duty game. The company only just confirmed that a new ‘premium entry’ into the franchise will release in Q4 this year.

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Call of Duty 2021 is officially on the horizon, and here’s everything we know about the upcoming game’s release date, who’s developing it, leaks, and more.

As always, a new year means a new Call of Duty game. The upcoming Call of Duty 2021 release is as mysterious as it is exciting, and we’re sure to get another year of Warzone updates combined with a brand new (or returning) setting for the franchise.

With the resounding success of Modern Warfare, Warzone, and Black Ops Cold War, the 2021 iteration of Call of Duty is sure to be a huge release. Let’s break down all we currently know.

CoD 2021 release date

Call of Duty traditionally releases in November. However, Modern Warfare and Black Ops 4 were both released in October. Ideally, Call of Duty targets the first Friday of every November, as we saw for the releases of CoD WW2 and Infinite Warfare.

The Friday tradition started with Black Ops 3, where games before saw releases on the first Tuesday of November. Below you can read some of the recent Call of Duty releases.

  • Advanced Warfare : November 4, 2014
  • Black Ops III : November 6, 2015
  • Infinite Warfare : November 4, 2016
  • WWII : November 3, 2017
  • Black Ops 4 : October 12, 2018
  • Modern Warfare: October 25, 2019
  • Black Ops Cold War : November 13, 2020

Activision has officially confirmed during their investor call on February 4 that there’s a new Call of Duty game coming this year, and the 2021 title will run parallel to Warzone.

We could expect CoD 2021 to release again on the first Friday of November. Black Ops Cold War was released on the second Friday of November, which could very well be due to the less-than-normal development time Treyarch had for the title.

Overall, we would definitely expect the new game to drop on either the first or second Friday of November 2021.

CoD 2021 title

There is a new rumor from ModernWarzone that the working title for the 2021 Call of Duty is ‘ WWII Vanguard .’ This title adds credibility to the potential of this being a World War game, as Vanguard is the foremost part of an advancing army or naval force.

While ModernWarzone believes this title may be changed in the future, Eurogamer “understands Activision’s current plan is to stick with the Vanguard subtitle for the final version.”

There has been no official word from Activision yet, and plans could certainly change in the future.

CoD 2021 setting and time period

One rumor suggests that the 2021 game will be set during the World War II era again, and Eurogamer reported that this will be true.

ModernWarzone claimed that CoD: WWII Vanguard would be an alternate history version of WWII set in the 1950s. However, Eurogamer’s sources disputed this information, saying it would be a “traditional WW2 setting.”

We should get more teasers for the game in the coming months. Leaks, as always, will be tough to decipher, with plenty of community members posting fake leaks for each new CoD game.

Developer

The current main development studios for Call of Duty are Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Treyarch. Normally these studios operate on 3-year development cycles. However, Sledgehammer Games did not have the lead slot for their most recent planned 2020 release, which instead became Treyarch’s Black Ops Cold War.

Due to this, Sledgehammer Games are the most likely candidates to develop the 2021 Call of Duty title. Eurogamer also believes SHG will be developing WWII Vanguard, reporting that their “sources have indicated this is indeed true.”

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Call of Duty 2021 will reportedly run on Modern Warfare’s engine

A new report from website VGC provides some fresh info on the 2021 Call of Duty game, which is rumored to be called Vanguard.

Per the new article from VGC, the 2021 Call of Duty title is set to run on the new Modern Warfare engine introduced in 2019.

Modern Warfare’s ‘IW8’ 2019 engine was a massive revamp of the Call of Duty engine. The engine was in development by Infinity Ward’s Poland studio for almost 5 years before seeing the day of light in 2019 with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

The 2021 Call of Duty game, which is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, is set to return to the Modern Warfare engine.

This might be a welcome change for players who enjoyed the improvements and performance the new engine brought. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War stayed on Treyarch’s own engine, which is quite different in many ways to the Modern Warfare engine.

Activision announced the IW8 engine back in May 2019, and described it in-depth both to press and fans in multiple showcases.

The features described for the ‘IW8’ engine were:

The new technology utilizes the latest advancements in visual engineering, including a physically-based material system allowing for state of the art photogrammetry, a new hybrid tile based streaming system, new PBR decal rendering system, world volumetric lighting, 4K HDR, DirectX Raytracing (PC) and more as well as a new GPU geometry pipeline.

Spectral rendering delivers thermal heat radiation and infrared identification for both thermal and night-vision in-game imaging. The technical investment provides a cutting edge animation and blend shape system, while the new suite of audio tools supports full Dolby ATMOS, on supported platforms, along with the latest in audio simulation effects.