The Call of Duty: Vanguard reveal event will begin in Call of Duty: Warzone on August 19, and a new teaser trailer gives us our first look at the game's World War 2-inspired look.
The trailer cuts from one historical battle scene to the next, with each one revealing a different face via bits of the battlefield. Finally, the trailer reveals a key art image of the same four soldiers heading into action.
The Call of Duty franchise has existed in a bit of a strange state of flux for a little while now. That's not to say it hasn't been successful. Warzone, the free-to-play battle royale game released in the height of the pandemic last year, was about as pitch perfect for the time it was released as it was possible to get, nailing not only the battle royale format to perfection with its addictiveness and approachability, but providing a salve for our collective worldwide boredom. It was, quite simply, the biggest thing on the planet for a number of months.
The problem Call of Duty has, however, is that it has become something of a victim of its own massively multiplayer success. The rebooted Modern Warfare came the closest to replicating the vibes of the earlier games in the series, and Black Ops Cold War made a small splash late last year, but both have been largely overshadowed by Warzone's success. Before that, none of the narrative-driven games the franchise attempted to release really landed in the same way games like the original Modern Warfare and World at War did in the early 2010s.
So will this change as the franchise revisits already well-trodden territory in Vanguard? It's too early to say. What we know so far is that Vanguard will see the series return for the umpteenth time to the battlefields of World War II, with the game's teaser revealed overnight confirming these already long-established rumours. There's been no official word on whether the game will skew towards multiplayer or focus more heavily on its single-player campaign. All we know so far is that the game has been put together primarily by Sledgehammer, who rotate development duties with Infinity Ward and Treyarch, making games for the series every three years. The last game Sledgehammer was the primary developer on was, surprise surprise, Call of Duty WWII.
The teaser released overnight points to a gritty artistic direction for the game, as the camera simply pans across carnage-strewn battlefields from all four of World War II's most famous theatres: the western and eastern fronts, the Pacific, and North Africa. Interestingly, it also shows a shot of an Australian patch in the sand of some desert battlefield, suggesting some of the story may focus on Australia's efforts during the war. If this is true, it'll mark the first time Australia's World War II veterans are represented in a video game, after Battlefield I let you play as an ANZAC soldier during the Gallipoli campaign of World War I.
