What We Know About Call of Duty Vanguard

It’s that time of year again. The new Call of Duty has been announced and revealed by Sledgehammer and Call of Duty in an in-game event in Call of Duty Warzone. Before I start talking about everything we know about the new Call of Duty 2021, I am quickly going to go over the event.

Battle of Verdansk Event:

The Battle of Verdansk event in Warzone was fine, I didn’t find much wrong with it personally. It focused around players coming together and destroying a heavily armoured train. Once the train is destroyed, Verdansk starts getting bombed by a fleet of aircraft and you have to make it to an extraction point without dying. The event was enjoyable, but honestly nothing extremely exciting.

The Trailer:

But now we move onto the trailer. We now know that the next Call of Duty game is going to be called Call of Duty Vanguard. Shown off in a 3-minute-long cinematic trailer that just gives us a bit to go on before any gameplay comes out. The trailer does not give off much to tell us about the game, which is expected from a cinematic. It does have a few splices of gameplay in there, but it isn’t enough to tell how good it is going to be. But what we can tell from the trailer is the following:

• Call of Duty Vanguard will take us back to WW2
• We will get a campaign mode that puts us fighting in four different regions
• The game will release on November 5th

Though we did not get much information from the trailer, the Call of Duty website gives a lot more detail and information that can tell us a lot more about the game. Including details on the campaign, multiplayer and zombies modes that will be included in the final game. We may as well jump straight into it. There are also some Warzone updates that I will mention at the end.

Multiplayer:

I’ll start with multiplayer as that is what most players care about. Though no gameplay has been shown off just yet, we did get a bit of good information. Call of Duty Vanguard will launch with 20 maps for multiplayer which includes 16 core gameplay maps. Of course, they will be set in diverse locations as expected from Call of Duty games.

A new advanced Gunsmith and Caliber system has been mentioned, but no further details have been given on this point. And the last major point to be mentioned is that the 2V2 Gunfight mode will be reintroduced with some updates and a new Champion Hill mode will be added.

But for multiplayer, that’s about it for the time being. The Alpha and Beta don’t seem to be far away, so we will get to see a bit more about it then.

Zombies:

I’ve always believed that the Zombies game mode is the most enjoyable and entertaining modes within Call of Duty, especially within the Call of Duty Black Ops series. What I’m trying to say is that Treyarch do a great job when it comes to the game mode. But when other studios attempt to make something around Zombies, it feels a bit off the mark.

But with Call of Duty Vanguard, we don’t have to worry about that as the Zombies game mode is going to be developed by Treyarch and the Dark Aether story is going to continue rather than having to wait for the next CoD from Treyarch. The way this works is just in a bit of a crossover, Sledgehammer work on the campaign and multiplayer and Treyarch continue with the Zombies mode.

Other than that, though, there is currently not much information on Zombies. So, we will have to wait a bit longer for details.

Campaign:

As theorised in the trailer, the campaign in CoD Vanguard is going to let us play as four different characters in four different regions of the world. The four characters have been announced on the Call of Duty website, and they are:

• Private Lucas Riggs – 20th Battalion, Australian 9th Infantry Division, British Eighth Army
• Sargeant Arthur Kingsley – 9th Parachute Battalion, British Army
• Lieutenant Wade Jackson – Scouting Squadron Six, United States Navy
• Lieutenant Polina Petrova – 138th Rifle Division, Red Army

As said before we are going to be playing as these characters in four different battlefields and regions. We will get to fight in Eastern Europe, so areas like France, Western Europe, which would include areas in Russia, the Pacific, areas like the Midway Islands, and Northern Africa.

Warzone:

I did say I would quickly go over the new Warzone changes that have been announced. The first is that there will be a brand-new Warzone map launching later this year. But the main thing to take notice of is that Warzone will feature a new anti-cheat for PC. This was bound to happen at some point as there is a huge cheating issue on PC. The new anti-cheat will go live with the new map, and will cover all games compatible with Warzone.

And some minor points are mentioned. Universal progression will continue. Playing on any of the four compatible games will allow progress. No surprise there. Anything you earned through the Battle Pass or purchased through the store will move forward.

Additional Features:

There are some additional details that I am going to go over as well. I am just going to make this brief.

• Cross play will be able from launch, so you can play with players from PC, PlayStation, Xbox and more.
• Content will continue to be added. Including free post-launch content, events, maps and modes and paid content.
• The Call of Duty Battle Pass will make a return. Unlocking different content within game.

Pre Order:

With every Call of Duty game, you can expect various different editions and pre-order bonuses for those who want to spend a bit more to get some exclusive bonuses and stuff like that. And obviously Call of Duty Vanguard has pre orders available right now and different editions.

As always you are going to be able to get the normal standard edition of the game in both digital and physical forms. When you pre-order any of the editions you will get access to the beta before it becomes open, the Night Raid Mastercraft Weapon Blueprint, the ability to pre-load the game before it releases and more.

With the digital standard edition for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC you will get the Call of Duty Vanguard base game and the digital exclusive frontline weapons pack.

The digital cross-gen bundle for consoles (PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S) will include the base game, five hours of double weapons experience, the digital exclusive frontline weapons pack and of course cross generation gameplay. This is not available for PC.

The digital ultimate edition for all platforms will include the cross-gen bundle of CoD Vanguard or the PC version of the game, the Task Force One Pack that includes three operator skins and three weapon blueprints with tracer rounds, the battle pass bundle (includes one Battle Pass and 20 tier skips), ten hours of double experience (split into 5 hours of double XP and 5 hours of double weapons XP), the digital exclusive frontline weapons pack.

If you pre-order from the in-game Warzone or Call of Duty Cold War stores you will instantly get 10 Battle Pass Tier Skips.

Key Dates:

After the reveal of Call of Duty Vanguard, we got a number of potential leaked key dates that will be a massive help. From August 27th to August 29th the Alpha is set to take place. From September 10th to September 21st the PlayStation Beta will take place. Between September 16th to September 20th the beta for all platforms will occur. Note these are leaked dates and may not be the actual dates.

And once again, the most important and confirmed date, Call of Duty Vanguard release date is November 5th.

But in terms of information, that’s about all we have at the moment of writing this. So keep your eye out for any more details over the next few weeks and months. It looks like Call of Duty Vanguard will also follow the same path of Call of Duty Cold War. Which can be seen as good or bad from multiple perspectives.