As the end of summer draws near, so begins the hype cycle for the next annual iteration of Call of Duty. Kicking off the opening night of this week’s Gamescom 2025 in Cologne is the first official trailer for the game, titled Black Ops 7, which reveals what fans can expect from the game’s action-heavy story when it launches on Nov. 14.
Watch the first look below.
The trailer opens with a look at a mostly unrecognizable future with David Mason (Milo Ventimiglia), the returning protagonist from Black Ops II (2012), and a troop of sci-fi looking soldiers. But things quickly go off the deep end as, either by some psychotropic drug or virtual reality shenanigans, the game’s world is literally turned upside down with roads, building, and more warped to twist into sky like something out of Inception. From just a quick look, it appears extremely different visually and mechanically from any Call of Duty before it.
Following the trailer, the game’s developers took the stage to tell host Geoff Keighley more about the game, which will include a fully cooperative story campaign as well as an all-new PvP (player vs. player) endgame experience that opens up after the main narrative ends.
Arriving just a year after Black Ops 6, the new game is set in 2035 and technically serves as a direct sequel to Black Ops II and prequel to Black Ops 4 (2018) — which might be confusing to casual fans, but such is the nature of the sub-series. The Black Ops games follow their own continuity under the larger Call of Duty banner, and frequently bounce around non-chronologically between eras, with Black Ops 4 being the furthest entry in the timeline, taking place in the 2040s.
Unlike last year’s Black Ops 6, whose Nineties-era setting brought the franchise back to a (relatively) grounded place, the new game once again stretches into a near-future, pseudo-sci-fi tone with high-tech gadgets and weaponry at players’ disposal. Once again co-developed by Call of Duty studios Treyarch and Raven Software, the next entry will have all the many modes fans expect like a robust single-player and cooperative campaign, competitive multiplayer, and of course, Zombies.
Initially announced back in June, the game surprised many by returning the world of Black Ops so soon after the previous installment, making it the first Call of Duty title to stick to a specific sub-series or serve as a direct sequel since the original trilogy of games that launched from 2003 to 2006. Traditionally, Call of Duty swaps between its mini-series and subtitles like Modern Warfare and Black Ops annually, each developed by a different creative team. This will be the first time in two decades that the same studios will have released back-to-back entries just a year apart.
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Recently, Call of Duty has been on its fans’ good graces, with last year’s Black Ops 6 arriving to acclaim with an innovative new movement system and solid trifecta of game modes that all felt exceptionally well-designed (and are all practically individual games in their own right). The series’ free-to-play live-service game Warzone has remained immensely popular as a throughline for fans who might not be interested in the perpetual release cycle of the paid entries, which are rendered mostly obsolete year after year.
The return to a more fantastical near-future setting may also serve as a blessing for the franchise, which finally sees some still competition in the military shooter space with the upcoming release of EA’s Battlefield 6. Early impressions of that game’s beta test have been extremely positive, and with a contemporary setting closer to Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare series. With a clear differentiation between the two flavors of jingoistic multiplayer shooter, players can revel in the franchise rivalry that was previously most heated back in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
It remains to be seen if Black Ops 7 can live up to the high watermark of last year’s entry, but players will know soon enough when the game launches for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on Nov. 14.
From Rolling Stone US
