'Call of Duty' Is Finally Taking A Year Off (And We Couldn't Be Happier)
It's been nearly 20 years since Activision released the first game in the Call of Duty series back in ‘03. It's so weird to think that many of the people playing the game right now are too young to believe that there used to be a time when war wasn't fun for everyone involved. After presumably spending the entirety of ’04 celebrating their big breakthrough, the company spent the next two decades churning out new Call Of Duty titles every year. 2023 will mark the 20th anniversary of the franchise, and Activision has just made a dream announcement for the celebration: they're finally taking a goddamn break from the franchise.
While they're doing this just because these games aren't clearing even the low bar they've been setting for the franchise for a while, we pretty much welcome the very anti-climatic move (so long as they aren't just moving all of their efforts to take as much inspiration as they can from the possible WWIII we might have at hand.)
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Selling war games as if they're a yearly sports franchise should rub you the wrong way – even if you're a total monster. You can't just add new players and dumber career modes. Activision's need for a new COD every year has resulted in ever-blander titles as well as in the premature killing of better games. I'm really sorry to remind you of this sad reality, but we could totally still be playing Modern Warfare 2 and be way happier (and richer) than we are right now.
Instead, 2022 will give us a completely unnecessary and certainly dumber new version of MW2. The remake of the original Modern Warfare framed Russia for actual American war crimes, so I can barely wait for the mission in the upcoming remake where new players will get to relive that time the US Army famously got to protect Iraqi civilians from Putin's Invasion of '03.
I'd say I hope that the next Call Of Duty would cut the crap and go full realistic by forcing players to watch a 4-hour long boot camp video of a shady recruiter spouting nonsense before getting to play, but that would probably just be taking America's Army's recently vacated spot as the Army's official recruitment tool, so I guess there's just no winning this one.
Top Image: Activision
