Summary

  • Call of Duty's post-launch seasons offer tons of content, focusing on cosmetics, maps, weapons, and game modes.
  • Black Ops 6 will maintain a seasonal content approach, including in-game seasons and battle passes with a focus on iconic villains.
  • Final seasons of previous CoD titles tend to spotlight iconic villains, suggesting a similar approach for Black Ops 6.

The Call of Duty franchise has become defined by its post-launch seasons in recent years, with the IP's iconic multiplayer experience being almost unrecognizable from its historic foundations. Like most massively popular multiplayer franchises, CoD has leaned heavily into the live-service post-launch approach to its annual releases, with in-game seasons and battle passes offering an endless loop of content in the way of cosmetics alongside the release of new maps, weapons, and game modes.

While the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has won a lot of fans over with its focus on returning to the franchise's roots, the title will still maintain the seasonal in-game content approach of more recent CoD titles, and a clear pattern is beginning to form in terms of how Activision handles the final seasons of these annual releases. Modern Warfare 3 recently announced the content for one of its last seasons, for example, and the focus on Call of Duty villains that these final seasons tend to have is a tradition that is very likely to extend to Black Ops 6.

Three Zombies from Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Zombies
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies is Removing a Feature That Has Been Around Since World at War

A feature that has been present since Call of Duty: World at War is being removed by Treyarch from Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies mode.

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Black Ops 6 May Wait Until its Final Seasons To Let its Villains Shine

In the past, the core multiplayer experiences of Call of Duty releases were essentially entirely removed from the single-player narratives of the games, but this is something that has changed with the new seasonal approach that defines the franchise. New in-game seasons often come with fully-fledged cinematics that follow a story that supplements the campaign of a given title, with fan-favorite CoD characters often appearing and bridging the gap between the franchise's two biggest modes.

Throughout the recent Modern Warfare reboot, characters like Ghost, Soap, and Captain Price have appeared extensively in multiplayer seasons, with multiplayer operator skins for Frank Woods already being marketed as pre-release bonus content for Black Ops 6. The upcoming game will have a mix of familiar and brand-new faces to pull from in its seasonal multiplayer content, but it seems likely that Activision will wait for the game's final seasons to pull the trigger on involving iconic Black Ops villains in its core multiplayer.

This is a trend that was first made noticeable with 2021's Call of Duty: Vanguard, with the game surprisingly introducing an all-star villain cast from a wide variety of CoD sub-franchises for its final season. This season saw the introduction of the likes of Raul Menendez, Al-Asad, Seraph, and Rorke to Vanguard, starting a trend that has recently been replicated with one of the final seasons of Modern Warfare 3.

Modern Warfare 3 Bided its Time To Focus on a Big Franchise Villain

The recently launched Season 5 of Modern Warfare 3 is potentially the penultimate season of the title, and this fresh wave of content has a surprising focus on Valeria Garza, one of the main villains of 2022's Modern Warfare 2. Valeria was first introduced to CoD multiplayer as a Warzone 2.0 operative in early 2023, only receving a handful of premium cosmetics ever since. It is clear that Valeria is going to be a huge focus of MW3's Season 5, however, with the season's battle pass featuring four unique skins for her, Black Ops 6 may save this approach for its own final seasons.

It is currently unclear who the main antagonist of Black Ops 6's story will be, with a popular theory currently pointing towards Russel Adler skirting the line between ally and villain within the game. This could mean that the multiplayer storyline of Black Ops 6 might culminate with a return of Adler as a big focus, while the main villain of the game's Zombies mode, Edward Richtofen, could also be a big draw of these final seasons. While it would not canonically make sense within the timeline of Black Ops, a younger Raul Menendez could also be a big content factor in BO6's final seasons, with the sub-franchise having a great stock of iconic villains to continue the CoD tradition of villain-oriented seasons late into a game's life cycle.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Tag Page Cover Art
9 /10

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
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FPS
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Systems
PlayStation-1 Xbox-1 PC-1
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Top Critic Avg: 83 /100 Critics Rec: 91%
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Released
October 25, 2024
ESRB
Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Suggestive Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
Developer(s)
Treyarch, Raven Software
Publisher(s)
Activision
Engine
IW 9.0
Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op
Cross-Platform Play
Yes - PlayStation, Xbox, PC
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WHERE TO PLAY

SUBSCRIPTION
DIGITAL
PHYSICAL
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Franchise
Call of Duty
Genre(s)
FPS