Genre: | First Person Shooter | ||
Developer: | Sledgehammer Games | ||
Publisher: | Activision | Classification: | TBC |
Release Date: | November 2021 |
In Classified Arms, the third season for Call of Duty: Vanguard, global Nebula attacks continue to threaten the balance of power. We need all the help we can get to turn the tide back in our favor.Hit the link above for more information on Vanguard and Call of Duty.
Invite your friends and family to gear up and deploy during the one-week Free Access period beginning 10 AM on May 18 through 9 AM on May 24. Enjoy the entire Vanguard Multiplayer experience with all maps and modes open to Free Access players, including the Season Three launch map, Mayhem. Read on for the highlights.
Roll the Camera in Mayhem
In new multiplayer map, Mayhem, players will feel absolutely gargantuan as they battle through a small-scale replica of a metropolis. Fight among the skyscrapers in the centre of the map, surrounded by an outer path where you can traverse an ocean, or move off-set.
Lay siege across the Alps in Arms Race
Players can also compete in Arms Race, the large-map objective mode first introduced in Season Two. The goal here is simple: capture all bases to win. Operators can respawn at held bases and can access Buy Stations to beef up their toolset with additional armaments and abilities. Capture objectives and collect cash from eliminated players to purchase weapons, equipment, Killstreaks, Field Upgrades, and Custom Loadouts.
Classic Hits: Dome, Castle, Radar, and more
Free access to Vanguard multiplayer will also allow players to battle it out across classic Call of Duty maps, such as Dome, Castle, Radar, and Shipment. Play the way you want with small-map playlists like Ship Haus, which features constant battle, or set your own parameters using the Quick Play filter.
On Caldera, Captain Butcher calls upon three more Operators — S.O.T.F. 008 — to investigate the true impact of previous enemy attacks. After reclaiming the island through tactical, yet somewhat flashy force, these elite Allied soldiers are rewarded with treasure troves of secret prototype weapons.There's actually a lot of information here regarding the new content, which looks to build towards the pair's showing, and tease it within new maps and points of interest. But either way, it's all very cool.
But these prototypes on the island, let alone their existence, raise a massive question: what kind of threats are these powerful weapons supposed to combat?
Their answer comes from an abandoned radio, which picks up several signals and primal roars unlike that of any known creature…
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A top-secret armory is open for all Operators during Classified Arms, the third season of Call of Duty: Warzone and Vanguard launching on April 27. And they will need all the power they can get their hands on to combat Godzilla and Kong, laying siege to Caldera later in the season with the limited-time event, Operation Monarch.
This new season of content will be available following updates to both games: one for Vanguard on April 26 at 9 AM PT, and one for Warzone on April 27 at 9 AM PT.
Lead studios Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software, in addition to Treyarch and Toys for Bob, came together to kick off this monstrous season. Here is what you can expect across Warzone and Vanguard:
- Uncover Ancient Secrets, Loadout Items at Dig Site. Get your hands dirty at this new Monarch Point of Interest between the Ruins and Mines to find Supply Boxes and clues of enemies to come.
- New Offshore Gulag. Escape the Hold, Caldera’s new Gulag. Built by Toys for Bob, this three-lane arena welcomes all combatants to intense duels before redeployment.
- Prepare for Operation Monarch. Ancient cave paintings, massive skulls, and an otherworldly axe are just some of the odd sightings around Caldera…
Rise on a new front and discover this secret in Season One of Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone Pacific, a massive island-sized introduction to another incredible year for Call of Duty — complete with free weapons, maps, Operators, and more content, especially for Vanguard owners.There's a lot more you can learn about the new Season and Warzone content from here, but to quicken your expectation check out the new trailer highlighting much of the above and that link, embedded below.
Season One will begin on December 8, following updates to Vanguard and Warzone. Vanguard’s update is scheduled for December 6 at 9 PM PT. Warzone will schedule its update for when it shuts down its servers from December 7 at 9 PM PT to December 8 at 9 AM PT to prepare for Warzone Pacific.
From all the free content across Multiplayer, Zombies, and Warzone Pacific, to new innovations within the Battle Pass system and 24 hours of exclusive access to the new Caldera map for Vanguard owners in Warzone Pacific, this is everything you need to know for Season One:
VANGUARD AND WARZONE OVERVIEW
- Vanguard Owners Drop in on December 8. Play the new Pacific map, Caldera, a day early by owning Call of Duty: Vanguard. Rebirth Island will remain live during this time for all other players.
- The Battle Pass: The Best Value Gets Better. Three functional weapons, two Multiplayer Perks, new Equipment in Vanguard, as well as other unprecedented free items in Tiers and dozens of other items in the full Battle Pass.
- Tips of the Three-Pronged Spear. S.O.T.F. Trident is prepared to pierce through the Pacific, with Francis “Kai” Lanakila arriving first with the Season One Battle Pass...
After battling it out in the present and then heading back to the Cold War era, it felt like a bit of a misstep for Call of Duty to take things all the way back to World War II – at least on paper. Yet Sledgehammer Games’ latest crack at the long-running franchise, Call of Duty: Vanguard, is the developer’s best.
With a campaign that packs some of the best CoD moments in years and a multiplayer suite that reworks rather than reinvents, Vanguard feels like a step in the right direction. For both the studio at the helm and the series as an FPS stalwart. It’s a shame then that the Zombies mode is as barebones as it comes.
Starting today the highly-anticipated Call of Duty: Vanguard is available worldwide. Vanguard delivers an unparalleled depth of Call of Duty content across a gripping single-player story, 20 multiplayer maps on day one, an all-new Zombies experience that further explores existing story cannon, along with the deepest integration yet with the all-new Warzone Pacific map “Caldera” coming 3rd December AEDT/NZDT.Watch the game's PC trailer embedded below, and stay tuned for our full review incoming soon.
In Vanguard, players will experience the origins of Special Forces fighting across four major theatres of World War II like never seen before.
With development led by Sledgehammer Games, Vanguard enlists players in an engaging blockbuster campaign as ordinary soldiers from diverse backgrounds rise on all fronts to turn the tides of war. Multiplayer features 20 maps, 12 Operators and over three dozen Weapons in the revamped Gunsmith all starting day one. Vanguard multiplayer delivers new ways to play with the Combat Pacing system and the fast and frenetic multi-arena survival Champion Hill mode. Vanguard also brings a franchise-first Zombies crossover developed by Treyarch, expanding upon the Dark Aether storyline that players were introduced to in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
Season One will bring a brand-new map, Caldera, to the free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone, along with a massive amount of new gameplay experiences—for free. Operator, Weapon, and Battle Pass progression will also be synchronised across Vanguard, Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare® when Season One begins on 3 December AEDT/NZDT.
Releasing alongside Vanguard, the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat TM initiative is a multifaceted approach to combat cheating, featuring new server-side tools that monitor analytics to identify cheating, enhanced investigation processes to stamp out cheaters, updates to strengthen account security, and more. RICOCHET Anti-Cheat’s back-end anti-cheat security features will also come later this
year with the launch of Call of Duty: Warzone Pacific on PC.
Vanguard features unified progression and supports cross-play across next-generation and current-generation systems. Players can look forward to a new level of social features bringing friends to play together with clan features and more.
Vanguard is available worldwide starting today on PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, Xbox® Series X|S, Xbox One®, and PC in a fully optimised experience for Battle.net, Blizzard Entertainment’s online gaming service.
Stalingrad, 1944. The mass graves of fallen soldiers stir as Dark Aether magic animates the dead’s limbs. This is Call of Duty: Vanguard Zombies.Our contact for the undead also pointed us in the direction of Zombies blog as well as a dev Q&A. But naturally you're mostly here for the trailer, which you can watch embedded below.
Developed by Treyarch Studios in a franchise-first crossover, new characters and new horrors will await your arrival when Vanguard launches on 5 November AEDT/NZDT.
The four-person co-op mode continues and expands on the Dark Aether story first experienced in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Set in World War II in the ruins of Stalingrad, this new incarnation of Zombies takes players to the darkest corners of the occult, where mortals bond with Dark Aether entities to gain immeasurable power… but at what cost?
Domination
Playing the objective in Call of Duty is a phrase you don’t often hear, on account of just how fast-paced and short the TTKs have been for a while now. Domination presents that typical capture point setup, though in defence of the design you have to stick right on the flag to capture it -- and that instills a sense of ‘playing the objective’. In the Beta, and our hands-on we got to play on a Russian wintery map, with the snow and buildings adding a distinct visual feel that suited the style of play.
"With Vanguard built on the engine that powered the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot, here we get to see that game’s smooth presentation and improved lighting in full and matured."
It’s worth mentioning that even in its Beta state, all of the modes and maps and performance we encountered (granted we were playing on a high-end GeForce RTX graphics card) was as smooth as you’d want -- and on par with the solid Call of Duty multiplayer that has become a series hallmark over the years. And really, the differences here are many but seamless. A new mode, new weapons, new Kill Streak rewards, new maps, but all with the same feel.
Become the original Special Forces in Vanguard’s intense, adrenaline-fueled Multiplayer. From the map and mode offerings on day one to advanced weapon customization, to all-new social and Combat Pacing features and a deeper focus on Operators.
Sixteen maps for traditional core play, four maps for 2v2 Gunfights, and one Champion Hill experience — this is what players can expect on day one at launch for Vanguard’s Multiplayer. These maps take place across a wide variety of different global environments and are ready to host an abundance of game modes.
Outside of Champion Hill — a fast and frenetic tournament for Solo, Duos, and Trios — Vanguard will introduce another new game mode: Patrol. Based on Hardpoint, this objective-based mode features a scoring zone in near-constant motion; if Operators want to rack up points for their team, they should keep up and move around the map within this Patrol point.
These modes are in addition to the classic offerings one would expect in Call of Duty. Modes like Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Domination, and Search & Destroy are just some of the ones returning with Vanguard.
Weekend One
11 – 14 Sep AEST/NZST – PlayStation Early Access
Weekend Two
17 – 19 Sep AEST/NZST – Xbox + Battle.net PC Early Access, PlayStation Open Beta
19 – 21 Sep AEST/NZST – Open Beta All Platforms
And finally, this original ragtag group is rounded out, as it should, by the Aussie 2Lt. Lucas Riggs of Australia’s 20th Battalion. He’s a veteran of the North African conflict and was inspired by Charles Upham. Riggs’ character is bolstered by the tall tales of the “Rats of Tobruk” -- an Australian-lead garrison who reclaimed the Rats of Tobruk handle given to them by German propaganda, and even created their own medals they struck from a downed German bomber. These guys were truly badass.Click here for our in-depth Call of Duty: Vanguard preview.
What’s interesting and cool about the collected individuals above that form the first Special Forces is that they’re not strictly hierarchical -- it’s their skills that play out over rank, which is best exemplified with the lowly sergeant Kingsley leading three officers. Moreover, Sledgehammer promises that each arc is based on “tide-turning” battles and events.