For the single-player campaign that is, with Activision and the team at Raven and Treyarch offering players the ability to create their own campaign hero (if that's even the right term) in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Which, was given its first gameplay trailer overnight after being teased.

And in terms of character creation you'll have control over things like skin tone, name, and sex -- plus, their psychological profile. Which will provide certain benefits like increased damage or more stamina when sprinting into your own Black Ops star. In our recent preview session and interview with Treyarch Co-Studio Head, Dan Bunting and Senior Creative Director at Raven, Dan Vondrak -- we put forth the question as to why it was decided to move away from the traditional 'Call of Duty... starring' approach.

“When we wanted the player to create their character, we wanted them to immerse [themselves] into the game,” Vondrak says emphatically. “We love the idea that the player can be anyone, anywhere in the [game] world -- that they could be the Black Ops soldier they wanted to be.”

Dan’s full statement takes into account things like gender and place of birth. What this means is you’re writing your own chapter in this fictional history, no longer constrained by flashback and bad accents. But how this plays out is yet to be seen. Treyarch has forever chosen voiced, fleshed out avatars for the player, bucking Infinity Ward’s traditional voiceless player-self.

“It was just too good of an opportunity,” Dan adds. “To let the player immerse THEMSELVES into the game, instead of just having them [play] a predefined role.”

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in a Call of Duty campaign, but as the debut trailer showcased, it's looking very cool.

I'm hoping there's enough character creator detail so I can create my own Reagan, go right up to the Gipper and say "Trickle This" whilst holding the correct button on the d-pad to activate a certain "celebration emote".

Our Full Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Preview