The Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War trailer just aired on the first day of Gamescom 2020. The trailer showed fans some familiar faces from the first Black Ops game that released ten years ago, including Alex Mason, Frank Woods, and Jason Hudson.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is set some time after the events of the first Black Ops, however, which took place between 1961 and 1968. The new trailer shows the Black Ops characters meeting President Reagan, setting and confirming the game some time in the early 1980s. Here are the ways the characters appear to have developed since the first game, based on what has been revealed so far.
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Jason Hudson is one of the main playable characters in Call of Duty: Black Ops. He’s a master tactician and was Mason’s CIA handler after his escape from Vorkuta at the start of the game. It is Hudson who eventually realizes that Mason was turned into a Soviet sleeper agent in Vorkuta, eventually helping him break free of that programming.
In Black Ops 2 in a segment set in 1989, Hudson sacrifices himself to save Alex’s son David and Woods. This makes sense, as Black Ops Cold War is set during the Reagan administration. In the trailer, Hudson appears to be continuing his role leading strategy and communications, being the main voice between the team and the US government despite the team being officially led by CIA officer Russell Adler.
The studio expressed a desire to include more player choice in the next Black Ops game, so Hudson’s death in Black Ops 2 could mean he’ll be a less prominent character in Cold War as the developer focuses on characters with greater flexibility. Unless, of course, the game is set in another continuity.
Alex Mason is the protagonist of the original Black Ops. Along with Woods, Mason believed himself to have been involved in the assassination of Fidel Castro in 1961, before it turned out to be a body double and he was captured. It was in Soviet detention at Vorkuta that Mason was made into a sleeper agent, and it is heavily implied that he was involved in the assassination of JFK in 1963.
When his programming was revealed, Mason joined Hudson to kill Dragovich, the man who had brainwashed him. Alex is implied to have then retired, during which time he had a son named David who implies that Alex’s wife died after he first returned to the CIA from his retirement. By 1986, Alex is retired once again when he decides to leave with Woods to fight in the Angolan Civil War. This suggests that Black Ops: Cold War‘s setting is some time between 1981 and 1986.
Alex only really speaks up in the new Black Ops trailer to say “what the hell are you talking about? Do you know who we are?” to a politician who suggests their mission may be illegal. Although not as hotheaded as Woods, Mason’s hair trigger reaction suggests he is still recovering from the trauma he endured in the first game, and fans may expect the character’s past to continue to haunt him in Cold War.
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Frank Woods first appears in Black Ops during the Castro assassination mission and has been a mainstay in the series since. Later captured in Vietnam, Woods escaped the Hanoi Hilton and by 1975 was back in the CIA. By the 1980s, players are seeing an older Woods in his 50s, but it is evident from the trailer than this has not dampened his hotheadedness, stating that “every mission” the team goes on “is illegal” in front of the President.
It remains unclear how all of these characters’ stories will tie into Russell Adler, the protagonist of Cold War and leader of the Black Ops team attempting to stop Perseus from leading an attack on the Western Bloc. Fans will likely be interested to see how the game delivers more freedom and choices than every before while including so many characters whose fates have been established by other installations in the Black Ops franchise. Whether it connects and shows what happens before or is set in another continuity, fans may just be happy to see Black Ops going back to its roots.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War launches November 13 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions also in development.
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