First, Google "Call of Duty Nuketown Shoot Heads off Mannequins." Also, how many games do you think are in the Call of Duty series? Spoiler Alert: it's triple the number that Joseph thinks, lol. Join Willie and Taylor as they answer his questions about the long-running series.
First, Google "Call of Duty Nuketown Shoot Heads off Mannequins." Also, how many games do you think are in the Call of Duty series? Spoiler Alert: it's triple the number that Joseph thinks, lol. Join Willie and Taylor as they answer his questions about the long-running series.
In this episode, we dig into the main entries in the Call of Duty series. Joseph has a lot of questions because he has no idea how many games exist or how they're all connected. We chat about celebrities featured in the series—apparently, Snoop Dogg is a playable character—tongue twist our way through the complicated naming convention and get lost in the developer battle between Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games. They're mentions of Nuketowm, nazi zombies, the infamous "No Russian" mission, and Hans Zimmer. Later in the episode, Willie asks Joseph if his military experience affected his desire to play Call of Duty, and we wrap with a mini celebration for reaching a small milestone for the podcast. (Reload SFX)
Games briefly mentioned in this episode: No Man Sky, Halo Infinite, The Last of Us Part 1, Atomic Heart, Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Call of Duty: Warzone, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Fortnite, Gears of War, Call of Duty: World at War, Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, Call of Duty 3, Rainbow Six, Destiny, Far Cry, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Call of Duty: WWII, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Call of Duty: Warzone 2, Battlefield: 2042, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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Note from Willie: As mentioned towards the top of the episode, I think it’s worth noting that Call of Duty can be seen as propaganda for the U.S. military, and it’s worth thinking about what happens when the fictional world is so closely tied to the real world and puts you in the middle of war as the hero. It’s something that warrants discussion but that’s not really the focus of this episode/podcast but I did want to include some links for reference.
I mentioned high ranking state officials on the advisory board at Activision Blizzard (the publisher of the Call of Duty games). It would be more correct to say that they have former high ranking government officials on their leadership team. What I was trying to sum up quickly is that there are some ties between Activision Blizzard and former government officials. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that but it does make me wonder how much sway the leadership team has on what is or isn’t included in a Call of Duty game. I’ve linked a few staff bios below:
One of the non-profit boards that Frances Townsend is on is the Atlantic Council, an American think tank in the field of international affairs. The Atlantic Council has additional ties to former Call of Duty staff.
Dave Anthony - Art of Future Warfare series announcement of Dave Anthony as a Nonresident Fellow.
The military-entertainment complex: Call of Duty makers have close ties with the Pentagon
Call of Duty as an engagement tool:
How the Military Uses Call of Duty As A Recruitment Tool
U.S. Army Planned to Pay Streamers Millions to Reach Gen-Z Through Call of Duty
Call of Duty Controversies and “re-writing” of history:
Call of Duty Creators Say Oliver North Helped Make Their Game More Authentic
That time Castro appeared in Call of Duty, angering Cuba
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s Highway of Death controversy, explained
Correction:
At 44:55 in the podcast I mention a Call of Duty game that was potentially set in 2075 with the primary conflict being with China. After further research, I can’t verify that statement with anything but a questionable source so I’ve chosen not to link any article.
(Spoiler Alert for Black Ops 2) It’s also worth noting that Black Ops 2 campaign takes place in two timelines, the late 1980s and 2025. One of the conflicts in that game is a new Cold War between a Chinese-led faction called the Strategic Defense Coalition and a U.S.-led NATO. One of the four endings leads to an alliance between the U.S. and China, ending the new Cold War.
00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: Yeah, that's what I've still been waiting for is some mechs or, you know, um, what was it, other series? Battlefield. Battlefield 2042 was always one of those. Is that what that game was? Or 2422? I don't remember. It was twenty for…
Taylor: I think it's 2042.
Willie: I think 2040-
Taylor: I think that was...
Willie: -2042 was not near, like, not far enough in the future.
Taylor: [laughing] Yeah it seems not far enough, yeah.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: I think 2422 was it. I, I'm gonna look it up in a second.
Joseph: I don't think it's 2422. Like that doesn't ring a bell.
Taylor: That seems too far in the future. That's when the robots are fighting the aliens..
Willie: There was only one that was just like this one version where there were mechs and there were like, there were space drops.
Joseph: Was it 2044?
Taylor: It was 2040-2... No, that's the new one is 2042.
Willie: Yeah, exactly. And I think this is far in the future, past that is what I'm saying.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Maybe 2142 or something weird. I don't remember. I'm gonna remember in a second.
Taylor: Ah there it is.. That's it. 2142.
Joseph: That one does sound better. Or more-
Taylor: There it is. Man that game was cool.
Joseph: - more familiar, 2142.
Taylor: That was a great game. I would love to see Call of Duty, do a take on that. It would be something huge, but that's my jam.
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:28
Joseph: What's up? Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for joining us for a casual, somewhat organized conversation about Call of Duty, a first person shooter, originally published by Activision in 2003. I think we'll probably end up talking about the entire franchise instead of a specific game, because I'm actually not that familiar with the series.
Anyway, my name is Joseph and I'm here with my friends Willie and Taylor. And we're just three regular guys who keep claiming we're gonna play No Mans Sky or get back into Halo Infinite's co-op campaign together and don't, but I digress. So, what's up with you fools?
Willie: I'm down to get into the Halo Infinite co-op campaign whenever y'all are ready. All you gotta do is text me. I'll drop everything I'm doing and uh, hop on that game. And I say that 'cause I'm, I'm actually making more time for games lately. I actually played through The Last of Us finally, for the first time.
Joseph: You finished it?
Willie: Yeah, I finished it yesterday.
Joseph: Oh damn.
Willie: I know you started, didn't you?
Joseph: Yeah, I just got to the point in the game where you find Ellie.
Willie: Okay. Yeah.
Joseph: So I'm like, way at the beginning still.
Willie: Yeah. Just to be very clear, we obviously, we won't mention any spoilers here 'cause Joey hasn't played it and I had never played it before this run through, so we won't be talking about that game today anyway.
And no spoilers there. If, if you're curious, when we do go into that game, we'll let you know.
Joseph: What is interesting, just for a second.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Is, I've done a fantastic job of staying away from spoilers somehow. Like I don't even know the major plot points, which I, I feel is kind of amazing because there's so much opportunity for it to be spoiled, especially with the HBO series lately.
Willie: Yeah, that's really interesting because I, I definitely knew... I don't wanna say definitely knew the whole story, but I knew the big beats of the story and knew what was coming. But not just because of the show, but because I've watched people play the game before in bits and pieces.
And I think I even watched Taylor play it at some point when it first came out, 'cause I think we were probably living together at the time. I didn't have a PlayStation 3 I guess then, so I never played it until just now.
Joseph: I think that's how I got away with it, because I've never watched anybody play it.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Even streaming on Twitch or YouTube, like I've never seen any videos of gameplay, so I think that's made it so much easier for me to stay away from the desire to want to be spoiled.
But what's up with you Taylor?
Taylor: Not much. I am also totally down to play some Halo anytime. I forgot that that existed and that we haven't really played through much of it, so that'd be a lot of fun. And congrats on your play through Willie.
That's a exciting campaign to complete. And now I'm gonna tell you guys about this awesome twist at the end of the show since you were spoiler fr... no, I'm just kidding. That's uh...
Joseph: [laughing] I honestly did get a little scared when you started doing that. [Taylor laughs] I was like, oh my gosh, what's this dude about to say?
Taylor: Oh man, I wouldn't do that to you. It's a great show though. We are big Pedro fans in this house, so.
00:04:17
Willie: I was gonna say, did you end up finishing that series? I know you were like behind on the TV show. Did you actually get through?
Taylor: Oh yeah. We, we caught up hard 'cause it seemed like one of those that just kind of started out a little slow. It's just seems to be the way that good shows arc nowadays, for the most part. It makes sense with funding and all that, that you gotta really spread it out and make the most bang for your buck.
I think by the third episode I was in and I was at that point where every time one comes out, I want to see it.
Willie: Gotcha.
Taylor: I want to know exactly what's going on so, it was good. They did a great job. Uh, they... capturing just the perfect ambiance that you would expect.
Willie: There's a, a lot of good conversation there that I do want to have in a, a future talk because I think now, once Joey finishes the game and then goes to watch the show, we will have opposite experiences.
I watched the show first and then played the game, and Joey is playing the game first, and then will probably watch the show. And I'm curious how that changes the dynamics of the two of them.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Me too. I think that'll lead to a good conversation about how our experiences were different.
Willie: I say that because I, I have some thoughts for sure that I like...
Joseph: Oh, okay. Nice.
Willie: It's interesting. And overall, I, I'd say like, yeah, it's a good game and it's a good show.
Joseph: Oh, I will say I'm enjoying the photo mode so far. I think the photo mode is pretty good.
Taylor: That may have been one of the earliest great photo modes, so unless that was added in the, in the newer version or something, but that was a really good one.
Joseph: It's a little clunky, but the movement of the camera is, it's pretty easy to control once you get the hang of it.
Taylor: Any neat features to it? Like Ghost of Tsushima you had the-
Joseph: [chuckling] Not really.
Taylor: -Okay, so just basic. Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. It's pretty basic.
Taylor: That's cool. I, I forgot I've been playing Atomic Heart too. I'm about five hours in on that.
Joseph: Oh right.
Taylor: Yeah, that's been a pretty interesting game. It's my fears come to life. Silent, murderous robots coming at you with zero stoppage.
00:06:17
Joseph: Right. Okay. Full disclosure. Our first seven episodes were all recorded before we even launched the podcast. So there's some basic stuff we haven't mentioned lately, like our IG account.
You can follow us at Berries a-n-d Blades, berriesandblades on Instagram and check out some virtual photography, game clips, and maybe even some behind the scenes footage, uh, or photos. Alternatively, you can email us at berriesandbladesteam@gmail.com. But back to Call of Duty. I feel like we should sort of abandon the format we were testing and just freestyle today.
But I'm gonna start us off by asking a simple question, what is even going on with Call of Duty? Because I feel like there's a hundred fucking games in the franchise and I have no idea how they all fit together. And it makes me wonder if Call of Duty is basically the Fast and Furious of the video game world.
Willie: That's a nice analogy for sure. And I, I don't think Taylor or or I would claim to be experts on Call of Duty, so some of this stuff is gonna be recalled from memory, but I'm down to answer any questions that you have. And that's sort of how like the synthesis of this, this idea to even record this episode.
I think we were talking specifically about Modern Warfare II, about to come out and you asked like, how are they on Modern Warfare II? Haven't they been making games for like 10 years or something?
Joseph: Yeah, I just don't understand. Like there's Modern Warfare, there's like the Black Ops. I don't know how many of each there are in each of those series. And even if they are related any way.
Willie: I'm definitely down to talk about any of those things. I do wanna preface this conversation with something that I think is pretty important when talking about Call of Duty. It's very clear that this stuff is propaganda for the US military. It just is. There's actually a lot of depth we could go into.
Like that would be a whole episode, like hours long. Could probably be a whole series. If you really dive into how the US government and like high ranking state officials have actually participated in the Call of Duty franchise, like inviting people to their base to see the most like modern hardware. To be like, look, this is how this works.
Check it out. How cool it is. If you want to use it in your game, you can, but you have to use it in this way. Right? There's a lot of stuff there. There are even members that are high ranking state officials who are on the advisory board for Activision Blizzard and Infinity Ward, I think, too.
There's so much depth you could go into, so I think it's important to recognize that that's what this is, right? It's sort of a engagement tool for the military to actively recruit people, you know? I'll put some links or something in the show notes or in the transcript that says like, hey, if you want to go read some stuff and actually get into that, you should, 'cause it's also very interesting.
But, uh, we're gonna take this as sort of a, again, more casual conversation and just talk about the fact that like, they have been games that have brought me lots of joy and brought me like connections that I would not have if I weren't playing Call of Duty multiplayer online.
Sometimes there is this weird escapism that's like, I'm gonna go play a first person shooter. Uh, this just happens to be the setting for this.
00:09:25
Joseph: Taylor, curious, what's your experience with the entire franchise? Have you played like a few of the games? Have you played most of them? All of them?
Taylor: I have played almost all of them as far as the core, the core ones available on platform, mostly Xbox. I don't think I've ever actually had one on PlayStation, but I mean, it's a, it's always, spoken to me.
Uh, something about even from the first Call of Duty, something felt right about that first person shooter feel, so... I've skipped a couple of 'em, I think, but it was because they became too same, same.
You could barely even see the difference between last year's and this year it became Madden.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: But otherwise, I've, I played all the, all the big ones, all the core ones that were new technology or a new game breaking mode.
Joseph: I kind of fundamentally feel that way, that it's just the same game happening over and over again because I don't really know how they all fit together, or even if they do. I also feel like I've been missing out on good gameplay with great graphics because I saw a clip recently, maybe something you sent me Willie, or were like telling me to go watch, but it was like 10 minutes of gameplay and I was like blown away by the realism in the game and like, thought it looked amazing.
Willie: And I think that's one of the first things that was spawning this conversation was, I had seen gameplay from the intro to Modern Warfare II. And I was like, I'm probably not gonna play this game. Like I'm sort of over them. But I looked at it and I was like, man, those graphics though, all of it looked really, really good.
And I was like, I might need to see more of that. And I think that was the reason I had sent that to everyone when we were talking.
00:11:11
Willie: I wanna flip that first question on you a little bit that you asked to open this. How many games do you think are in like sort of main entries to the Call of Duty series? Connected or not connected, how many do you think have been made since 2003, 20 years of games?
Joseph: I'll try to... damn, 20 years of games. I would probably say there was like an original Call of Duty that didn't have any kind of subtitle and then there was Modern Warfare. I know there's two of those. Call of Duty Black Ops, which I assume there's maybe two of those.
So where are we at, like six now? [Willie chuckles] And then I, I think I'm forgetting one entire spinoff that I can't think of, but maybe there isn't another one.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I dunno, how close am I?
Willie: So I'm, I'm gonna do a little bit of weird math here, but I think there are 19 Call of Duty games.
Joseph: What?
Willie: That's like sort of separating Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, the games that have come out most recently. People count the release of Call of Duty: Warzone, which is a part of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. But War Zone is the multi-player battle royale side of things.
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: People count that as a separate release because in both the last two Modern Warfare games, they came out like months after the game released. It was like an additional thing that got released afterwards.
Joseph: Is it like an expansion to the base game or is it a completely different game?
Willie: It's just the multiplayer battle royale section because Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare II. Uh, [chuckles] I'm trying to think which order to talk about this in, those games have like multiplayer team death match stuff that you would always get-
Joseph: Like built into the game?
Willie: Built into the game. But the battle royale mode is like its own separate standalone release. And that's what, that's the only thing I've played because it's free to play for Modern Warfare II. So that's why I've actually played any of it.
Joseph: Okay. So you don't have to have Modern Warfare or whatever is connected to Warzone, you don't have to have that original game to be able to play the battle royale stuff.
Willie: Right. So I'm counting those as separate releases, which is why we're at 19, but-
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: -there's actually way more games than that. When we were originally thinking about this concept, I did way too much research that I probably don't remember now anymore.
But there's all kinds of games. The first game, I never played Call of Duty, the original, uh, it was on PC only actually, as far as I know, and I just never played it. Yeah, it was just a Windows release and there was no multiplayer. It was just a single campaign that took place during World War II.
Joseph: Okay, so it was like Medal of Honor style-
Willie: Exactly, and that's...
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -where you played through like a linear story.
Willie: And that's what I was playing more of at the time. Did y'all play those series? I played that on PlayStation for sure.
Joseph: I did yeah. I played Medal of Honor.
Taylor: Yeah.
00:13:57
Willie: I loved those games. I do want to touch on, you were like, "oh, I think there's like two Modern Warfares." You should understand that Modern Warfare I and II, or Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare II that came out recently within the last year. Those are not remakes of other Modern Warfare games, but there are other games called Modern Warfare in the Call of Duty series that came out years ago.
Joseph: Yeah. That's why this shit's confusing.
Willie: [chuckling] Yeah. I think-
Joseph: Because I feel like when I heard Modern Warfare II, I was like, no, this, this seems like a, a title that has been around for way longer than two games could have existed.
Willie: There's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, or actually Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and then Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with the number two, and then Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 with the number three.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And then most recently, in 2019 is when they decided to reboot the series. It's not an actual remake of the old game, but it sets up a lot of the characters and they made Modern Warfare.
Joseph: Okay. So is it-
Willie: I think there's probably a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in front of it, but it's just-
Joseph: Yeah, I was about to ask that. So they've really just lifted the name and reused the name, but it's not a remake of the original four, three Modern Warfares.
Willie: No, but it uses some of the same characters. [chuckles]
Joseph: Oh, okay. So like loosely-
Willie: [laughing] Yeah.
Joseph: -connected to those original games.
Willie: And the ridiculous part about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II that recently released last year in 2022, is that instead of the number two, it's the Roman numeral two in the title.
Joseph: The fuck outta here...
Willie: [chuckles] They, they, you know, they had to distinguish it some way.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. See, this sounds messy. [Willie and Taylor chuckle] Like I can barely even follow it listening to a breakdown of all of these games.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: It really is. Taylor was saying he's played most of them, like from the beginning, I think I did play one of the first ones on 360 or the... Call of Duty 2 is actually like the fourth game in the series sort of, 'cause there are like expansions and stuff for Call of Duty for the original single player Windows PC only thing.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But Call of Duty 2 came out as a launch title for 360. And so I think I played that when it came out.
00:16:18
Taylor: That was a big deal. That was a real big deal 'cause the trailer for it was incredibly epic. I don't remember ever seeing a more epic trailer for any kind of first person shooter than that really.
Do y'all remember it at all? It was the one in the desert. You're a soldier, first person of a soldier and you're walking through the desert and the graphics were already mind blowing at that time. But then you kind of hear the, a little fighting pop off and then outta nowhere, I think a tank just busted through a house or something, or a wall and just shows up right in front of the guy and he's just joining the tank and everybody's kind of getting together and walking towards a purpose and...
It was as call to action as you get. It says, Call of Duty as if it could-.
Joseph: [laughing] Call of Action.
Taylor: I couldn't have, yeah, I, I remember playing that and just being blown away at how cool it was to just be there kind of shit talking with people and blasting fools and choosing different weapons and yeah, that was a lot of fun. That game kind of set a precedent.
Willie: I think that it did in a lot of ways. I kind of only remember that trailer. I mean, I... so what I remember about the trailer is that it was a launch title and so it kept getting lots of coverage.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I definitely remember the desert scene sort of that you're, you're talking about, but I don't remember any more specifics than that and I know that it was a big deal.
And the other thing that I know is that it launched, I'm pretty sure multiplayer for the Call of Duty series. It was like the thing that, that happened.
Joseph: Ah, interesting. I'm trying really hard to remember that trailer. I think what I remember most is, were there marketing campaign, marketing campaigns that included celebrities for the Call of Duty franchise?
Willie: I feel like at some point there might have been.
Taylor: Oh yeah, yeah. Later on for sure.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: There were, everybody you could think of and they were using real good celebrities. In the last, four or five, you had, um, Chris Maloney, is that the guy's name from... Maloney?
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: He is one of the, uh, blue shield guys or one of the TV cops. Jonah Hill was one of the people in there. They had Terry Crews, might have been-
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: They've had some insane marketing that is amazing.
Joseph: What was that? Was that Black Ops?
Taylor: A guy slamming a Mountain Dew and shootin', shootin' a chopper outta the sky. Uh, that might have been Black Ops.
Willie: Yeah, I, I looked it up real quick and Terry Crews was definitely playing some, some Black Ops at some point. I don't, I can't find [Taylor chuckles] those particular.
Taylor: They had some good humor going on, at least, uh, for whatever the meta was during the time, I guess.
Joseph: They weren't like playable characters in the game or anything like wild like that, right?
Taylor: That didn't happen until most recently, I believe, unless it was a major character in the game.
Joseph: What happened? You said that didn't happen until recently. Like now you can?
Taylor: Warzone happened, so they had to start gamifying the game just like, uh, man, it's, I'm blanking on it right now, Fortnite, where you have to have all these different skins and so they just, they embraced the silliness, which actually kept someone like me playing it because-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -you know, you throw barefoot John McClane in there, or you throw Rambo or whatever. That stuff is hilarious to me.
Joseph: Okay.
Taylor: If I see Snoop running around and blasting me, I'm gonna laugh. I'm gonna laugh.
Joseph: Is Snoop Dogg in it?
Taylor: I think, I think he finally got added.
Willie: What? I didn't even know that.
Joseph: Yeah, like how w.., how... how wild, how silly is it?
Taylor: Somebody should look, I don't know.
Joseph: Like, can you play as like Freddy Krueger?
Taylor: I have no idea. Now you got me real curious. Um, who are guest stars?
Joseph: Yeah, exactly.
Willie: If I look up Warzone, Snoop Dogg, there is a Snoop Dogg bundle.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Oh shit. Like Snoop's in the game.
Willie: [laughing] Yeah, I guess so.
Taylor: Interesting.
Willie: There's a skin for him, for Warzone . What? This is new information to me 'cause I stopped paying attention to it. Interesting.
Joseph: What did you see? Or that is, Snoop?
Willie: Just the Snoop Dogg thing, like, I had no idea. He's wearing a long coat and with some like fur lining the, the collar.
Joseph: Nice. That sounds about right.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I can picture that.
00:20:21
Willie: Yeah, I didn't know that. I mean, so there have been other celebrities too 'cause that's, that's the thing. Maybe you heard about Call of Duty Zombies. That sort of whole thing.
Joseph: I think I only know of that because you've mentioned it recently.
Willie: Okay. It's like a Gears sort of Horde mode thing.
Joseph: Oh, you get waves? Waves of, of zombies.
Willie: Yeah. And it started in Call of Duty: World at War. It was uh, World War II first person shooter, but then there was this extra mode in the multiplayer mode that was called Zombies, and maybe it wasn't called zombies, but I think that was the name that got adopted.
And so that's what it became. And you're just, yeah, you're trapped inside of a building and you are building up defenses, just putting planks on the wall. And there are vending machines for guns in the place that, you gain kills, get points, and you can buy stuff, buy perks from the vending machine, buy different guns from different vending machines, and you're just trying to survive as long as possible.
In the original version, it's just like, stay in this one place, shoot the zombies that come in and stay alive for as long as possible.
Joseph: What does Red Dead Online call their like, I don't, is it like Undead or something?
Willie: Undead Nightmare.
Joseph: Undead Nightmare. Okay.
Willie: I think was, was the name of that?
Joseph: I feel like that's a way better name than Call of Duty: Zombies.
Willie: I don't remember what the actual title was, but that's definitely what everyone, and also, I think people call it like Nazi Zombies too at some point, because that's what you're fighting off in World War II.
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: But that game got more and more complicated with each new release of that mode. Uh, they started adding in, well now you're no longer in one building.
Now there's like a series of puzzles or something that you have to unlock and you can unlock different parts of the map. Some of them, and I never really played them that much, but would have a little bit of a storyline and included, like famous people in those storylines. Like Danny Trejo, I'm pretty sure is in one of them.
Joseph: Is he in it as himself?
Willie: Yeah, I think so.
Taylor: And then they have actors that are also playing, uh, other people. They have people playing real characters, like real famous humans from the past. Jeff Goldblum was in one of 'em that was a, a super humorous one.
Willie: Right!
Taylor: Whenever you were playing as Jeff Goldblum. And he's just like, "huh-huh, okay. I don't know about these zombies, but whatever you guys say ha-ha."
And oh man, that was a lot of fun.
Willie: Is he in the one with Danny Trejo? I feel like him and-
Taylor: That's right around the same area?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: 'Cause they were really trying out some real fun characters. They were having good like female leads in there and doing some really fun stuff. The humor in there was what really got me and they, they would get ridiculous with it. Towards the, the last one that I played, you were summoning portals and trying to fly a rocket off the planet, and there were dragons involved.
They really did, I think everything possible to keep people in there, but at its core, if you played one, you could play any of 'em because it's the same foundation. It's that really solid engine and control style that anybody who's ever played any first person shooter, that is a subset of the Call of Duty style, you can just pick it up and play it. You know exactly what you're doing.
You may be lost as hell in the scheme of, because the stories, the lore and everything has gotten incredibly deep, and you have to really pay attention. You either have to pull up a video that walks you completely through it to really get through there. And you've gotta have some amazing teammates to pull it off sometimes, unless you have a trick or something.
And you can get deep into it. Some of our friends, I remember them putting in hundreds of hours and they, you would go through and they would just be like, okay, we're going this way now. We gotta open this gate. Don't open that gate. You silly person, open this one. And you just, you feel so clumsy and lost in there because they know what they're doing to reach a certain point.
And sometimes it's incredibly complex. You have to have this book, you have to hit this event. If you missed that event, too bad, you may as well just die off or just play it out until you can't anymore and...
At some point it becomes a science if you're really trying to get to the bottom of it.
Joseph: I don't know how I feel about games that have time missions like that. So like if you don't ever start the mission, it eventually disappears forever and like you can't go back and do it. I don't know where I land on those.
Taylor: Well, luckily you can reset on this so quick and easy. I mean, it's usually a five to ten minute ramp up time from the moment you start the game and your characters say their intro lines to where you're really in the shit.
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Taylor: So that's, that's not too bad.
Joseph: What title in the series is The Game that had the celebrities in it?
Taylor: I think that might have been Black Ops.
Willie: I think it might have been Black Ops too, but it was the, I mean also, Black Ops also.
[Joseph and Willie laugh]
00:25:21
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. Did you already go over the complexity of Infinity Ward Treyarch, Sledgehammer?
Willie: No. No, that's what I wanted to talk about though. Just so you know-
Joseph: What does that even mean?
Willie: The original developer for Call of Duty was Infinity Ward. Now, they got support off their first game. With some expansions. Another developer called Gray Matter Studios and another studio called Spark Unlimited, each made a separate DLC for that game. Like an expansion.
Joseph: For which game? For Just for Call of Duty.
Willie: Call of Duty, the original Call of Duty.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And then Call of Duty 2 came out, which Infinity Ward also made. When they made that game. That was the first one with multiplayer. That was the one that was on 360. And there was an expansion to that, an add-on called Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, and a developer named Treyarch-
Joseph: oh.
Willie: -joined the fold there, which turns into a longer running thing. But Treyarch built that second expansion or that expansion for Call of Duty 2, and that ended up coming out for like PS2 , Xbox and GameCube. And I made a note here that I don't really remember why, but Mark Hamill was in that one. I guess he-
Joseph: Really.
Willie: -I think he really played the main character.
Taylor: Nice.
Joseph: Wow. So just voiceover role, not playing himself.
Willie: Yeah, exactly. Voiceover role in that. Now, the reason I wanted to point that out and what Taylor was referring to is, Treyarch becomes a studio that starts developing Call of Duty games on their own. And that's how they managed to hit these release dates of like, every year there's a new Call of Duty game.
Joseph: Oh, wow. Okay.
Willie: So, Call of Duty 3 comes out and Treyarch makes that game. And then-
Joseph: Hold on real quick.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Real quick. So we went Call of Duty, and then we had two other developers create expansion packs.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: And then we have Call of Duty 2.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: And then we have Big Red One, which was an expansion to Call of Duty 2.
Willie: Yep.
Joseph: And now we're at Call of Duty 3.
Willie: Now we're at Call of Duty 3. I should also just point out, 'cause I never knew this existed. Call of Duty 2 had a mobile version that was specific to Verizon wireless phones.
Joseph: Oh my gosh. That sounds like trash.
[All laugh]
Willie: Yeah. I don't actually know what it was, but it does exist.
Taylor: Ugh..
Willie: But Call of Duty 3 comes out and Treyarch makes this one. While that's going on, there's a couple games in here I'm gonna skip and then Call of Duty 4 comes out, which is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and it's Infinity Ward.
Joseph: Okay, so that's the first title that has the words Modern Warfare in it. And then there were three more of those?
Willie: Y...
Joseph: ...before we even get to the recent two?
Willie: Yeah, yeah. Then there's way more games between the... here and there.
Joseph: Yeah. Okay.
Willie: So Infinity Ward makes Modern Warfare, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which is one of the games that I wasn't playing for a long time, 'cause I was playing Halo so much that I just never got into it.
I didn't like the realism in it. I was like, I don't know. But everybody else was playing it so I ended up playing it.
Joseph: I feel like this is some weird love triangle of publishers 'cause they're like swapping back and forth between them, right?
Willie: Well, so the publishers is the same, right? It's Activision Blizzard the whole time.
Joseph: Oh yeah, yeah. Okay.
Willie: It's developers that they're switching out.
Joseph: The developers. Yeah.
Willie: And again, this is for, so they can hit that release schedule, right? Because in May of 2007, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare comes out. And then November 2008, Treyarch develops Call of Duty: World at War, which is the one we were talking about a little while ago that has the first zombies mode.
Joseph: That's one I didn't remember like at all. Like the name of that game doesn't even sound vaguely familiar.
Willie: Yeah.
00:28:48
Joseph: So before we go on-
Willie: Uh-huh.
Joseph: -is there consistency between these games because they're being developed by different teams or do they feel like completely different games?
Taylor: Y... did you leave off on World at War, just now?
Willie: Yes, uh-huh.
Taylor: It's funny you bring that up Joey 'cause that is where they started to split off. World at War was one of the... I... Maybe the first one that had where body parts fell off. When you threw a grenade at somebody or shot somebody with a rocket or whatever their heads and... and limbs would blow off. Or if they hit a mine.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That was the first one that actually started separating it, at least for me. I don't know about, I can't speak for an entire community, but that was the cool thing to me, was that the bodies blew up. It was just a extra bit of realism that really conveyed, because all of these were super serious.
We were talking about all these actors and, and funny stuff. These, the tone was extremely serious. It was very much more like saving private Ryan, where they were trying to show you the ugliness of war and, and all of that. That really did it. When you see people's arms and legs getting blown off from a mine or something like that, or dogs getting blown up.
That was another thing I believe from that game, was when they, they implemented dogs and, and you could also blow those up, which was-
Joseph: Damn, that's fucked up.
Taylor: -You think of it now. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't sound great, uh, especially as an older adult, but that was one of the things that started separating 'em.
They still had the same core engine, that same control style and everything, but they started to kind of separate in those ways.
Willie: Yeah. I didn't actually look that up to know if they're built on the same engine, but you're probably right that they are. But they did have a different feel between the Treyarch games and what are the Infinity Ward games that we're about to talk about?
Those two developers are gonna start switching off making games at that point in time.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I think most people who played one probably played both, but I do think there was a slightly different feel in the gameplay. Even though the mechanics were the same, some people were like, "no, I prefer the Treyarch ones", or, "no, I prefer the Infinity Ward ones."
Joseph: But the mechanics aren't, there's not significant changes between the titles that different developers are creating.
Willie: I can't think of anything big other than what-
Joseph: Yeah, nothing major.
Taylor: No. Like the graphics are always right on par. That's, that's why I'm pretty sure they use either the same engine or just a paralleled streamline that, you know, because the things that would change would be you could slide in one, but in the other one you dove forward or something like that.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: It would just be minor differences that would give people a reason to maybe play the next years.
Joseph: And also, you wanna make a different game, right? Like you want it to be somewhat different than the last title so that it does feel like, it's a new game.
Taylor: Yeah. And so the time, that was another big differentiator was that you had World at War, which was a World War II game or maybe World War II, but-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -you had that one and then they, the other side was coming out with the modern stuff, so-
Willie: Right.
Taylor: -kind of that fix for everybody. 'Cause there's a lot of people that probably just wanted to play World War II stuff and did not care about the new, and then vice versa as well.
Joseph: So where does that lead us after, when was it? War. War. War of the Worlds.
[all laughing]
Willie: World at War.
Taylor: I wish but...
Joseph: [laughs] World at War, shit.
00:32:16
Willie: Yeah. So after that game, like the next major release is basically just a year later. That last game released November, 2008. The next one releases November, 2009. It's Infinity Ward and it's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with a number two.
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: That one I played a lot of. So after playing a little bit of world, or not... Call of Duty 4, after I played a little bit of that after, I was like, "okay, fine, I'll play."
I dove into Modern Warfare 2, and played a bunch, and I felt like amongst our friend group, I was like, actually one of the better people, just because I played way too much of that damn game.
Taylor: And that one was the controversial one, right?
Willie: Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was, had some, definitely had some controversy around that one, because that's the one that has the infamous "No Russian" stage-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -in it.
Joseph: What does that mean?
Willie: The stage is called "No Russian" and you are playing, uh, I don't know. I... you're playing a double agent. I can't remember what you are exactly. You might be a US Army person, you might be a CA... CIA operative, I can't remember. But you were planted on a team of Russian people who are infiltrating a, uh, airport and you were trying to basically set up a false flag.
So you're told like no one speak Russian because you want them to think that this is an American troop of people I think, who are, or some troop. I can't honestly remember the details anymore. But the horrifying part about it was you were playing a level where you were going through an airport mowing down civilians to-
Joseph: Oh fuck.
Willie: -a false flag information or false flag.
Joseph: Wow
Taylor: with chain guns.
Willie: Yeah, with machine...
Taylor: Just like with chain guns. Yeah. Is that right?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Am I making that up or you were using,
Willie: I don't remember what they have in it, but it was, you know, it was a battalion of soldiers walking through an airport just like, as terrorists going through an airport, just mowing people down, civilians and stuff.
Taylor: It was bad.
Willie: I don't remember how it ends, and I think this was in the first version, but maybe not. It had to be, that you could just skip that level. At the beginning of the game, it told you there's a graphic thing that happens in this game. If you wanna skip it, you can just skip it.
Joseph: Wow. At the start of the game?
Willie: Yeah, I think so.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: It's just like, "yeah, level 13 is fucked up so if you don't want any part of mowing down civilians."
Willie: Yep. Yeah, for sure.
Joseph: Wow, that's a bold move.
Willie: Yeah. What I played a lot of is obviously the multiplayer. That's the thing that got really interesting to me, and that's where they first started. They started adding spec ops as a multiplayer mode, which was basically, here's a team of two or four people and you go do a, a short mission.
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: You just get XP for doing this short, brief, go capture these satellites or these intel points or whatever and try to return. Get to the ex-fil and get out. And also added kill streaks and death streaks to the multiplayer.
So if you get three kills, you get five kills, you get some special perk for doing that.
Joseph: The spec op was that against AI? It wasn't against other online players, right? It's not like PVP thing?
Willie: Yeah, no. Spec ops was just against, it was, yeah. A PVE sort of experience where there's AI you're fighting against and infiltrating a base or whatever it happens to be.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. That actually sounds really fun.
Willie: Yeah, that's the thing. All those modes have been fun 'cause they're easy to pick up and, and just do for a little bit. You don't have to play through the whole game together. You can just do them over and over again until you get better at them if you want. Rainbow Six always had some good versions of that as well. Just playing against bots and a simple, quick mission.
Joseph: These are essentially like strikes and raids, right? Like in like Destiny?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like they're short bits of the game.
Willie: Yeah. Sometimes they were very, like ripped directly from the campaign or they're like things that were happening just outside the campaign.
You knew a mission was happening off screen somewhere else to put what you are doing in place in the game and you could play, go play that in spec ops later.
Joseph: That's legit. I like that format.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: To be able to go play those missions that you already have been introduced to, that's pretty badass.
Willie: Yeah, and I don't know when that sort of mechanic got introduced, but some of those things were definitely, they're all tied together in the way that's like, it's definitely happening in the same world that the rest of the stuff is happening in.
Joseph: I like that. And it's designed for fewer players, right? It's a team of like two or three.
00:36:43
Willie: Yeah, and I, I, I don't remember the numbers specifically, but yeah, it's usually between like two and four, I think. But I think the thing that changed the rest of the games going forward, back to the multiplayer, the other multiplayer stuff that was PVP is the kill streaks and death streaks, right? You get three kills and you can call in a UAV, so you'll call in a, an airplane that will light up everybody on the map.
And now your whole team can see where the enemy team is. You get five kills without dying and now you've stacked up more kills and you get your higher kill streak. And now you can call in. I don't remember what five was. I'll never remember any of these, but some were like, call in a, a mortar strike or call in a stealth bomber at some point later, or call in a chopper that'll come support your team.
Joseph: This is fucking survival of the fittest, right? Way to kick 'em while they're down. If you continue killing people, you get more abilities and more- [laughs]
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: More options to keep killing people.
Taylor: That ha, that became a total meta, uh, sometimes like if someone was too good, they could just make people want to quit constantly.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Like if you're getting nothing but planes in the air and choppers blasting you, that became a major factor and whether you want to continue playing or not.
Willie: Well, and I, I want to correct this thing before, I know no one's going to email us about it or tweet at us or anything, but I do want to correct that.
I think I said this is the first game with kill streaks, but actually Call of Duty 4 was the first game with kill streaks that do that. And I think it was just like three, five... and at kills three, five, and seven that were kill streaks. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 expanded on that and also added death streaks, which is what-
Joseph: Oh, that's cool.
Willie: If you were getting beat real bad and you weren't doing well, you could do something to counteract that. So, so that it's not completely one-sided, like you were describing.
Joseph: I do feel like it needs some kind of checks and balances in there.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Or just balance in general.
Willie: Right. Yeah, as Taylor was saying, you sort of had to play that meta to figure out are you gonna stack kills on one person so that-
Joseph: Right.
Willie: -they're getting kill streaks, you know? Or stack deaths on someone so that they can get a death streak in Modern Warfare 2.
Joseph: That's interesting. I like that it... you can strategize off of those mechanics.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That's pretty cool.
Willie: I will have to say here, one of the, the Modern Warfare 2 kill streaks was calling in the Nuke, I think it was nine kills.
Joseph: Oh damn.
Willie: Or was it like 20 Kills? I don't know what it was.
Taylor: Oh, it was. It was a ridiculous amount, I believe. I think it was 20 in a row...20. I don't know.
Willie: You could literally just end the game if you got enough kills without dying, [Joseph lauhgs] you would just call in a nuke and the game is over.
00:39:27
Taylor: Which also spawned Nuke Town, which was one of the most famous maps and probably still is.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Either famous or notorious, depending on if you like it or hate it.
Joseph: Is that a map of like a city that's in ruins because it got hit with a nuke?
Taylor: A small neighborhood.
Willie: Yeah, it's a small neighborhood. It's one of those, it's one of the testing sites for, it's built off the model of like having a, a testing site in the distance, right?
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: So there's like a town nearby. So what happens to that town once the nuke goes off in every-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I don't wanna say every, but the thing about that is when the game is over, whether someone calls in a nuke or not, once the timer runs out, there's a nuke and it just destroys everything there. So like that's the in, that's the timer running down.
Joseph: Okay. So it's just game over regardless.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Was that the one that if you, they had little things inside of that too? Like if you shot off all the heads of all the mannequins in a quick enough time, something would happen, like an alternate nuke ending would happen or something.
I don't remember exactly, but there have been some crazy little easter eggs in those that you would not expect.
Willie: I remember there being some lore about that, but I don't really remember being in a group that ever did that. So I'm don't know, actually, I guess I'd have to go look it up.
Taylor: Similar to the, uh, the, the, it reminds me of the battlefield giant shark that allegedly people could do something and make a giant shark come outta the ocean and and eat them. Yeah, stuff like that is cool if it actually exists. If not, then it's crazy lame.
Willie: There is a version of the map. If you just look up Call of Duty Nuketown, shoot heads off mannequins, the first thing that comes up is like how to complete Nuketown '84 easter egg. And just looking at, I'm just looking at the preview and it just says, upon successfully shooting all of the mannequins heads, your screen will glitch out and a retro '80's theme filter will be applied to your game, along with a funky synth wave soundtrack.
While filters are random, it's worth mentioning that it does happen to come in two different colors: blue and purple. This is from 2020.
Taylor: What a cool detail.
Willie: Literally no idea. I guess this is in Modern Warfare, the recent Modern Warfare.
Taylor: Is that the IGN article?
Willie: Uh, yes, it is.
Taylor: That's cool. It looks awesome. The filter, it looks like you're playing um, what was that Far Cry mod? Uh, blood dragon.
Willie: Blood Dragon, yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really cool.
Joseph: So where did we end up? So did we get through the, the group of games that is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare?
Willie: No.
Joseph: And then what happens? [Willie chuckles] Okay. We're still in that.
Willie: Yeah, we're still in that. I am gonna brag a little bit before we move off Modern Warfare 2, 'cause it was the game I played a lot of, and I definitely successfully got off a nuke, like two or three times in that game. And it was one of the best feelings of being like, just being able to actually do that, get 20 kills or whatever without dying and then just end the game for everybody.
Joseph: That's power.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: So let's hop back into this. Infinity Ward made Modern Warfare 2, and then Treyarch comes back with, finally a game that's not during World War II and does something during the seventies, sixties and seventies, I think.
Taylor: Vietnam era.
Willie: Well, I think it's during Vietnam, so yeah, right around the era, and they make Call of Duty: Black Ops. This becomes the sort of franchise war between the two, where one group is making Black Ops and the other group is making Modern Warfare for a few years back and forth. And that's where people probably divided a little bit more, if they weren't already like feeling one developer over the other. That's where people were like," well, no, Black Ops is definitely better than Modern Warfare."
Joseph: Interesting. So Black Ops is a game set in Vietnam?
Willie: I think so. It's definitely during that era, 'cause I think there's a couple things that happen. That one has a weird story and I won't even try to explain it 'cause I don't remember the details 'cause it's weird. But it involves like a maybe, CIA operative that has... is being mind controlled and you don't know it throughout the game.
So sorry, spoilers for that if you've never played it. It's very weird. And then Infinity Ward develops the next game with the help of Sledgehammer Games, which is important for later so I'm saying that now. But they develop Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, it's kind of the same stuff, you know, same multiplayer, gameplay still set in a modern time.
I would assume those games that came out in, they came out in like 2010, 2011 era. But they're set in the distant future. Maybe the 2020s or something. They might actually even be set in the same timeframe.
Joseph: Are any of the games in the franchise post 9/11?
Willie: Yeah, so there's definitely some stuff that's set in the Middle East, in Middle Eastern countries. They do name some actual locations and things, but they also make up countries in the Middle East sometimes to avoid things.
Joseph: That makes sense.
Willie: This is one of those points where it's like, there's some really interesting stuff there to talk about, like the consulting and stuff that happened in those games and how those things happened.
But again, I don't, we could literally spend hours talking about that shit, so I don't wanna delve into it, but I will put some links for anybody who wants to just look at like the history of Call of Duty as military propaganda stuff, because I think what happens in some of these games is definitely a rewriting of history.
Let's pretend that this other thing didn't happen, but instead it's happening in this fictional country.
Joseph: Right, right. Interesting.
Willie: There's even an instance of Activision Blizzard wanting to make a Call of Duty game set in 2075 according to some reports.* And they were basically encouraged not to by the US military, because the story was gonna revolve around a conflict with China.
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: And they were like, we don't wanna do that, so could you not do that? And so they tried to decide, design the game around another conflict that was similar but not including China. And ultimately they just abandoned the game because they were like, oh, nevermind, we're not gonna do it.
So we're at Modern Warfare 3 with Infinity War and Sledgehammer Games, and then Treyarch comes back with Black Ops II, which a lot of people got into that one.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: The gameplay was just really good. I don't know what was so good about the multiplayer, but I felt like Taylor, you and I played a lot of that one.
Taylor: Oh yeah. Yeah, we did.
Joseph: I feel like the last time I saw any Call of Duty gameplay was actually you playing Willie, off Valleyridge when we were next door neighbors. And I think you might have been playing with Taylor that day.
Willie: Mm. And that was, did Black Ops 2 introduce the battle royale? That's way too long ago, right? Yeah, that's way too long ago. That's not till 4. That was, you watched Black Ops 4.
Joseph: Oh, okay. Damn. There's four Black Ops.
Willie: [laughing] Yeah.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: We're gonna have to start skipping some of over the, uh, over these, because Treyarch makes Black Ops II, Infinity Ward comes back with Call of Duty: Ghosts-
Joseph: Ah!
Willie: -which is based around a character in Modern Warfare series that everyone really loves. So they're like, let's make this guy have a game.
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: And he had a team of people who went and did some stuff. Which I can't say I ever... I wrote a note that says I played it, but not much, which means I think I saw that I had a couple of achievements for it, but was like not really into it at all. But, it was the first game on PS4 and Xbox One.
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: I'm looking at the date that it launched was November 5th, 2013. So that was like, right. That was around the launch of Xbox One.
Joseph: So they're trading off-
Willie: Uh-huh.
Joseph: -and then we get through Modern Warfare. We get through Black Ops. And then what happens after those two?
00:46:55
Willie: Well, so we get Ghosts, like I said, by Infinity Ward, and then Sledgehammer Games, which helped Infinity Ward on the last game makes a game called Call of Duty Advanced Warfare.
Joseph: Oh!
Willie: Which I think was-
Joseph: In color. [chuckles]
Willie: [chuckling] Yeah. Do you remember Taylor? Was that a futuristic game?
Taylor: Advanced Warfare was the futuristic one.
Willie: Okay. That's what I thought.
Taylor: It was kind of full on where everybody had the frames, like people had exoskeletal frames on.
Willie: Oh.
Taylor: So you, it's, it's blurry. I didn't play a ton of them because that one and the one after they had exo-frames. And maybe both, or one of them, you had extra jumping abilities, you could dash around. They were using those in some interesting ways that, I thought was executed pretty well.
Eventually, I think people started exploiting and things like that as it just kind of died down, because that's part of the cycle, but it was a lot of fun. That's my jam. If you get people in exoskeletons, and in the future, and robots and all that, I'm down.
Joseph: Willie, how do you, so just read off the titles-
Willie: Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: -to get us like all the way caught up to where we are today.
Willie: All alright. Yeah. The next game is Black Ops 3, which Treyarch makes, and it's actually set in 2065, where there are like actual cybernetically enhanced characters in that game. That's also a big shift for the other series at the same time.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And then you have Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Willie: Oh, the other thing [Joseph and Willie laughing] I should, the other thing I should say is, at the time of Call of Duty: Black Ops III is when Activision ended their partnership with Microsoft Studios and they partnered with Sony Computer Entertainment instead.
Joseph: Oh, interesting.
Willie: They still make games for both, but it like, there was a partnership that ended at that point.
Joseph: What was that game called? Infinity Warfare?
Willie: Infinite Warfare.
Joseph: Infinite Warfare, oh my gosh.
Willie: And then you have Call of Duty: World War II, which I don't even-
Joseph: That sounds cool.
Willie: -know what that is. I think that's what that game's called. And then there's Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. And then, and that's what you saw me playing back at that, that duplex, I think
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Was the multiplayer of that where there's um, was that game only, I wrote non-traditional single player campaign. I don't know what that means.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: I think it was like not as linear. It wasn't like a, here's the story, go play it. I think there were like points on the map that you would like pick which missions you were gonna go do. And maybe there was some order you had to go do it in, but ultimately you were like picking where you would go and what you would play.
But the thing you saw me playing at that time was Blackout, which was their answer to Fortnite, to PUBG, to all of the other battle royale games that were coming out.
Joseph: Call of Duty Blackout?
Willie: Yeah. It was in Black Ops 4, but the game mode was called Blackout.
Joseph: Oh, gotcha. Okay. Is that just be the last person standing?
Willie: Yeah. Or team standing. But you could play in, I think you could play in duos, but you could play in, definitely individually and as a four-person team.
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: And that's the last one before Call Duty: Modern Warfare, which is the 2019 version of the game. Which is a reboot of the Modern Warfare series, which has characters from the beginning but is not, it's not exactly the same.
Joseph: Okay. Now knowing how much time has elapsed between the first set of Modern Warfare games and the newer set, I guess it makes sense that they could leverage that name and bring it back.
Willie: Yeah. The original Modern Warfare came out in 2007. So it, it was 12 years after that game that they rebooted the series.
Joseph: Yeah, that's a long time. So what's the latest release? Modern Warfare II?
Willie: Yeah,
Joseph: But with the Roman numeral.
Willie: With the Roman numeral.
Taylor: Get that, get that shit straight.
Joseph: Yeah. Xbox One. Xbox Seri.... Xbox X, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S.
Taylor: Oh. It's confusing if you're, if you're not living it and you are outside of it, and you are very confused by it.
Joseph: Xbox one X, is that a thing?
Willie: Xbox One X? Yeah, that's what I have.
Joseph: Okay. Okay. [Joseph and Willie laugh]
Willie: That's the thing that I own, that came out before the Series X. I think you hit on this very early on, but it is kind of the same game over and over again. Obviously the campaign... ob, obviously there's a lot of hard work that goes into these games, right?
People are like spending hundreds of hours building these things and then writing the stories through the campaigns or whatever. And some of them aren't bad, but I also think with any media, you gotta be critical of it too, right? And particularly because I brought up at the beginning, like they're rewriting history in some cases here and like making it-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -sound like we didn't do some bad stuff. Like the US military didn't spearhead some like campaigns in the Middle East that were bad and-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -they just tell it in a different way and they're like, no, that actually wasn't us. That was somebody else.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: When I think about Taylor, or maybe it was you, Willie, that said, this is a game that really is just the same game over and over again to like a certain extent. It's the game type that I feel you can do that with.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Because it's just a straight up first person shooter and there's so many different spinoffs, different takes, different settings, different eras.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: That you can keep remaking the game and people are gonna play it because of the game type and game style.
Taylor: That template is tried and true. People use it constantly on, on games to this day, and it works. There's not many movies out there that you watch that are in first person, maybe Hardcore Henry or something like that, which very, I don't think a ton of people are watching because that'll make people sick.
Joseph: I forgot about that.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Did not see that. I totally forgot about it.
Taylor: Yeah, that thing will make you sick, watching that.
[All chuckle]
Taylor: I had to stop it multiple times just because my fucking stomach, and I don't, I mean, VR doesn't make me feel sick or anything. But that movie, there were times. But just being able to put you in the shoes of a person on ISS, or they even went as far as you were flying a futuristic jet out in space and, and having dog fights and stuff, in the Advanced Warfare so-
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Taylor: -they really have taken people places. And I'm sure to some extent they probably do a decent job of at least showcasing a culture, or something like that with some respect, whenever you go there, I hope. I don't, I, I just don't, I have a unbiased view on that because I don't know, I'm ignorant to it, but, It seems visually to me that they do a really good job of putting you in that place.
00:53:35
Joseph: The latest released is, yeah, I think I already asked that. The latest release is Modern Warfare Roman numeral two.
Willie: Yeah, exactly.
Joseph: Do you have the year of when that was released?
Willie: Uh, that was 2022. That was like just-
Joseph: Oh shit.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. But that just came out at the end of, uh, last year. I didn't write it down when, but I think Warzone 2, which was like the, you know, I said it comes out like a month after, or two months after. I guess that launched probably November or December of 2022. So like, it's not that old.
Joseph: Okay. So they're still, they still have the tag on Warzone.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: To both of those games. Modern Warfare and then Modern Warfare II.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Yeah, and I think it's actually called Warzone 2, this time around.
Joseph: Mm. Clever.
Taylor: Yeah. I haven't played it too much. They seem very alike and at this point in my life, it's tough for me to, dedicate Call of Duty type time to anything really, to learn it and actually succeed or be good at it. So it seems good, but throw some mechs in there and you'll get me back.
Willie: Yeah, that's what I've still been waiting for is some mechs or, you know, um, what was it, other series? Battlefield. Battlefield 2042 was always one of those. Is that what that game was? Or 2422? I don't remember. It was twenty for…
Taylor: I think it's 2042.
Willie: I think 2040-
Taylor: I think that was...
Willie: -2042 was not near, like, not far enough in the future.
Taylor: [laughing] Yeah it seems not far enough, yeah.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: I think 2422 was it. I, I'm gonna look it up in a second.
Joseph: I don't think it's 2422. Like that doesn't ring a bell.
Taylor: That seems too far in the future. That's when the robots are fighting the aliens..
Willie: There was only one that was just like this one version where there were mechs and there were like, there were space drops.
Joseph: Was it 2044?
Taylor: It was 2040-2... No, that's the new one is 2042.
Willie: Yeah, exactly. And I think this is far in the future, past that is what I'm saying.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Maybe 2142 or something weird. I don't remember. I'm gonna remember in a second.
Taylor: Ah there it is.. That's it. 2142.
Joseph: That one does sound better. Or more-
Taylor: There it is. Man that game was cool.
Joseph: - more familiar, 2142.
Taylor: That was a great game. I would love to see Call of Duty, do a take on that. It would be something huge, but that's my jam.
Willie: That's what I am waiting for in a, in a first person shooter again, is something like that. Because I also liked the Battlefield version of spawning in, in that, in 2142, where you could spawn on your squad or you can jump down from the giant spaceship that's floating above the battlefield.
Joseph: Nice.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: And I think, yeah, you would come down in a mech or in a special suit or whatever, and it was, it was cool.
Taylor: And it had big carriers where you could have a big, um, spaceship that allowed you to carry up to, I think 12, 8 or 12 of your comrades, and then they could just shoot down in a capsule basically out of it. Or maybe they just shot down. I don't remember, but it was epic.
00:56:29
Joseph: One random bit of knowledge I do have, is I listened to, I guess it's the first Modern Warfare, but was an original soundtrack by Han Zimmer.
Willie: Interesting.
Joseph: And I listened to that quite a bit, but this would be, I think it's Modern Warfare 'cause I remember where I was living when I was listening to it. But I, I enjoyed that quite a bit.
Willie: I'm trying to remember which one that was. I do remember that being a, a thing.
Taylor: Oh, that... the reason you remember it is because he was in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. He was in World at War, Modern Warfare: Mobilized.
Joseph: Nice.
Taylor: Which I guess was the mobile. Silly.
Black Ops. Modern Warfare 3 - Defiance. So he has put some work in.
Joseph: I'm not gonna lie, a mobile shooter like that seems impossible.
Taylor: Nah, they, they really dilute a lot of it down. I thought so too until I tried it out once and you, it's very much auto lock on.
Joseph: Oh, okay.
Taylor: It makes it a lot easier. Yeah.
Joseph: Interesting. I feel like most of my reasons for getting wrecked would be my eyesight in general. Trying to play on a smaller screen.
Taylor: Oh yeah. That's, like I said, tried it once.
00:57:43
Joseph: Overall. I think the last final thought I have is it's super intimidating to try to get into for me, because I see clips of people playing with mouse and keyboard, and the speed in which they play the game, and like pick up and drop equipment and ammo and gear, and stuff like that blows my mind.
Like there's no way I could play with two joysticks and like even survive against some of those players.
Taylor: I think they've done things to combat that, like you can choose to not play with people on PC, and you can even choose, if I'm remembering correctly, it's even more granular now where you can choose to not play against people on keyboard and mouse, so-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: You don't have to deal with that.
Joseph: And maybe it's just the keyboard, the mouse sensitivity that makes it look extremely fast to me.
Taylor: Oh, it's, that's always blown my mind how fast, uh, you can't even tell what's happening.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: 'Cause they remove all the blur and everything, so it's just instantaneous that they're there. Yeah. I, I would never get into those games, especially at this point in life and expect to do it-
Joseph: Professionally.
Taylor: -competitively or, yeah. But really if you see one that comes out with something that really seems entertaining to you. You could probably get into it and have a good few months of fun with it when it has a big community and a ton of people playing it and there's lots of diversity in the rankings so that you're not paired with people that are amazing constantly.
Once all that stuff sorts out in the first couple weeks, you can have a lot of fun. They get you paired up with people that you're just as good as and-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: They do a lot of stuff right.
Joseph: Are any of them free to play?
Taylor: Yeah. Just the Warzones, I believe. And they have different-
Joseph: Okay.
Taylor: -aspects of the Warzones that you can play for free, like extraction.**
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Which was a lot more of a, kind of a entry player friendly version where, I think it's only 10 or 16 people that are actual people playing and everybody else is AI or NPCs.
Joseph: Okay.
Taylor: And so you can have missions and you may not even encounter people, but when you do it's a lot of fun 'cause it's unexpected and they're all over a big map, so-
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: -that's a pretty cool version to play.
Joseph: I feel like I would enjoy some of the full campaigns. Like I would probably enjoy the full campaign playthrough more than getting just beat up in Warzone.
Taylor: Yeah. Their campaigns are good.
Joseph: So maybe, I don't know, I feel like I should play one just to get a better idea of like how they even handle a campaign. Like I have no idea what the storyline of those games could even be.
Taylor: I'd be curious to hear what you think about it if you do.
Joseph: Being former military myself, like it is interesting to me, to like assume those roles and play in that world. I'm interested in the storytelling, I guess. Because like, are they even good?
Are the campaigns even well written?
Taylor: I think Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The first one, is really heralded as an amazing, uh, story overall. And Black Ops got into some interesting, like psychedelic, I don't know, just kinda like mental warfare. I don't know what you would call that, Willie-
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: -but remember the numbers and everything. Like they really did some interesting stuff there that got into brainwashing and...
Willie: Yeah, exactly. I will say that, that series was interesting and told an interesting story, especially if you want to dive deep into it and think about any of the parallels they might be telling about what was happening with actual soldiers at the time, or CIA operatives or double agents or whatever and what sort of thing might have been going on with them.
But that story is very weird and very strange about the weird, uh, you said psychedelics [chuckles] and I was trying to think what the right word is and I still don't even know. [chuckling]
Taylor: Yeah, I don't know why that was, but it's just that it... I guess because it invokes to me the LSD experiments-
Willie: Right.
Taylor: -and stuff like that that were going on during those times.
Willie: Right, exactly.
Taylor: So that's the first thing that I think about. But I, I wanna say that that was maybe incorporated into it or at least alluded to or something.
Willie: Yeah. Maybe. That is definitely an interesting story to, to, to go through the other ones. I think they tell a decent story. I think anybody who enjoys historical fiction and understanding it's historical fiction, like that's-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -that's worth like, probably playing. I, I can't speak to all of them cause I haven't played through all of them. I especially haven't played through the most recent one.
Taylor: They're all like a blockbuster movie.
Willie: Right.
Taylor: Every single one. And they all, and they all have the same elements of, you know, you're gonna have a moment at the beginning that's gonna shock the shit out of you. It's gonna be, either you're a character who maybe is shot in the head, you know, like sometimes they'll do that. They'll start you off as somebody who maybe doesn't make it. Then you pivot to someone else and they're really good at invoking, um, like a feeling, um, and catching that ambiance mentally and getting you into a real fucked up state if they want to with some of the storytelling.
01:02:48
Willie: You started to hint at this Joey a little bit and I, I don't even know what the question I'm gonna ask, it might be like two parts, but, um, I was a little curious, like if your military experience pushed you to not wanna play the games ever or made you interested in the games, or if it's really just that you don't like first person shooters that much, so you've never played them.
Joseph: I think for Call of Duty specifically, it's been like so much has happened it's been intimidating to jump in at any point.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: In film, I enjoy wartime films for sure, like saving Private Ryan, Blackhawk Down, you know, Tears of the Sun and then all of the other classics, Hamburger Hill, Platoon, whatever it may be.
I enjoy those until they start to feel like it's glorifying killing like, uh, like American Sniper kind of felt that way to me
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: When they were focused on an individual that was like literally killing for a living. So like that was a film I didn't watch just because it didn't sit well with me. It's a movie I want to watch, but it's also the kind of movie that I might like just get up and walk out of.
Taylor: Especially knowing the outcome. It's not a-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: It's not a work of fiction, so it's...
Joseph: Nothing in my military experience has kept me away from Call of Duty. I would say they're in the world of games that I would enjoy playing and Taylor mentioning that they're like all blockbusters.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That all sounds really entertaining to me in a way that I would enjoy playing through the full campaign.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I probably wouldn't spend a lot of time in multiplayer, only because, well one get destroyed.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Two, it would take so long, so much gameplay to get good so that you don't get destroyed. But also that's all time that I could spend playing through another full campaign of another game.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: I wouldn't hop into those multiplayers at all now. Even... even the newest one is probably too old for me to hop in at this point and have a good time because people are gonna be pretty embedded, unless there's a big event that's bringing in new people like a sale or something like that.
Those places get pretty, and they get very toxic too.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: There's no secret that you might go in there and hear some words that you do not want to hear. So...
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Word.
Willie: It's funny to me because I think the only thing I would play right now is whatever's free and that would be-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Warzone or multiplayer for whenever it's a free weekend or something. I think I have lost the interest of seeing, uh, I love me some Saving Private Ryan probably one of my favorite movies ever. However, uh, ridiculous that is, that's one of those things if it's on tv, I'm flipping through channels, I'm probably gonna stop and watch it, but I just don't have, I don't have TV in that way, so I'm not ever flipping through channels anymore.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Same.
Willie: I don't know that I need to play any more Modern Warfare. And I, like I said, I saw the graphics, I saw that people were like, man, this is pretty good. And it's exactly the type of escapism I wanted. Like it's completely dude, bro-ish. And it is kind of ridiculous, but it is a blockbuster thing, so whatever, I'm gonna play it, right? I've seen people say that-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -about it. And that's kind of interesting to me. But I think there are still so many things I haven't been playing that I do want to play. So I'm, I would just pick something else. I would play the free stuff if friends were like, "Hey, we're going to hop on this game," because games still have been that, that huge connector that we just keep mentioning over and over again.
So it's like, yeah, I'll spend some time playing a game and there'll be some ridiculous stuff that happens. We might get owned a couple of times and it'll be funny because of the way it goes down in the game.
01:06:25
Joseph: That's what it would take for me to play the game. I just thought about this when you were talking about playing together as a group. That it could be fun to just, 'cause there's vehicles in those games, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like just get in a vehicle and not try to get kills. Just try to stay alive and just like zoom through the map in a vehicle and just try not to get killed. And that's the entire, our entire game mode is just to stay alive as long as we possibly can without actually trying to take out the other team.
Taylor: There's a whole world of fun that could be [Willie chuckles] had with that because then you could start doing things like, let's put all our C4 on this vehicle that we're driving around all over the place and, you know, as somebody's extracting, their whole team is about to extract on a plane, you just-
Joseph: Aww...
Taylor: -drive it in there gingerly and just bla... [Joseph laughs] everybody blast their c4
Joseph: Gingerly.
Taylor: And yeah, dude, that's, um, I mean the, you could have a lot of good times doing that and honestly, a refreshing take on a game like that is probably what a lot of people, I'm sure there's tons of people doing that already, just making it their own game.
Willie: Yeah, the last time I played I probably, I don't remember how long ago it was now, but the last time I played Warzone, every time I was dropping into the map, I was trying to land on the, the train.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Willie: And I would just ride around on the train the whole game, as long as I could-
Joseph: Hell yeah.
Willie: -I would just be on the train.
Taylor: Yeah, that train is cool. It takes you to where you want to go... dead.
Joseph: Oh shit. Uh, we should wrap up. I totally forgot. [Joseph and Taylor laugh] I totally forgot that the episode published. Episode four is now available, and it published about an hour ago, and I need to post about it on Instagram.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Oh, probably not a bad idea.
Joseph: Also, for everybody listening, this is going to be episode eight, which is probably gonna be published in a couple of months, but the episode that just published and is now live is episode four. Just to give you some context of like how far ahead we are in the recording process. The reason I'm mentioning that is because we just hit 100 all time downloads.
Taylor: Woo.
Joseph: 102.
Taylor: Hey! I, I did share it in a couple different places, so I'm gonna go ahead and pat myself on the back.
Willie: Yep, you did it. [laughs]
Joseph: [laughing] Yeah. [Taylor laughing] Taylor got us to a hundred downloads. [chuckles]
Taylor: Got us those five that we needed, man, thank you community for coming through,
Willie: We we're only three away, I think earlier-
Taylor: Could have been my mom,
Willie: -so, yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, it was at 97 before we started recording today.
Taylor: Yeah. Thank y'all so much for checking it out.
Joseph: I think the next mini milestone is maybe 250 all time downloads.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: And then probably 500 after that. I'm just-
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: -making this shit up, of what kind of makes sense to be like rooting for on our end over here as small fries.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: But yeah, let's wrap there. I think I have a much better understanding of how many games there are for sure.
Willie: Yeah. Uh, it's a lot to wrap your head around and we barely touched the surface of a lot of things, and I'm sure there are people who are steeped in this lore, who know things that we did not mention at all,
Joseph: We're noobs. Forgive us.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
[Taylor chuckles]
Willie: Yeah, I will, uh, one last time, say thanks to everyone who's listening. Thanks for getting us to a hundred downloads while we're recording this, and we do look forward to those milestones. So if you're checking us out, we do really appreciate it, you spending time with us. So thanks again.
Taylor: And with that, we'll catch you in the next episode. But until then, [singing] never stop gaming, doopity doe.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
01:09:57
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
01:10:19
Taylor: This episode brought to you by Berries and Blades Cereal. You eat it once and you die. [Joey laughing]
[laughing] Fuck, I don't know. No, no, that's not it. You eat it and level up.
Editor’s Notes:
*See the correction in the show notes about this reference to a Call of Duty game set in 1975.
**The extraction gametype being referenced here is called Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 DMZ.