Activision has dropped a teaser for the next big trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
The actual trailer, which will be live action, drops tomorrow, May 28, 2024, at 7 AM PT. The timestamp for the trailer on YouTube is only 58 seconds, which is longer than the teaser itself. It seems Treyarch has a surprise that is so big they only need a minute to share.
You can watch the teaser below, but we’ll share a general description here. The clip is a montage of video footage from the 1990s, interspersed with a voice over talking to the audience. The narrator tells us that we didn’t know that we were fed lies during this period, and that we need to choose to change from sheep, to wolves.
The footage itself shows several world leaders, including George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Margaret Thatcher, and of course, Saddam Hussein. If you were curious, tangentially, Activision and their PR company would be allowed to use this footage under fair use, in the same way that election ads often use footage of the candidates’ opponents. They also show a snippet of a Chia Pet ad, which implies they paid NECA.
Obviously, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is deliberately treading on potentially controversial territory, but Treyarch did make one clear choice in showing this footage, and using these politicians in specific. These are clearly 1990s era politicians, and not the 2000s era politicians who were involved in the post 9/11 invasion of Iraq.
So, Treyarch wants to remind us that this game is placed in an earlier setting than that event, that literally changed the world around us. This is about the Gulf War, the one waged from 1990 to 1991, and involved a 42 country coalition seeking to end Iraq’s occupation and annexation of its neighbor, Kuwait.
Some gamers would also do well to remember that the Call of Duty games may not have been afraid to paint politicians in a bad light, but they are also known to have positive portrayals of the soldiers themselves. If not all US soldiers act in good faith in these games, you will always be playing one of those ‘good guys.’
CharlieIntel shares one interesting detail about the upcoming trailer. As they point out, the thumbnail they put up on YouTube shows the coordinates of Saddam Hussein’s palace. It certainly looks like we are looking at the video game version of Saddam Hussein in it as well. Whatever Treyarch has planned to reveal looks to be potentially bombastic.
In the meantime, you can watch the teaser trailer below.
