After several hours, the big Black Ops: Cold War reveal puzzle has been solved.
YouTuber Noah J. — working with other players from the Call of Duty community — cracked the code that led to a hidden Activision website. According to numbers on the flashing VCR, and the web page’s source code, the Pawn Takes Pawn site will play a video at 12 p.m. noon this Friday, August 14.
Whereas a lot of folks (myself included) assumed today’s puzzle-solving event would lead directly to the trailer, we’ll have to wait just a few more days.
Noah J. and company solved the puzzle by pooling information from the slides sent by Activision, studying new symbols in Black Ops 4’s Summit map, and reading up on one of the most famous chess blunders in history: a 1972 championship match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer.
“I just heard directly from Activision,” Noah J. said later in a tweet. “What we solved today was just the first step of the Call of Duty 2020 reveal. What comes out on Friday at [noon] is just the next part. We go again.”
Cold War: Know your history
The Black Ops: Cold War reveal has turned out to be a wild puzzle-solving exercise, on par with some of the all-time great Destiny quests. So far, it’s requiring community participation and multiple game clients — including Black Ops 4 and Modern Warfare (2019) — to solve.
YouTuber NoahJ456 and several other players used a projector and slides, sent by Activision, to decipher an in-game code that took them from Black Ops 4’s Summit to the underground bunkers of 2019’s Warzone.
As spotted by Charlie Intel, it’s worth pointing out that the official Treyarch Twitter account has made the mountains behind Summit their new cover image. Could they be teasing the next location for Warzone, maybe? Or a centerpiece of their next story campaign or Zombies mode?
Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War is slated for release later this year.
Warzone season five
Modern Warfare and Warzone both got a massive seasonal update on August 5, introducing a new battle pass; new maps for 6v6 multiplayer, Ground War, and Gunfight; and of course a season’s worth of new modes, Operators, weapons, and cosmetic rewards.
For more, check out all of Gfinity’s season-five Modern Warfare coverage.