It rains in the fall, leaves crumble and another Call of Duty. The new game (the seventeenth in the main cycle) returns to historical setting and offers a tour of the forgotten pages of the Cold War. Details of the plot, of course, are stored in the strictest secret, but for several trailers you can already make some assumptions.

In this material we will figure out what to expect from Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Why the action takes place in the early 80s? What real events and technologies can be reflected in the campaign? Will we finally find out the truth about what remains behind the scenes of previous games?

In the previous series

First refresh the memory. Cold War is the new chapter of the Black OPS universe, which, in addition to four license plates, also includes World at War (Prologue about the events of World War II), several portable titles, comics and online stories. We are mostly interested in the first parts: Cold War is declared as a direct continuation of the original Black Ops , And her plot only precedes the mission of the Flashbeki for a couple of years Black Ops II. These three games are connected by the central composition of the characters and the plot inspired by real historical events and locations. In addition, this trilogy has a common screenwriter: co -author "Blade" And "Dark Knight" David s. Goyer.

Therefore, the keys to a future story should be sought in the past. Caution, ahead of the spoilers to the game ten years ago!

The first Black OPS is unfolding in the 1960s, at the peak of the Cold War-the global confrontation of the USSR and the USA. Two superpowers, avoiding direct military conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, are trying to expand their zone of influence. In such a case, all means are good: diplomacy and humanitarian aid, custom -made murders and sponsoring revolutions, technology race and intervention in third world countries to support “right” modes. In the second half of the 20th century, almost the entire planet, from Chile to Laos, split into two camps: capitalists and socialists.

The plot starts in 1961 against the backdrop of the American invasion of the Communist Cuba - the so -called "landing in the Gulf of Pigs". Young Marine Alex Mason joins the CIA operaced, which is instructed to eliminate Fidel Castro, but the mission is moving quickly. Mason is captured and transferred to the Soviet military under the command of General Dragovich; The next one and a half years, the American spends in the harsh prison "Vorkuta", where he meets another prisoner - veteran of the Second World War Viktor Reznov.

In the fall of 1963, prisoners raise the uprising (which is interesting, this episode took place in reality, however, ten years earlier). To help Mason run, Reznov leads the chase behind himself and seems to die. The marine on the USA who has returned to the United States is greeted with joy and at the same time distrust: who knows, suddenly the advice was transferred to him? Mason is enlisted in the “Research and Observations” group (Macv-Sog), where he works with the brutal specialist Hudson and his former fellow soldier, a daring sergeant Woods.

At the beginning of 1968, the MACV-SOG goes to Vietnam and immediately falls under the massive attack of the Viet Congovites-Tetsk offensive. In the turmoil, the Mason team manages to go on the trail of Nova 6 neuro-paralytic gas, which Dragovich plans to use to attack America. After many dangerous ups and downs, the heroes find the creator of gas, the Nazi biochemist of Steiner: in exchange for asylum, he offers the CIA information on how to disrupt Dragovich's plans. But before Hadson manages to evacuate a scientist from the laboratory on the island of the Renaissance (yes, it really exists), Mason kills Steiner - as if not of his own free will.

It turns out that in the "Vorkuta" over the prisoner conducted experiments on "programming" consciousness. But the process was intercepted by Reznov, who secretly invested a new team in Mason’s head: to take revenge on Steiner and Dragovich, by whose fault his detachment died during the Second World War. The suggestion turned out to be so strong that in Vietnam, Morpeh even seemed as if Reznov was fighting again with him side by side.

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Mason calculates the whereabouts of the Dragovich underwater base and undermines it before the general transmits a signal about the activation of “Novova 6” to other sleeping agents in the United States. Soviet saboteurs are defeated, the American military triumph. Happy end.

Or not so happy? As Mason had a secret program in his head, so the Black Ops plot has a second bottom. The main campaign gives only a general idea of ​​events, and their true background can be recognized by collecting intelligence and studying the secret level in the main menu. The game is full of reports, letters and ciphers that open a completely new layer of history-with their riddles and questions.

Question one: what happened to Viktor Reznov? Hudson assures Mason that Reznov died in Vorkuta. However, on the post server you can find letters behind the authorship of a certain John Trent, which Hudson received shortly after the uprising. He seems to be familiar to Mason, uses quotes from Reznov’s replicas in the text and shares information about the upcoming murder of President Kennedy, which Mason (possibly?) carried out under the program of Dragovich. Finally, if you decipher and put together the code from the beginning of the plot missions, you get a message: "Reznov died or not the body is not found".

The second question concerns the "Haribda operation" - in fact, this is the teaser of the Black Ops sequel, hidden in intelligence games. In 1978, the CIA and British intelligence MI-6 were collecting a special detachment to eliminate Mason: the government believes that an unstable mental state of the agent may become a threat to national security. At the same time, it is supposed to remove his closest allies, Hudson and Woods. By the way, a young SAS fighter Jonathan Price was appointed one of the murder performers - such a reference to the fraternal cycle Modern Warfare.

But the flashbacks from the Black Ops II seem to be ignored: Mason, Hudson and Woods continue to work for the CIA in the mid-80s. Really the attempt at the last moment canceled? Or the operation fell off for some other reason? Cold War has a great opportunity to shed light on these events. Moreover, Grigory Weaver, a combat comrade Mason, mysteriously disappeared between the first and second units of Black Ops, was noticed in the trailers of the game.

Neon Armageddon

There are many assumptions about the plot of the new Call of Duty can be made based on its setting. Beginning of the 1980s-the choice is hardly random. Of course, it is partly dictated by fashion: the last decade has passed under the banner of nostalgia for neon, electronic music, Pixel Art and horror Stephen King. But for the same historical period, perhaps the last surge of military-political crises of the 20th century accounts. Wars, revolutions and strikes broke out around the world, and the threat of nuclear apocalypse again became very real. The symbolic “Day of Days of the Day”, which tracks the danger of disaster, in 1984 reached the mark “Three minutes to midnight”-for the first time from the end of the 50s!

This situation was partly due to an economic recession, on the wave of which more conservative politicians came to power around the world, promising to “restore order”. In Britain - Tori under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. In Germany-Helmut Kol and the Christian Democratic Union. In the United States, an implacable, republican anti-communist Ronald Reagan, who in his famous speech of 1983 declared the USSR the “Empire of Evil” and openly declared that the Cold War can be completed only by winning it.

In the Soviet Union itself, the beginning of the 80s was marked by the power of the "Kremlin Elders" from the generation of Brezhnev. People met at leading posts, many of whom have already exchanged the seventh ten years: of all the methods of solving problems, they preferred loud slogans and a demonstration of force. Such a philosophy led to the fact that in December 1979 the Soviet Army entered Afghanistan covered by the Civil War, in order to establish a regime friendly to the Union in the capital. The West was indignant and supported the Islamist-Mojahidees. Against the backdrop of the Afghan conflict of the USSR and NATO, the mass deployment of nuclear-missile systems “RSD-10” and “Pershing-2” in Europe, capable of destroying the military infrastructure of the continent in Europe,.

In general, ideal conditions for a new action movie about a special train trying to prevent the third world. However, the plot of Black Ops Cold War starts a little at a distance from European missiles. On the calendar - January 1981, the last days of the confrontation in Tehran, where radical supporters of the Islamic Revolution in Iran have been holding the hostages of American diplomats for more than a year. In the spring of 1980, the United States made an attempt to free them, but it ended with a complete collapse and exposure of Western agents in the country. And now Mason, Woods and Hudson are going to Turkey, where a secret meeting of the Soviet and Iranian military is taking place at the airfield near the city of Trabzon - its outcome can give the key to resolving the crisis.

Further events will unfold on the narrow streets of Amsterdam and Berlin, as well as in several locations in the USSR. For example, in a trailer you can see a huge pyramidal structure that is very similar to the Don-2N radar station near Moscow (or its prototype in Kazakhstan). This project was developed for the early detection and interception of ballistic missiles, and its work was provided by advanced Soviet supercomputers. However, it may turn out that the construction in the game is nothing more than a dummy. According to the descriptions of journalists from the presentation of Cold War, inside the pyramid, the heroes find a giant training ground where the streets of the American town are recreated to work out the invasion scripts.

Another Soviet mission seemed to come from Hitman. The CIA agent under the cover penetrates the KGB headquarters on Lubyanka, where he needs to eliminate an important officer-glassist. The murder method was left to the player’s discretion: the goals can pour poison, throw incriminating documents or lure the target into the camera for a dangerous prisoner who will do all the work for you.

By chance or not, this operation is also echoing with a real history. The beginning of the 80s took place in the struggle between the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, especially those who were fierce after the murder of Major Afanasyev by employees of the Moscow police. The head of the KGB Yuri Andropov in response to a large -scale investigation in corruption, and in 1982, becoming the General Secretary, shifted the Minister of Internal Affairs Shchelokov - he soon shot himself. Were arrested, fired and even shot by many other officials.

If you believe the rumors, some 20Bet Casino of them (for example, the head of the Uzbek SSR Rashidov) "helped".But even this does not exhaust the list of “hot spots” of 1981-1983, which can be reflected in Cold War. For example, the Mason team can bring to Poland, where martial law was just introduced to repulse the “solidarity” movement. Probably, the plot will also affect the battle in the Middle East, the conflict of Iraq and Iran and the invasion of Israel in Lebanon. And with a bonus - resonant political attempts. On October 6, 1981, during the army parade, the pro -Western president of Egypt Anvar Sadat was shot dead, and Reagan almost died on March 30 in Washington. According to the official version, the shooter is considered the mentally ill John Hinkley - the murder of the president, he wanted to impress the actress Jodie Foster - but suddenly Soviet azure are involved?

The winner of the monsters

In the center of all the above events, according to Cold War, there is an elusive Russian spy named Perseus - the main antagonist of the game and the sworn enemy of the United States. Only individual facts are known to us so far. The developers opened one fragment of mosaics in a special quest inside Call of Duty Warzone : Exploring the prison in Verdansk, players could find a note with the mention that Perseus tried to recruit the terrorist Imran Zakhaev and that he was somehow connected with the CIA agent Adler (about him later).

It is also known that, according to the Cold War plot, the heroes will have to “return” under the hypnosis in 1968. At the height of the Vietnamese War, the villain organized an attack on the American base in Laos to steal an atomic bomb. Is it by chance that the prologue of the new game unfolds parallel to the events of the original Black Ops?

The activity of Persei was tracked already to the Second World War: in 1943, the agent sent information about the “Manhattan project” to develop nuclear weapons to Moscow. Interestingly, the spy under the code name "Perseus" is really listed in Soviet and American documents declassified in the early 90s. The Pers operative is mentioned in the archives of the Venona project created by the US intelligence to intercept and analyze encryptions from the USSR. From 1948 to 1951, Venona helped reveal the betrayal of many scientists and officials involved in the nuclear program: including the legendary intelligence officer Kim Filby and the couple of Rosenbergs, executed on charges of spying.

The personality of the Pers agent was not able to establish. Perhaps this nickname belonged to another spy from the Venona lists, because in order to conspiracy, many scouts had several callsigns. And perhaps, in fact, Perseus was only a dexterous hoax that allocated suspicion from the true operatives of the USSR. During the Cold War, disinformation was used extremely successfully: for example, the KGB hid a serious lag from America for several years in the development of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

Nevertheless, in the world of Cold War, Perseus seems to really exist. And many players have already begun to build their theories regarding his personality. The most likely (and therefore, probably false) candidate seems to be the new commander of Mason - CIA officer Russell Adler. He does not shy away of cruel methods, speaks freely in Russian and German, and also worked with MACV-SOG in Vietnam during an attack on the American base in 1968.

Not in favor of Adler also says that his image was obviously written off from actor Robert Redford - the icon of Hollywood spy thrillers. Redford characters often keep on their minds and work against the system: in "Three Days of Condor" His hero exposes the conspiracy inside the CIA, and in "Spy Games" He conducts a tricky operation behind his own superiors to save the young protege. Finally, in the film comic "First Avenger: Another War" Redford even plays the head of the neophastic organization Hydra, which has been into exploration of the United States. Trust this type is definitely not worth!

It is possible that “Perseem” is one of the characters already familiar to us. Maybe the CIA did not just doubt Mason’s loyalty, and Dragovich’s program still makes him secretly (even from himself) to work on the enemy? Or a completely unexpected option: what if the spy is ... Victor Reznov, he is "John Trent"? It is not so difficult to imagine how, after the escape from Vorkuta, the old soldier tries to prevent both superpower from reaching world domination and, under different pseudonyms, supplies them accurately verified information in order to restrain the balance of power in the Cold War. And if it turns out that it was through his fault that the operation “Haribda” broke away, this will gracefully untie all the incomplete plot nodes of the series.

***

Whatever the final plot of Black Ops Cold War turned out to be, it will surely present a lot of surprises. Unlike a more serious and “realistic” Modern Warfare cycle, the authors of Black Ops are not shy even the most crazy moves: from manipulations of consciousness to the resurrection of the dead. The era of the Cold War is the best suited to them - with its hoaxes, bold experiments and conspiracies, many of which are not solved to this day.

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