WAR GAMES

Ian Dean and Leon Hurley pull on their Reebok Pumps, push play on Hall & Oates, and embrace the 1980s thrill of Call Of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War

- Ian Dean and Leon Hurley

We don’t yet know how this year’s Call Of Duty will end, but we do know this: it’s entirely up to you. Raven Software, the studio behind the game’s single-player campaign, is building a player-led story where what ultimately happens is entirely down to the decisions you make.

Set in the 1980s (with flashbacks to 1968 Vietnam), Black Ops – Cold War is a direct sequel to the first Black Ops and sees Woods, Hudson, and Mason reunited to find Perseus, a real-life Russian spy. It oozes ’80s espionage cool as the team shoot their way through locations such as Ukraine, Laos, Moscow, Berlin, and Turkey in search of the legendary Soviet agent.

“One of the things early on the guys cracked was this idea of vintage through a modern lens,” says Raven’s Dan Vondrak as he reveals the lengths the team went to nail the perfect ’80s vibe. “We’re really inspired by some of those [films] like Atomic Blonde or Narcos; they took that approach of looking at vintage through a modern lens in a cool way.”

PERFECT COCKTAIL

It’s a tone that requires careful balancing. The studio’s whiteboard had Miami Vice and Red Dawn at one end, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy at the other. Discovering Cold War’s feel took time, particularly as the ’80s were relatively recent.