Call of Duty: Vanguard video game takes players into World War II for a special forces mission against the Nazis
- The latest instalment in Activision’s top-selling video game franchise has gamers in pivotal face-offs such as the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Midway
- It includes the birth of special forces, and the game’s creators worked with historians to make it as realistic as possible. When can you play it? November 5
Call of Duty is parachuting back into World War II.
Call of Duty: Vanguard, the next entry in Activision’s multibillion-selling video game franchise, inserts players into pivotal battles including the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Midway, and Operation Tonga on the eve of the D-Day invasion.
In the game (out November 5 for Microsoft Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, Sony PlayStation 5 and PS4, and PCs on Battle.net), you get to know – and fight as – four different characters who eventually team up as the first special forces squad for a mission against the Nazis in Berlin.
Special operations forces such as SEAL Team Six grew out of Allied experiments with small squads chosen for specialised missions in World War II. In developing the single-player story campaign, Sledgehammer’s creative team worked with historians including Marty Morgan, author of D-Day: A Photographic History of the Normandy Invasion who served as technical director on the studio’s 2017 game Call of Duty WWII.
“We were really inspired by these first special forces operators and they seemed like such interesting characters that we wanted to explore,” says David Swenson, creative director of the game’s single-player story campaign for development studio Sledgehammer Games.