Activision has revealed significant changes to the Call of Duty battle pass for Season 1 of Black Ops 7 that should make progression a lot quicker.

The battle pass has been the subject of much debate in recent years, with Call of Duty players often bemoaning how long it takes to unlock all its content — even if you pay for the premium version and, on top of that, the more expensive BlackCell version.

In a new blog post, Activision said it had “taken learnings” from Black Ops 6 battle pass completion times and made tuning adjustments for “a more satisfying journey.” The result is each season’s battle pass in Black Ops 7 should be “more rewarding for your time spent in-game, no matter where you’re playing across all parts of the game.”

So, how does this work? Earlier pages in the Black Ops 7 battle pass can now be completed faster with fewer tiers needed to unlock High-Value Target (HVT) content at the end of the page, while later pages in the battle pass will contain more rewards. This means players will earn more HVT content sooner across all 100 tiers, Activision said.

And, for the first time, Activision is adding the ability to earn battle pass tokens through completing daily challenges, which are now available not only in Multiplayer, Zombies, and Call of Duty: Warzone, but also Co-Op Campaign and Endgame. On certain days in the season, completion of your bonus daily challenge will grant you a battle pass token, which can be used right away to unlock a tier.

Call of Duty players who regularly grind through the battle pass will welcome these changes, particularly the addition of earning tokens via challenges. That should speed things up by default, but it remains to be seen how progression overall will feel now the later pages of the battle pass have more content to work through.

The Season 1 battle pass includes up to 1,100 COD Points, 11 operator skins, 26 blueprints and weapons, and 119 total rewards, 23 of which are free to earn, including two new base weapons. You can buy the battle pass for 1,100 COD Points, or get the battle pass bundle for 2,400 COD Points, which also grants you 20 Tokens to use.

Earlier this week, new data showed Black Ops 7 sales were lagging behind those of Battlefield 6 and even Black Ops 6. Activision has yet to announce a sales figure for the game, or comment on its commercial performance. Microsoft has yet to say whether Black Ops 7 boosted Game Pass subscriptions in any way.

Activision is also in hot water with a member of the U.S. Congress, who called out the company’s use of generative AI in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, demanding tighter regulation to “prevent companies from using AI to eliminate jobs.”

If you’re hunting for the best offers this week, we’re actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Persona and Metaphor: ReFantazio director Katsura Hashino claims Japanese role-playing games — often categorized as JRPGs — are entering a new age, dubbing the resurgence as JRPG “3.0.”

Speaking at the Korean G-Star 2025 gaming conference (as reported by 4gamer and translated by GamesRadar+), Hashino suggested that the foundational RPGs — think “true classics” like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, although Hashinon did not mention specific games — form JRPG 1.0, the current crop of games with their “current style, which feels higher quality due to how much more responsive they are to the player,” are JRPG 2.0. And JRPG 3.0 signifies the role-playing games coming in the future.

Reflecting on the JRPG games still to come, Hashino said, “There will be a greater dimension to these games, and they’ll change the genre’s structure and presentation at a fundamental level.”

One of the big talking points around JRPGs revolves around combat, specifically if games like Final Fantasy should return to the turn-based combat of old. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 co-director Naoki Hamaguchi recently reflected on features like turn-based combat following the huge success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which boasts traditional JRPG-inspired turn-based combat, saying: “If you would ask me, ‘Is [my next game] going to be an RPG?,’ yes, there is definitely a possibility. But is it going to be a turn-based RPG? We’re taking this aside from the fact that Expedition 33 was received well, we received a lot of ‘JRPGs are back’ comments. For me, I’m thinking about what game experience fans will enjoy. That’s the most important point.”

In July, Naoki Yoshida, the director/producer of Final Fantasy 14 and producer of Final Fantasy 16, was asked in an interview with AnimeNewsNetwork whether mainline Final Fantasy games could go back to being turn-based, in the wake of Clair Obscur’s success.

“With this question of turn-based versus action, it tends to isolate the gameplay to just the battle system,” said Yoshida. “That doesn’t take into account what kind of game the creators want to deliver to players. For example, based on a certain graphical quality we want to present to our players, or the narrative we want to deliver to our players, it relates to how we set up the game’s systems around it. This includes the battle system, game design, and gameplay feel. It’s not a clear-cut answer, whether it will become all turn-based, or if it’s going to become more action-based.

“[I’m] not necessarily going to be on Final Fantasy 17, so we also don’t want to obstruct or limit our future director or whomever will be producing the games like 17 or even 18,” Yoshida continued. “We don’t want to put them on a rail.”

It later emerged that several members of the Clair Obscur team had recently visited Square Enix’s offices and met with some of the development leads there, including Hamaguchi and Visions of Mana director Ryosuke Yoshida. In a social post, Hamaguchi described it as a “creatively rich exchange of visions and ideas.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has sold five million copies in five months, making it one of the biggest hits of the year. It also received a record-breaking 12 nominations at this year’s The Game Awards, and is up for Best Direction, Best Narrative, Best Art Direction, Best Score and Music, Best Audio, Best Independent Game, Best Debut Independent Game, and Best RPG, as well as the ceremony’s coveted Game of the Year gong. Three of its performers are also up for Best Performance.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

As the darkness of winter descends and people are driven to gather indoors for the holidays, it suddenly becomes a lot more important to have good board games on hand. If your board game shelf is looking a little barren, worry not; Amazon’s Black Friday sale has the excellent Azul for just $21.49 – a 33% drop from its usual price.

For the uninitiated, Azul is a strategic tile placement game in which two to four players are tasked with creating mosaics to win. It’s on IGN’s best beginner board games list – so at over $10 off, if you’ve never tried it, now is a good time.

Black Friday Deal: Azul Down to $21.49 at Amazon