The Elder Scrolls 6 — one of the most hotly anticipated video games in the world — won’t be out for some time yet despite being announced over seven years ago, Bethesda development chief Todd Howard has said.
In an interview with GQ magazine to celebrate the release of Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition, Howard said The Elder Scrolls 6 is “still a long way off.” He added: “I’m preaching patience. I don’t want fans to feel anxious.”
Now, in the GQ article, Howard has once again admitted that it’s taken too long to get The Elder Scrolls 6 out the door, but did tease an The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered-style shadowdrop — without confirming anything.
“I do like to have a break between them, where it isn’t like a ‘plus one’ sequel,” Howard said of making The Elder Scrolls games again. “I think it’s also good for an audience to have a break — The Elder Scrolls has been too long, let’s be clear. But we wanted to do something new with Starfield. We needed a creative reset.” Bethesda is currently playtesting The Elder Scrolls 6, Howard revealed.
So when will it actually come out? It seems likely at this point that it will be released for Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox console and PC. Will it also be a PS6 game? A cross-gen title perhaps?
“I like to just announce stuff and release it,” Howard continued. “My perfect version — and I’m not saying this is going to happen — is that it’s going to be a while and then, one day, the game will just appear.” The Oblivion Remastered shadowdrop was “a test run,” Howard teased. “It worked out well.”
As for what Bethesda has going on right now, hundreds of people are working on Fallout, Howard said, across Fallout 76 “and some other things we’re doing, but The Elder Scrolls 6 is the everyday thing.”
Last month, it was confirmed that The Elder Scrolls 6 will include a character designed in memory of a much-missed fan, after a remarkable charity campaign that raised more than $85,000 for Make-A-Wish. Howard revealed that Bethesda has spent some time talking with the group of fans who organized the fundraiser about what they want to see from The Elder Scrolls 6, and commented: “I think we’re aligned.”
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.
Video games are synonymous with the name Nintendo. But which of the hundreds of incredible games that have graced the legendary Japanese company’s numerous home and handheld consoles are the best? Well, here at IGN, we’ve teamed up with our friends at Nintendo Life to try and answer that question. What follows is the 100 best Nintendo games of all time, based on a combination of each site’s expert opinions.
From iconic Nintendo in-house series such as Super Mario, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda, to third-party heroes who have made their home on everything from the NES to Switch 2, narrowing down the field was no easy task. These aren’t necessarily the best games to play right now, but a ranking based on a combination of historic innovation, modern ingenuity, and the legacy each has left behind.
Have an opinion on what should be placed where? You can contribute to our public ranking by voting in this Faceoff or let us know in the comments below. Over the course of this week, we’ll be steadily revealing our picks, with 20 being revealed each day until the full ranking is complete on Friday, November 14. So, without further ado, here are the top 100 Nintendo games of all time:
100. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
More than 20 years on, there’s still nothing quite like Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (which, yes, is probably due in part to Nintendo’s now-expired sanity system patent). Not only did it have the temerity to jump between wildly distinct time periods, but it also went to great lengths to mess with your mind should you get spotted by enemies too much. Whether it’s an unsettling noise, a slightly skewed camera angle, or the game straight up simulating a ‘blue screen of death’, it made for one of the most memorable experiences in the horror genre. The Lovecraftian aesthetic still sings to this very day, and a certain bathtub scene is just as sure to give you the willies now as it did back in 2002. A remarkable game that deserves a second chance in the spotlight.
99. GTA: Chinatown Wars
A GTA game releasing exclusively (until its later PSP arrival) for a Nintendo handheld seems like an incongruous proposal. But, in 2009, Rockstar gave the DS Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, a standalone story of Triads and tribulations in GTA 4’s modern Liberty City setting. This top-down ode to the series’ roots miraculously converted the open-world cinema we’d come to expect, adapting to its handheld confines through smart touchpad mechanics and a stylised, cell-shaded comic-book-like aesthetic to stunning effect. What could so easily have been a misguided experiment between Rockstar and Nintendo instead became one of the DS’s most essential games.
98. Star Fox
From the days when the word “polygon” was exclusively found in math textbooks comes Nintendo’s 3D evolution of a mainstay arcade genre: the SHMUP. Taxing the SNES hardware so much, even the Super FX chip included inside the cartridge couldn’t get the action to run even at a targeted 12 frames per second, Star Fox followed the linear stage setups of R-Type and co., but played from a behind-the-ship and first-person perspective. The “talking” animals are here to remind you that you’re playing a Nintendo game, but in the end, Star Fox is a highly technical and experimental harbinger of the future. Far from being just a tech demo, it’s also a really fun game, however, thanks to challenging players to play again and again to perfect their runs and experiment to discover alternate paths.
97. Super Castlevania IV
While it’s effectively a re-thread of the original Castlevania, this fourth mainline instalment in the series really does elevate things to an entirely different level of quality. Sure, Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse might be the better game overall, but Super Castlevania IV reimagines Transylvania through a 16-bit lens; the visuals are stunning, with Mode 7 effects adding a new dimension to proceedings, while the music is so good you’d swear it was being streamed from a CD. Subsequent entries would arguably take the franchise to the next level of brilliance, but one thing is clear: Super Castlevania IV remains a masterpiece.
96. 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
The Nintendo DS became a haven for visual novel fans; an interactive storybook device that could ease you into a deep night’s sleep. 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was far more likely to keep you up all night, however, with its twisted game of life and death. Chunsoft’s first entry into the Zero Escape series, 999 placed you alongside eight other potential victims inside a sinking cruise liner that tested your puzzle and deduction skills as you unraveled the web woven by a mysterious mastermind. It’s twisted, clever, and a great example of handheld experimentation that he console would become known for.
95. Fire Emblem Three Houses
Three Houses is a Fire Emblem game that got it all so right; it’s been hard to readjust to the series in its aftermath. You see, Three Houses gives us the turn-based strategy we’re all fiending for, yes, and it does so with style to spare. However, the real draw here, and the thing that makes this one so worthy of note overall, is the focus and effort that’s been placed on the socialising, customisation, relationships, and all that good stuff that happens between scraps. It’s a game you could quite happily live in for a bit.
94. Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
What does Professor Layton hide under that huge hat? Perhaps, a towering cylindrical head of a shape unlike any other in human history. He’d certainly need one to house a brain big enough to solve all of the puzzles thrown his way over the course of his many DS and 3DS adventures. A consistent quality of cosiness mixed with Sherlock Holmes-esque yarns can be found across the Layton series, but we’ve gone with The Unwound Future as our pick of the bunch. Its time-traveling tale, full of memorable twists and turns, thrills just as much as solving one of its dozens of conundrums does, satisfying brains of all shapes and sizes to great effect.
93. WWF No Mercy
25 years later, WWF No Mercy, the THQ-published wrestling game released on the Nintendo 64, is not only still considered to be the pinnacle of the N64 wrestling game boom, but it’s also widely thought of as the greatest wrestling game of all time. Since its release, it’s been the benchmark for what any wrestling game, with or without the WWE license, has aspired to be. It’s developed a cult-like following, with fans still playing (and modding) No Mercy to this day, updating its 25-year-old roster with modern superstars when the latest 2K game doesn’t live up to its standards. It’s not often a game still stands strong after a quarter of a century, and it’s even rarer when it’s a sports game. All of this makes WWF No Mercy not only the greatest-ever wrestling game, but perhaps Nintendo’s greatest-ever sports game that doesn’t include Mario.
92. Kirby: Planet Robobot
Kirby: Planet Robobot, a truly astonishing little game for the Nintendo 3DS that encapsulates all that is best and beloved about the pink puffball. Robobot has everything: a deep roster of unique and useful copy abilities, colorful and creative levels, an interesting one-off gimmick in the robot armor, silly minigames, and a plot that starts with Kirby taking a nap and ends in a giant galactic battle against a superintelligent, planet-sized being.
In addition to all this, Kirby: Planet Robobot is one of the very few games to really make effective use of the Nintendo 3DS’s 3D capabilities. While the game itself takes place on a 2D plane, it features a number of levels that have depth as well as length, and look absolutely fantastic with the 3D turned on, as cars drive directly at the player and giant ice cream cones tip over and spill on the camera. While Kirby has since gained other new copy abilities, minigames, and even his first 3D adventure in the years since, most of them struggle to hold a candle in our hearts to Planet Robobot’s breadth, depth, and pure charm.
91. Diddy Kong Racing
Apart from Nintendo itself, Rare was the N64’s most important developer, and one place the UK-based studio actually outpaced Nintendo was in the kart racer category. Mario Kart 64 is an undeniable classic, but Diddy Kong Racing just inches ahead as our pick for the best kart racer on the 64. In addition to chaotic split-screen kart racing, Diddy Kong Racing drove the genre forward with three vehicle types (your friend could be in a plane flying alternate routes during the same race you were in a car!), an adventure mode complete with boss battles, and an amazing soundtrack from Donkey Kong Country composer David Wise. Plus, it was the first appearance of Banjo and Conker ahead of their solo platformer outings – and it’s the forgotten, cute, family-friendly version of Conker well before he started drinking, smoking, and swearing.
90. The World Ends With You
Though it’s been ported and remade several times, none of the more recent versions of The World Ends With You has managed to capture how excellent this game was back when it first released on Nintendo DS. We could go on all day about what makes it great: the art style, the deep fashion mechanics, its accurate portrayal of Shibuya and Japanese youth culture, its unusual story with multiple wild twists, its incredible cast of characters, the MUSIC.
But maybe the best element of TWEWY that we’ve lost in subsequent editions is its battle system, which made unique and brilliant use of both the system’s dual screen and its touch controls simultaneously with its D-pad to effectively simulate two different characters synchronizing their attacks with one another in two different realms. Combined with a wide variety of “pins” that could be activated with different types of touch attacks, there was endless room for creativity and growth through multiple playthroughs. Which you definitely wanted to do, if only to hear Calling and Three Seconds Clapping one more time.
89. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
After years of being relegated to supporting roles, our little mushroom-headed friend Toad finally got his own game in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Nintendo, over the years, has done a brilliant job of designing games fit and tuned perfectly to the personalities of each of its mascots, and Captain Toad is no exception. The cute, diorama-like levels proved to be magnificent puzzles for our intrepid explorer to navigate one by one, presenting a slower and cozier pace from other Nintendo challenges, yet still being perfectly, whimsically Nintendo. It’s a shame we never got another one of these.
88. Golden Sun: The Lost Age
We could’ve gone with either Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age as our entry on this list, but we’ve settled for the second part of Camelot’s two-act RPG adventure, as it is ultimately the better half. Golden Sun was already an absolute feat, with its creative Psynergy and Djinn systems, gorgeous environments and music, and surprisingly robust open world. In the sequel they quadrupled the size of that world, added even more Psynergy and Djinn and classes, came up with more banger songs and environments, and opened the second act with a wild party switching twist that would go on to be subverted further in a triumphant march to the final battle. Golden Sun and The Lost Age are nuts in the best way, The Lost Age even more so, and are among the best GBA games of all time.
87. Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
Mario has tried his hand at a lot of different sports over the years, but few have had the staying power of golf. Originally driving off on the NES, before approaching the 3D world of the N64, it’s Toadstool Tour on the GameCube where the plumber really nailed the action on the green. Its sizeable roster of characters and compelling courses offered a great round of multiplayer fun for those looking for a more laid-back time away from the hectic rush of Smash Bros. and Mario Kart, and the furious consequences of Mario Party.
86. Super Monkey Ball 2
Super Monkey Ball’s brilliance lies in the fact that you’re tilting the stage to roll your monkey around rather than directly moving the character itself, and its table maze concept has never been more finely tuned than in Super Monkey Ball 2. The 2002 GameCube sequel is stuffed with 140 stages to clear – ranging from fun and simple courses perfect for laughing at the silly monkeys on family game night to downright brutal challenges that’ll make you go bananas as you lose hundreds of lives trying to clear them. Mastering everything it has to offer is extraordinarily satisfying, and its physics, momentum, and controls are so pinpoint that a study found that surgeons who warm up by playing Super Monkey Ball 2 are more efficient and precise in simulated surgeries compared to the surgeons who didn’t play. Video games really can save lives!
85. Viewtiful Joe
Viewtiful Joe practically attacks your eyeballs with its standout art direction and frantically fun combat. It’s unfiltered Hideki Kamiya at an exciting career crossroads, melding his Devil May Cry action with a colourful paintbrush palette that would later evolve into the likes of Okami and The Wonderful 101. A wholly original side-scroller that threatens to burst out of its purple cube confines if your fingers don’t keep up with its cell-shaded antics, it’s an exciting combo of 2D and 3D platform action that felt fresh in 2003, with an intoxicating style that few have come close to matching since. It spawned sequels, but none truly reached the heights of the original, which has stood the test of time as one of the GameCube’s very best.
84. F-Zero GX
F-Zero is about cheating death to go faster, and F-Zero GX’s uncompromising difficulty and incredibly high skill ceiling represent a peak of the futuristic racing genre. Like F-Zero X before it, GX forces you to sacrifice your machine’s health bar to get a boost, resulting in tense risk-reward scenarios that get your blood pumping every time. And if you fall off the track while trying to shave off an extra split second, Lakitu won’t swoop in to save you – you’re dead. You must master GX’s tight mechanics and memorize its radical track designs to even stand half a chance against its toughest CPUs, and you hit a high most video games can’t reach when you finally cross the finish line in first place. The cold-blooded challenge only works because GX runs perfectly at 60 fps and looks fantastic with strong art direction that rivals the GameCube’s best, like Metroid Prime and Rogue Leader. F-Zero GX is a masterpiece, and probably the most hardcore Nintendo game since the NES.
83. Ring Fit Adventure
Ring Fit Adventure is one of the best-selling Nintendo Switch games, thanks largely to a global pandemic making indoor exercise briefly appealing. Unfortunately, like many other exercise programs, most people who started Ring Fit fell off the game before they could discover how much more than just an exercise game it really is. Ring Fit Adventure is genuinely one of the most unique RPGs of the generation. It has a colorful cast of characters, bolstered by surprisingly good writing, a battle system revolving around your own physical movement, complete with skill trees, elemental weaknesses, and even healing items you can craft through more exercise. Plus, its soundtrack is straight work-out bangers, too.
82. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Nearly every moment of Phoenix Wright’s original courtroom adventure is iconic. From Phoenix’s debut trial against Mr. Sahwit (Or should I say… Mr. Did It!) to cross-examining a literal parrot, the first Ace Attorney fully commits to its completely unhinged world and never looks back. Exposing witnesses’ lies and uncovering the truth of each case is exhilarating, largely because of its excellent soundtrack and lively character animations, and the way Ace Attorney balances its unabashed silliness with genuinely serious, heartfelt moments is nothing short of masterful. It’s also an essential game in its genre, as Ace Attorney’s surprisingly successful sales paved the way for more visual novel and puzzle games to find a footing in the West.
81. Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse
Considered by many to be the apex of the ‘classic’ Castlevania entries, Dracula’s Curse remains a wonderful example of a talented group of developers pushing aging hardware to its maximum potential. By the time it arrived in 1989, the 16-bit era was already in full swing and the NES was looking very old-fashioned. However, despite the humble nature of the host hardware, Konami created a stunning action platformer, boasting multiple playable characters and optional routes through Dracula’s castle. Indeed, many consider this to be superior to the first 16-bit entry in the series, Super Castlevania IV, which arrived just a short time later in 1991.
Come back tomorrow when we’ll be revealing numbers 80 to 61…
Nintendo fans are rejecting a new description found within Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment that describes Link and Princess Zelda as just friends.
An in-game journal entry from Zelda’s ally Lenalia claims that the princesses’ sword training was inspired by “a knight — and friend — from her own time.” But while this description seems clear-cut, fans have compared it to the text found in the game’s original Japanese language version — which simply refers to Link as a “familiar knight,” without the explicit “friend” label.
This latest snippet has reignited the debate over whether Link and Zelda are more than just pals — something that Nintendo itself has kept mysterious for decades.
Of course, Lenalia’s journal entry is just that — one character’s recording of what she has been told by Zelda, who may or may not have been speaking truthfully. In one social media post that has now gone viral, Zelda fan IvyfulWorld put it thus: “she is not fooling ANYBODY.”
“I guess one explanation could be she tried to downplay it out of shyness,” replied big_asutaro.
“Nintendo of America’s localization team has this thing for wanting to portray Link and Zelda’s relationship as purely platonic by adding things that aren’t even present in the original text,” claimed another fan, verieas.
Throughout its almost 40-year history, The Legend of Zelda series has frequently suggested that Link and the princess are romantically involved. The pair hold hands in the finale of Spirit Tracks, and are implied to be settling down as a couple to found Hyrule at the end of Skyward Sword. Zelda even kisses Link (on the cheek) during Oracle of Ages, sending hearts fluttering from the swordsman’s eyes.
Most recently, both Zelda and Link appear to be sharing a house in Tears of the Kingdom — which features the incarnations of Link and Zelda referenced in Age of Imprisonment.
Zelda voice actress Patricia Summersett, who has voiced the same incarnation of Zelda seen from Breath of the Wild onwards, raised eyebrows in 2023 when she stated that she believed the pair were definitively “in a relationship.” However, Summersett swiftly walked back the comments just days later saying her words had been “misconstrued.” (Nintendo did not comment on this kerfuffle at the time, though fans noted it had been unusual for anyone outside the company itself to discuss its characters in such a manner.)
“I will leave it to everyone’s imagination [whether Link and Zelda are in a relationship]. I don’t think that Zelda is a type of game where the development team says, ‘This is what Zelda is, this is what the story is, this is what the game is.’ Everything that the development team wants to convey has already been placed into the game. And the rest is up to the player’s imagination, and their reflection on how they feel… what they’ve experienced in the game.”
Considering the most recent Zelda game features a house lived in by Link and Zelda (with Nintendo placing just a single bed into the bedroom), some fans took Aonuma’s comment to be the clearest sign yet that Nintendo does indeed see the two as a couple — even if it doesn’t want to explicitly apply that label in-game.
Kadokawa, the parent company of Elden Ring: Nightreign developer FromSoftware, has confirmed we’ll get new DLC for the multiplayer game by the end of March 2026, as unhappy players leave negative reviews on Steam.
“We are aiming for further sales growth for Elden Ring Nightreign, original Elden Ring, and its DLC,” the company said in its recent financial report to investors (thanks, GamesRadar+). “We have multiple game titles in the development pipeline. FromSoftware is currently developing Elden Ring Nightreign DLC (planned for release in FY2025) Elden Ring Tarnished Edition (planned for release in 2026 for Nintendo Switch 2), and The Duskbloods (planned for release in 2026).”
FY2025 in this instance means by the end of Kadokawa’s current financial year, so by March 31, 2026. But while the financial report revealed that Nightreign had “performed well beyond initial expectations” and confirmed the DLC — described on the Steam storefront as being available “by Q4 2025” — is still on the way, recent user reviews for the Deluxe Upgrade Pack have dropped to a ‘Mostly Negative’ rating as players express their frustration at the lack of tangible news.
“We’re mid-Q4 2025. No news, no teasers, total silence,” wrote one negative reviewer on November 1. “If you’re thinking about buying Deluxe Upgrade, wait until we get actual news about the content. I can’t recommend you a promise.” Another said: “It’s been half a year now, still no dlc or any new characters in sight even though they got leaked a bit ago. Right now this is a complete scam, as even the soundtrack isnt even full.”
Someone else said they would change their negative review to positive “once FromSoft announces something.”
Nightreign’s ultra-hard difficulty mode, Deep of Night, released back in September, having been discovered by dataminers back in August. Beyond that, though, there’s been very little firm news on what additional content could be on the way. It’s worth noting that even though the Kadokawa financial report guarantees the release of the Nightreign DLC by the end of March 2026, that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t release before the end of calendar year 2025.
“When Elden Ring Nightreign is played exactly as it was designed to be played, it’s one of the finest examples of a three-player co-op game around,” we wrote in IGN’s 7/10 Elden Ring: Nightreign review. “But a lack of crossplay, duo matchmaking, and built-in communication tools makes it hard to create the conditions needed to have this kind of experience unless you’re bringing two real-life friends on every run.”
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.
Arc Raiders has had another bumper weekend, once again breaking its own concurrent record on Steam.
Within a day of its release, Embark Studio’s new extraction shooter hit a Steam concurrent peak player count of 264,673, making it one of the biggest extraction shooters ever on Valve’s platform. And now it’s topped even that record over the weekend, hitting a concurrent peak of 462,488 players according to Valve’s official figures.
Yesterday, November 9, Arc Raiders had a higher concurrent peak than Battlefield 6 (441,035), and placed behind only the eternally popular Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG. Of course, Arc Raiders’ true concurrent player peak will be higher, given the game is also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, but neither Sony nor Microsoft make their player numbers public.
As Arc Raiders tears up Steam’s most-played games list, streamer Shroud has continued to call on his fans to vote for it as Game of the Year 2025 over Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, calling multiplayer gamers “the minority” (even though research shows that it’s mostly multiplayer games that retain high player counts).
“I thought I was only going to play five or six hours of Arc Raiders on launch day before sitting down to write this initial review in progress, but after just a handful of matches, I suddenly couldn’t pull myself away – and before I realized it, I’d been playing for 10 hours,” we wrote in IGN’s Arc Raiders review-in-progress.
“This is without question the most hooked I’ve found myself on an extraction shooter (and I’ve played a lot of them), with clean and tense gunplay, a progression system that’s been incredibly satisfying so far, and a loot game that has me sweating over what to put in my backpack and what to leave behind.”
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.
Lieutenant Titus from Space Marine 2 has become one of the most recognizable faces in all Warhammer 40,000 following the enormous success of the video game. We’ve already seen Games Workshop double-down on the Ultramarines hero with merch, an appearance in the Warhammer 40,000 episode of Amazon’s animated anthology, Secret Level, and various cameos across the setting. But now things have leveled up — not just for Titus as a Space Marine, but his place in the ongoing Warhammer 40,000 narrative.
This week, Games Workshop unveiled Captain Demetrian Titus, Master of the Watch, which means Titus has had a much-deserved promotion since the now canon events of Space Marine 2 and Secret Level. Titus is once again Captain of the Ultramarines Second Company, a position he had already held before he was taken into custody on suspicion of heresy by the Inquisition after the events of the first Space Marine game. What does Titus’ promotion mean for Sevastus Acheran, the former captain of the Second Company and Master of the Watch who we see in Space Marine 2? Let’s be real here: he’s probably dead. I guess he couldn’t spare enough men.
For Titus, his promotion comes with bigger and tougher responsibilities: he’s been put in charge of defending the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, the realm of Space Marine poster boys, the Ultramarines. With Primarch Roboute Guilliman off gallivanting with his Indomitus Crusade, Titus is now in charge of keeping things safe and sound back home, where new Necron threats have emerged, as they always do.
Games Workshop released a new trailer, below, to hype up this narrative expansion, and it features Titus front and center as he accepts his new job title and what he calls his “impossible mission.” He’s had an eye-catching glow up since we last saw him, and he has a cool new model for use in the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game to boot. Titus is joined by friends his fans will know well: Ancient Gadriel from Space Marine 2, and Veteran Sergeant Metaurus from Secret Level (he lives!).
500 Worlds: Titus is the name for the next major narrative expansion for Warhammer 40,000. According to a post on Warhammer Community, that includes a set of four books that will tell the story of the Ultramarian Reclamation and the embattled Vespator Front, where Titus and the Ultramarines Second Company “are locked in a desperate struggle against a Necron force rife with the Destroyer curse.”
This is a big moment for Titus but also the Space Marine video game franchise. It is evidence of the importance of the character to Warhammer 40,000, and the seismic impact Space Marine 2 has had on the setting.
Speaking to IGN at gamescom 2025, Tim Willits, development chief at Saber Interactive, said Space Marine 2’s popularity had opened the door to the grimdark Warhammer 40,000 setting for an army of new fans who weren’t necessarily clued up about the intricacies of the universe.
“I heard that lots of people now think that Thousand Sons are the only Chaos faction because that’s what we had in the game,” Willits said, reflecting on Space Marine 2’s first year.
“And so people are like, ‘Oh, I guess Thousand Sons, they’re Chaos.’ It’s like, ‘Actually no it’s not.’ They’re actually just a small faction. But people are just like, ‘That’s the one I played against.’”
This assumption about Chaos extends to the Space Marines themselves. The Ultramaines — the chapter used by Games Workshop itself when introducing newcomers to the tabletop via starter sets — are the protagonists of the Space Marine 2 campaign, although many other factions are available to play as in the PvE and PvP modes.
“People have assumptions about the Warhammer 40,000 universe that are not correct,” Willits continued. “Like Thousand Sons being the only Chaos faction. That is kind of humorous. And like, ‘Oh Space Marines are only blue!’ That has been quite humorous to be honest, which is good for us.”
One of the big questions going into the already confirmed Space Marine 3 is whether Saber will venture beyond the Ultramarines and the Thousand Sons in terms of the next campaign. The story seems to set up the addition of the Necrons, which at this point probably wouldn’t come as much of a surprise for Space Marine 3. But could other Space Marine chapters also appear? Perhaps other Chaos factions, too? We asked Willits about Space Marine 3, but he remained tight-lipped.
But now Titus is firmly back in the fold, we have to wonder, what does the overly suspicious Chaplain Leandros think? He spent pretty much the entirety of Space Marine 2 threatening to end poor Titus at the first sign of corruption, and even after Titus’ heroics, a commendation from Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, and what some think was a word of encouragement from the Emperor himself, Leandros remained unconvinced. If Titus manages to complete this impossible task and defend the 500 worlds, will he finally win Leandros over? Somehow I doubt it.
All of this probably feeds into Space Marine 3 in some way. Assuming Space Marine 3 picks up after the events of 500 Worlds, we may well see Titus lead armies into battle, rather than a single squad.
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.
We’ve rounded up the best deals for Saturday, November 8, below, so don’t miss out on these limited-time offers.
Gurren Lagann Complete Box Set Blu-ray for $109.99
Crunchyroll Store is holding its annual Aniplex sale, meaning now is the only time you can save on some of the most expensive anime Blu-rays out there. Today, you can score the Gurren Lagann Complete Box Set, which includes both the original TV series and two movies, for $109.99. This is a must-watch for any fan of the genre, and this box set is the perfect way to make this all-time classic a permanent part of your collection.
The Hundred Line – Last Defense Academy for $49.99
The Hundred Line – Last Defense Academy is one of the most underrated games of 2025. This massive game features a whopping 100 different endings to discover, each offering unique content and dialogue. Created by Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, The Hundred Line is a game any RPG fan will quickly fall in love with.
Save on the Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy Commander Deck Bundle
This Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy Commander Deck Bundle packs in all 4 decks available, and you can save over $90 this weekend at Amazon. The Final Fantasy collaboration was the biggest in history for MTG, with sets sold out everywhere around launch. If you’ve held out on starting your MTG journey, this is the perfect set to jump in with.
Bleach Rebirth of Souls for $34.99
Bleach Rebirth of Souls was the first major Bleach game release in many years, with Bandai Namco and Tamsoft bringing the iconic series to modern platforms as a fighter. All of the most iconic Bleach characters are here, including Ichigo Kurosaki, Rukia Kuchiki, Grimmjow Jeagerjaques, and even Coyote Stark. Save $25 off the base game this weekend with this deal at Woot.
Raidou Remastered for $31.99
Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army launched in mid June, and you can save almost 50% off a PS5 copy for this weekend at Woot. This action RPG is a remaster of the 2006 PS2 game, and there are many improvements and new features to discover. For one, UI, visuals, and voice acting have all been tweaked to refine the experience, but you can also discover more than 120 different demons.
Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut for $37
The Nintendo Switch 2 edition of Yakuza 0 is available on sale for $37 this weekend. The Director’s Cut version adds new cutscenes among other features, and it supports 4K resolution at 60FPS. While you can start with most Yakuza games, this is arguably the best entry point.
NBA 2K26 for $39.99
NBA 2K26 is on sale this weekend for $39.99, just in time for the start of the NBA season. This is even lower than last weekend’s sale! In our 8/10 review, we wrote, “Ball Over Everything” is a fitting description for NBA 2K26. The smooth on-court action is better than ever and MyCareer’s excellent started-from-the-bottom journey to the pros story make it so the imperfections are easier to ignore.”
Microsoft has announced plans to put Halo Infinite into maintenance mode later this month so developer Halo Studios can focus on working on multiple new Halo games.
In a blog post, Halo Studios said Operation: Infinite, due out November 18, is the last major update currently planned for the Xbox and PC first-person shooter, but insisted it will support players with challenges, ranked rewards, and community events throughout next year and beyond. Operation: Infinite’s free, 100-tier Operation Pass and 100-tier Premium Pass have no planned expiration date.
One of the new Halo games Halo Studios is working on is Halo: Campaign Evolved, which is due out at some point in 2026 across PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 5. Halo Studios did not say what the other upcoming Halo games are.
“As we look back on four years of evolution and updates in Halo Infinite, we’d like to thank our community for your steadfast support,” Halo Studios said. “Without your feedback and enthusiasm, Halo Infinite multiplayer would not be the special place it is today: a robust arena for slaying and playing, with something for every Spartan.
“With multiple Halo titles in development, we’ll need our whole team’s combined focus to deliver new experiences with the same passion and care that our community has given us. While we remain committed to supporting Halo Infinite on the road ahead, Operation: Infinite is the last major content update currently planned.”
Halo Studios, once called 343 Industries, leaves Halo Infinite behind four years after its delayed launch across Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, and PC in December 2021. Microsoft had intended for it to be an Xbox Series X and S launch title and come out a year earlier, but pushed it back following negative feedback to a hotly anticipated gameplay reveal in July 2020.
Gamers are already pointing out that Halo Infinite hasn’t even managed to reach the halfway point of Microsoft’s well-documented 10-year plan for the game (it wasn’t called Halo: Infinite for nothing). In July 2020, IGN spoke with now former Halo Infinite Studio Head Chris Lee, who described Halo Infinite as “the start of our platform for the future.”
“We want Infinite to grow over time, versus going to those numbered titles and having all that segmentation that we had before,” he continued. “It’s really about creating Halo Infinite as the start of the next 10 years for Halo and then building that as we go with our fans and community.”
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.
You know something didn’t quite go right when the best mode in Battlefield 6’s battle royale-focused spin-off, Battlefield REDSEC, is the one that isn’t a battle royale at all. While REDSEC takes notes from other grounded-ish military battle royales, it doesn’t innovate much on what’s already worked. The destructible environments and powerful vehicles of the otherwise exciting multiplayer seem like a perfect fit for this genre, but REDSEC’s relatively shallow execution just hasn’t hooked me the way Fortnite’s cartoonish chaos and electrifying events did, nor has it separated itself from the likes of PUBG or Call of Duty: Warzone. Instead, I’ve had way more fun when its map is used to push the boundary beyond the requisite ever-shrinking storm in the squad-based, elimination-driven Gauntlet mode that cleverly fleshes out the mission structure hidden within the battle royale’s streamlined familiarity.
You know the drill: you and a squadmate drop onto a massive map in the rapidly blinking eye of a destructive storm. In REDSEC’s case, a closing plume of neon-scarlet-streaked charcoal clouds surround a fictional military base in Southern California called Fort Lyndon. Looting Lyndon’s blown out shops and construction sites for anything you can find, your squad has to scrap its way to be the last one standing. EA clearly believes that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and I can’t fault them for that.
Dotted with memorable named locations like the Golf Course and the Lighthouse, there are all kinds of high vantage points for sniping and tight corridors for scrapping. And with destructible terrain and a seemingly endless supply of artillery and airstrikes, these locations have a tendency to “lev-olve” into bombed-out rebar skeletons or collapse entirely (I learned this the comically hard way after dying to a ceiling). This blend of different battlefields makes for a balanced, tense frenzy within each named location, especially in matches with four-player squads. Even the dusty roads and stark topography in-between do a good job of keeping things balanced, with plenty of hills and valleys or scattered vans and small buildings offering cover from enterprising marksmen.
But when cover fails, you’ll get a second chance if you fall early enough in battle and your squadmate doesn’t revive you in time. That comes complete with a second drop-in (over your squadmate if they’re still kicking, or above a random location if you’re both wiped within a few seconds of each other), and you’ll need to re-up on gear and consumables from there. I like that you can even make re-deploying at the right moment work in your favor, because you can aim for special pickups from your parachute that weren’t there when the match started.
The battle royale mode actually dilutes the chaos of Battlefield 6’s multiplayer.
Battlefield 6’s class system translates well into a battle royale, with each of the four classes offering something helpful. I usually stuck with the all-around Assault class that specializes in assault rifles because it has the best boosts for completing REDSEC’s mid-match missions, but each class shines in its own way. The Engineer class seems the most useful at first glance because it can repair vehicles just like in the main mode, as well as use its blowtorch to open special weapon lockers that are otherwise locked. But the Recon and Support classes each offer their own benefits too, especially in a four-player squad.
Classes aside, REDSEC’s battle royale modes actually dilute the chaos and excitement of Battlefield 6’s premium modes, spreading the madness out over a massive map. Its 100-person lobbies are about 50% bigger than the 64 people in an All-Out Warfare match, but Fort Lyndon is definitely more than 50% bigger than your average Battlefield 6 map. This math does REDSEC no favors. Suddenly, crazy and complex sequences with collapsing buildings and vehicular showdowns lose their chaotic excitement because the open map gives you more places to run and hide. As a result, REDSEC doesn’t have much to set it apart from other military battle royales. Its hardcore “realism-ish” nature might be part of the draw to anyone looking to avoid getting ran at by Nicki Minaj or Homer Simpson, but nobody’s going to confuse the tacticool aesthetic for personality. It kind of feels like this could be any other big-budget military shooter adapted into a battle royale.
Thankfully, REDSEC’s compelling mission structure takes a rewarding cleaver to the otherwise ho-hum military doldrums. They’re kind of like the missions and bounties you’d find in Fortnite, but with better rewards and more diverse challenges. Automatically populating in your map menu after the first few seconds of each match, you’re usually presented with three missions, but those options might diminish as the round goes on. The rewards (and risks of attracting others) that come with each mission, on the other hand, remain consistently worthwhile and well-communicated. They can provide helpful stuff like weapon upgrade packs, one-time-use abilities like destructive airstrikes and UAV surveillance drones that reveal enemies’ locations, battle pass XP, and strong guns. I love how explicit REDSEC makes all of the mission rewards. Sure, it doesn’t specify which weapon (or even type of weapon) will drop from a mission, but guns outside my preference still made a huge difference.
Even with otherwise uncooperative squadmates, those irresistible rewards spurred me into planting the bombs and capturing the waypoints required to earn them. That seems to be REDSEC’s secret sauce: each in-game mission pops up like clockwork after a few seconds, only requiring a couple of button presses to reveal the next target. Hinging on classic military FPS objectives like babysitting a planted bomb or picking up an important file so you can transmit its signal back to home base, these smaller sidequests add order and welcome direction to the otherwise listless pace of conquering the battlefield. Some, like planting a bomb, will reveal your location with a big red marker on nearby enemies’ screens and match that with an equally loud siren alerting opponents to your location.
Compelling missions take a rewarding cleaver to the military doldrums.
But if your loadout isn’t battle-ready and you’re worried about running into other players, there are more ways to get better gear. In addition to the standard looting option, weapons, armor, and other useful pickups will randomly rain from the sky. Custom Weapon Drops make for the most useful and desirable pickups, giving you access to one of your customized weapons from Battlefield 6’s standard multiplayer modes. I like that these drops work once for each player, rather than just giving one squad their trusty sniper or assault rifle, but it almost feels like a microcosmic participation trophy rather than rewarding squads who treat these drops like hard-push objectives and beat out the others.
REDSEC doesn’t offer enough to do in-between wiping enemy squads and looting military-themed chests compared to some of its contemporaries, but the map-driven context of each mission does add spontaneity and strategy to the ways you might carry out a mission. For example, taking a bomb-setting mission when you’re close to the otherwise slow and unthreatening firestorm that closes in around you might dissuade anyone from a risky diffusion that puts them right at the edge of the billowing wall of smoke.
In contrast, the Gauntlet mode ditches the storm entirely as it expands each of these extra objectives into full-fledged game modes. It pits a handful of four-player squads against each other to rack up the most points on each objective, and even adds a few extra scenarios to the mix, totaling eight different game types. I think my favorite is the area control mode, where each squad is competing for a small hexagonal chunk of the map that has its own corresponding satellite dish to take over. There are 15to compete for, making each round a chaotic, scrappy battle for domination that rewards different kinds of play depending on which part of the map you’re fighting over.
Gauntlet also cleverly recognizes that some people just want to play each mode like Deathmatch, and weighs points accordingly with kills and revives contributing to the scoreboard. And to make things more competitive, all points double in the last minute of each quick round, preventing any team from completely running away with the win. High-performing players from otherwise losing teams might also get reassigned into squads whose teammates disconnect, adding extra reward and incentive to do well.
The mode and objective will change throughout the four total rounds, with the two lowest-performing of eight squads getting eliminated each round until only two remain for one final showdown that plays out like a mini Battlefield match. Rotating through different named locations within Fort Lyndon, Gauntlet ends up working almost more like a brilliant mish-mash between Fall Guys and a squad-based, free-for-all version of traditional Battlefield than it does the otherwise uninspired battle royale that houses it.
Call of Duty: Black Ops is a decades-spanning tale of deception, betrayal, and questionable psychiatry. It’s just one of CoD’s several separate subseries, but it’s by far the beefiest.
Back in 2010, it would have been easy for developer Treyarch to whip up some jungle assets and ship Call of Duty 7: Vietnam, but instead it unleashed a sprawling techno-thriller with all-you-can eat acronyms in which half of the characters are hallucinations and the rest are historical figures up to no good.
Black Ops is where Call of Duty gets weird– a stylish head trip with plot twists to spare. There’s a century’s worth of storyline in this epic espionage saga with more on the way, so consider this your pre-mission briefing ahead of Black Ops 7. Here is everything you need to know about the Black Ops story so far.
BLOPS is a twisted web of flashbacks, dream sequences, and choice-driven alternate endings, so we’re charting the most chronological and canonical path we can. It begins with a World at War.
1942
Stalingrad, September 1942. Red Army soldier Dimitri Petrenko claws his way through streets of corpses guided by his comrade, Soviet sniper Viktor Reznov. Reznov’s father was killed by the Nazis, creating in him a thirst for payback so deep that not even death will quench it.
1945
Petrenko and Reznov blast into Berlin and plant the hammer and sickle atop the Reichstag in 1945. Black Ops 1 reveals their post-war fates. Treacherous officer Nikita Dragovich and his pet sadist Lev Kravchenko drag our heroes into a task force hunting German scientist Friedrich Steiner– the evil genius behind a doomsday nerve gas called Nova 6. They corner the unrepentant jerk in the Arctic Circle where Steiner defects, to Reznov’s disgust.
Dragovich betrays Reznov and gasses his men with the Nova 6, killing several including our POV character from World at War. Reznov is rescued by the British but sinks the Nova stockpile beneath the ice.Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner escape with the formula. Reznov is recaptured and sent to the Vorkuta prison camp where he waits 16 years for a new protagonist to bro out with.
1961
During the Bay of Pigs invasion, the United States supports a coup that fails to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government. In real life, the U.S. provided funding, training, and air support for the revolution. In Black Ops 1, the CIA sends some special ops assassins to eliminate Castro: Alaskan Marine Alex Mason, Navy Seal Joseph Bowman, and chain-smoking, nigh unkillable veteran Frank Woods. Mason and Woods become the bedrock characters of BLOPS. Bowman, not so much.
Treyarch’s trio take down El Commandante’s body double. Mason is captured and taunted by an alive and well Fidel. Castro hands his prisoner over to returning Soviet heavies Kravchenko and Dragovich, who throw him in the gulag at Vorkuta.
The bad guys rewire Mason’s brain to become a sleeper agent controlled by a cryptic numbers station. Mason resists with the help of Reznov, his lone ally in the bowels of the Russian prison– Shawshank Redemption in a Soviet labor camp. As the men bond, Reznov programs a backdoor into Mason’s brain, compelling him to annihilate Steiner, Kravchenko, and Dragovich by any means necessary.
1963
Reznov engineers an uprising with a catchy 8-step plan that doubles as a conditioning tool. Big Vik sacrifices his own freedom so Mason can catch the last train out of Vorkuta, ending his two year imprisonment.
The extremely traumatized Mason is assigned to handler Jason Hudson and summoned to the Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara briefs them on Dragovich’s plans while Mason, who probably should have taken some self care PTO, starts to unravel. Mason’s mental breakdown crescendos when he meets John F. Kennedy as Dragovich’s programming surfaces.
Despite the fact that he just crashed out in front of the President, Mason’s bosses send him to sabotage the Soyuz space program and torch the team of Nazi scientists working on Nova 6. The team rescues double-agent Grigori Weaver, who loses an eye in the process. He doesn’t have a massive role beyond BLOPS 1, but he plays a pivotal part in the Zombies’ Dark Aether Saga– one of many characters who found new life within the mode.
Most operators would call it a day there, but because of Reznov’s programming, Mason literally cannot stop until he finds and ends Dragovich. The gang blows up his limo but they bail before the kill is confirmed.
Five days later, President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Mason is present at the scene, but the CIA is quite unbothered by the brainwashed killing machine’s proximity to the crime of the century and keeps him on the payroll.
1968
In Vietnam, Mason joins up with old buddies Woods and Bowman in search of Soviet intel on Nova 6. Mason meets with a defector that he believes is Viktor Reznov and they survive a lot of action setpieces together. The crew eventually arrives in Laos to secure a crashed plane carrying a cargo of Nova 6, but the gas is gone when they arrive.
VC and Spetsnaz troops ambush team BLOPS and force them to play Russian Roulette in a gruesome homage to The Deer Hunter. After Bowman is brutally murdered, Mason and Woods fight their way free, hijack a Hind, and bust up Kravchenko’s headquarters, saving “Reznov” once again. Woods sacrifices himself to save Mason from the cornered Kravchenko, and both men are presumed dead. In true Call of Duty fashion, neither are.
Meanwhile, Weaver and Hudson make contact with Dr. Steiner, who is now terrified of Dragovich and desperate to flip on him. He reveals that Dragovich is hours away from ordering sleeper agents to unleash Nova 6 across the U.S., provoking nuclear war. Hudson and Weaver rush to Steiner’s lab on Rebirth Island, but Mason and his guardian angel beat them to it. They infiltrate the facility on their own and find Steiner. Reznov executes the Nazi scientist, but that’s not what Hudson and Weaver see. Mason is alone, and they watch him pull the trigger.
Hudson and Weaver take Mason in and race to unravel his severely compromised brain to stop World War 3. Their desperate interrogation makes up the iconic frame narrative of Black Ops 1. “The numbers, Mason!” ranks among Call of Duty’s most immortal lines– right up there with “50,000 people used to live here” and “f***ing campers.”
We learn the truth: Reznov died in Vorkuta and the disgruntled old soldier who’s been following Mason around is a Fight Club-style figment of his imagination.
Mason decodes the sequence and leads a strike on Dragovich’s undersea numbers station. In the final showdown, Mason strangles Dragovich and puts an end to his decades-spanning plot. This will not be the last of Mason’s problems.
With Black Ops in the bag, we leap forward four games in the release order to Black Ops: Cold War, set in the brief window of the 1980s before the flashback sequences of Black Ops 2. Dragovich is dead, Mason is half out of his mind, and a new figure named Persus has emerged from the ashes.
1981
Soviet spymaster “Perseus” amasses power and creates his own rogue intelligence network to sow discord across the world. By 1981, they’ve stolen an American-made nuclear bomb courtesy of Operation Greenlight, an extremely dubious top-secret program that hid scorched-earth nukes all across Europe.
Woods is back in action after blowing up and escaping from a POW camp. Hudson asks him to join Mason and new super spy guy Russell Adler to hunt down Perseus for the CIA. They capture an injured Perseus lieutenant and bring them in for some light MKULTRA. M16 agent Helen Park helps implant the Perseus agent with false memories of serving with Adler in Vietnam in order to exploit them for intel.
Reborn as “Bell,” the new player character joins Adler’s team, where they are kept in check with a “would you kindly” style control phrase: “We’ve got a job to do.” They gather a CIA Scooby gang and uncover a Spetsnaz training ground dressed up like an idyllic American suburb, complete with an arcade and period-appropriate Doritos. They confirm the stolen nuke was of U.S. origin, and learn the truth about Operation Greenlight– and their boss’s role in it.
Hudson was not only aware of the plan, he was in charge of it. The squad shelves their beef and plots to steal a list of sleeper agents from KGB headquarters in Moscow.
With the help of a mole named Belikov, Adler and Bell infiltrate the Lubyanka and cross paths with Mikhail Gorbachev and a bunch of Soviet spooks, including young Imran Zakhaev, the future final boss of Modern Warfare. The two series don’t cross over very often, but there are sporadic hints that the worlds of Treyarch and Infinity Ward aren’t as separate as they seem.
The agents go loud and escape with the sleeper list, which points them to a Greenlight scientist named Hastings. By the time they find him it’s too late– Perseus has the activation codes.
Adler abandons his totally subtle mind-meld scheme and force-feeds drugs directly into Bell’s brain instead. Their past as a Perseus agent resurfaces along with the location of the secret base.
The story can go a few different ways from here, but as far as canon is concerned, Bell lets Adler’s intrusion slide and gives up the real location. The team destroys Perseus’ monastery stronghold and secures the nukes, but the man himself escapes. Hudson, wanting to clear up any loose ends, orders Adler to execute Bell as the story concludes.
Cold War sits awkwardly in the Black Ops timeline– you’d think someone would mention the whole “seeding a continent with nukes” thing over the next few decades of the story. Still, the retcon works, and characters like Park will pop up in future games.
The real main event of Black Ops in the 1980s isn’t Perseus, however– it’s Black Ops 2‘s Raul Menendez, a ruthless arms dealer turned charismatic cult leader locked in a 40-year blood feud with Mason and Woods.
1986
Alex Mason has retired to Alaska’s frozen tundra, raising his son David and being generally irritable. He should try mushing wolf-dogs. Ex-handler Hudson and Oliver North come a-knocking with one last job: “Uncle” Woods has gotten himself captured again while messing around in the Angolan civil war.
Mason and Hudson rescue Woods and in the process Mason crosses paths with an ice-cold young arms dealer named Raul Menendez. The men scuffle, Mason shoots his eye out and leaves him for dead.
At this point in his career, Mason has slaughtered entire legions of hostile NPCS. What difference does one more gun-runner make? But Menendez survives with a gnarly scar and swears vengeance on the spook.
Raul was raised during Nicaragua’s dirty wars, watching U.S. backed Contras tear his homeland to shreds. His animosity towards America became personal when his beloved sister Josefina was nearly burned alive by a greedy American businessman.
Raul and his father built a massive drug cartel that attracted the ire of the CIA. The agency merced Papa Menendez in front of his son, which further soured Raul’s feelings towards the United States.
By 1986, he’s running arms with the Soviets in Afghanistan. Mason and company are sent to intervene, linking up with local freedom fighters and a Chinese contact named Tian Zhao. They survive a Soviet attack led by Lev Kravchenko, last of the Dragovich loyalists.
The sight of Kravchenko does a number on Mason’s, let’s face it, completely cooked brain, but it’s Woods who canonically delivers the killshot after they learn about a mole in the CIA.
The Mujahideen leader turns on the Americans under orders from Menendez, leaving the squad to die in the desert. A delirious Mason sees “Tricky Vik” Reznov ride in on horseback to save the day.
The CIA finds the Menendez family compound in Nicaragua and cuts a check to Manuel Noriega, the real-life Panamanian dictator on the U.S. payroll. Noriega’s goons storm the compound and brutalize Josefina. Raul goes berzerk. Noriega shoots his own men and lets Menendez go as a favor, which Raul returns by nearly beating the general to death.
When they finally meet, Woods hurls a grenade meant for Raul, but a bad bounce means it kills Josefina instead. Raul survives, and vows that Woods, and the entire world, will one day feel his absolute loss. Three years later, Menendez puts his plan into motion.
1989
The U.S. invades Panama with the aim of overthrowing Noriega. In real life, Noriega was smoked out of the Vatican embassy by Van Halen music on loop. In BLOPSworld he’s captured by (who else?) Mason and Woods. Hudson informs his men that Noriega is a “high-value individual” to be exchanged for an anonymous prisoner.
Hudson tells Woods that the hooded captive is Raul Menendez, and orders him to shoot the restrained prisoner during the swap. To Woods’s horror, the man is really Alex Mason, and while the canon isn’t absolutely clear about this, it’s widely believed that Mason is no more.
Afterwards, the real Menendez appears, blows away Woods’s kneecaps, and reveals that he’s kidnapped Mason’s son David. Menendez used the boy as leverage to force Hudson to do his bidding. He slits Hudson’s throat with Josefina’s locket, leaves David traumatized, and spares Woods to suffer with the guilt of killing his closest friend.
In one fell swoop, two lead characters from the previous Black Ops game were wiped off the board and another horribly mutilated, leaving young David to pick up the pieces– a story to which we’ll return after a detour through the early ‘90s for Black Ops 6.
Woods spends the intervening years riding a desk and raising David as best he can without revealing the truth behind his father’s death. The CIA believes that Russell Adler is the mole, paid off by Menendez to teamkill his CoD clan. Woods doesn’t buy it, and suspects a shadow faction inside the agency itself: Pantheon.
Pantheon began as a CIA subdivision in the ‘70s, experimenting with a psychotropic super-soldier serum called Project: Cradle. After a disastrous outbreak of the Cradle virus turned survivors into hallucinating rage monsters, Deputy Director Daniel Livingstone officially disavowed it.
The group reformed as an independent rogue cabal, reviving Cradle in secret while fanning the flames of America’s forever wars.
Speaking of which, grab your best bootleg Bart Simpson shirt and get ready to rip some packs of Gulf War generals, because it’s 1991 and we’re invading Iraq… the first time.
1991
Wheelchair-bound Woods is fielding a new team: his protege Troy Marshall, ops specialist Jane Harrow, and the enigmatic William “Case” Calderon. The squad is tasked to extract Saddam Hussein’s defecting defense minister Saeed Alawai, but their target is executed on the spot by fugitive Russell Adler.
Adler insists that the CIA is compromised, and says he couldn’t allow the man to fall into Pantheon’s clutches. He surrenders himself with a simple riddle for Woods: “Bishop takes Rook.” Livingstone dismisses his warning and suspends the squad, who decide to follow Adler’s trail anyway.
“Rook” refers to an old KGB safehouse in Bulgaria that Adler and Woods discovered during their adventures in the ‘70s. The disgraced team shacks up there and recruits some new allies: German tech guy Felix Neumann and Sev Dumas, an assassin from the fictional city-state of Avalon. She was trained and betrayed by the Guild, an underground criminal network that will become way more important in the sequel.
With the gang assembled, they break out Adler from a CIA black site deep beneath the U.S. Capitol building while Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton works the room at a glitzy gala upstairs..
Back at the Rook, Adler explains that Pantheon was in bed with Hussein, trading experimental weapons for access to his definitely-real WMD facilities. He tells them about Cradle and where they might find it. Next stop: Saddam’s palace.
With help from Cold War’s Helen Park, the rogue BLOPers infiltrate Hussein’s gilded bunker. Among his hoard of treasures, the squad finds a sample of Cradle. They also discover that Jane Harrow is Pantheon’s mole within the CIA and trace the virus’s origin to a research facility on American soil.
When they arrive in Kentucky, Case falls down an elevator shaft and is exposed to the Cradle, experiencing a Zombie nightmare.
Case overcomes his BLOPs protagonist amnesia and unlocks his past– he was the failed original test “case” for a Cradle-powered super-soldier. The project was scrapped, his memories were erased, and he was welcomed back into the loving arms of the CIA, which remains oddly unconcerned with the scrambling of its employees’ minds.
A casino heist points the squad towards Gusev, Harrow’s Cradle scientist. He’s hiding out in Kuwait, so Case, Adler, and Lawrence Sims, another Cold War veteran, ground his flight.
Gusev tells the gang that Pantheon’s headquarters is located in an old Soviet prison camp– Victor Reznov’s old haunt Vorkuta, ground zero for the entire Black Ops saga.
In the most shameless nostalgia fest since Snake returned to Shadow Moses, team Rogue BLOPs revisits the gulag and apprehends the traitorous Harrow. They dose her with truth serum and drag the whole story out of her: She blames Adler for the home-invasion deaths of her parents and joined Pantheon for revenge.
Their master plan is to use the Cradle for a false-flag terror attack on Washington, D.C. The Iraqis would take the fall, Livingstone would be KIA, and Harrow/Pantheon would be in charge of the CIA.
Pantheon invades the Rook, setting off a climactic safehouse standoff. Harrow attempts to escape on a helicopter, but Case boards her vessel mid-flight. Completely geeked on Cradle, Case strangles Harrow in a blind rage and sends the chopper crashing into a river, where both are presumed dead. Sure they are!
Livingstone makes peace with Woods, Adler, and Marshall and encourages them to hang out their shingle as an off-the-books Black Ops cell. In a final stinger, we see that Pantheon is down but not out as another mole, Jackson Caine, slips into Livingstone’s office and hacks into his computer.
The story continues 44 years later in Black Ops 7, but first there’s the matter of Menendez to attend to.
In 2014, a social movement named Cordis Die emerges from the internet. Its charismatic leader Odysseus gains followers with his impassioned rants against the corrupt 1%. He engineers riots in Iran and North Korea and develops an unstoppable computer worm out of the rare earth metal Celerium with the help of hacker Chloe Lynch.
He uses it to hack the Chinese stock exchange in 2018, pinning the blame on the U.S. and triggering a second cold war between NATO and China amid an escalated drone arms race. Mason’s former ally Tian Zhao is in charge of China’s SDC and working with Menendez, combining their vast resources to heat up the conflict and usher in a new world order.
2025
By the far off distant future of 2025, Cordis Die has amassed two billion followers, none of whom realise their cult leader is the Nicaraguan narco-terrorist, and that the entire “Occupy BLOPS” movement was just a cover for one man’s mad-on against Woods and Mason. Young David Mason is now a Navy Seal operator named “Section” who still checks in on his dear old Uncle Frank.
Menendez makes the first move by visiting a still-living, still-smoking Woods in the Vault, a retirement home for Mimis and Pop Pops with red in their ledger. He leaves behind the pendant used to murder Hudson.
Section and his JSOC boys Mike Harper and Javier Salazar visit Woods for some action-packed ‘60s flashbacks. The old man gives them the dirt on his tragic history with Menendez and clues them in about Celerium. The young bucks embark on a series of missions investigating Menendez, and his massive mercenary army.
The gang eavesdrops for intel about a cyber weapon called “Karma.” Section, Harper, and Salazar search for it on the decadent floating city of Colossus, where they discover that “Karma” is actually Chloe Lynch, and that Menendez is trying to kill her to keep her quiet about the Celerium computer worm.
Her fate has yet to be confirmed by canon, but if they do save Karma from top henchman DeFalco, she uncovers Menendez’s ultimate plan: on June 19th, Freedom Day, he’s going to hijack the U.S. military’s drone system and unleash an electronic rumbling on every major city within both global superpowers. That’s tomorrow.
Over Section’s objections, his commander Admiral Briggs decides it’s high time to grab Menendez. They contact Farid, a deep cover operative observing Menendez ignite a revolution in Yemen. Farid sacrifices himself to save Harper and Melendez is easily captured and taken onboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Barack Obama.
Surprise! We were playing right into Menendez’s brilliant ruse the entire time. It’s the “getting caught was part of my plan” gambit that was all the rage in the late aughts, though to be fair, Black Ops 2 scribe David S. Goyer also wrote the screenplay for the trope-defining Dark Knight.
Cordis Die goons storm the Obama and Menendez seizes control of the ship with the help of his double agent, your now ex-BFF Salazar. He uploads the virus and takes over the U.S. military drone network before escaping.
Since canon presumes you completed the bonus Strike Missions and took down Tian Zhao, Chinese planes will save the ship and ally with JSOC against the drones, ending the cold war for good.
As thousands of metal death machines swarm upon populated cities, Section, Harper, David Petraeus, and the President of the United States are shot down in a war-torn Los Angeles. Under siege by an army of killer drones, the men escort POTUS to safety in one the most spectacular setpieces in a series that has a lot of them.
JSOC and China trace the drone control signal to a Cordis Die facility in Haiti and stage a full-scale invasion. Menendez goes live when they arrive, but instead of destroying the world’s cities he blows up every single one of the drones instead, crippling American military infrastructure.
Section finally captures his father’s murderer and makes a martyr out of Menendez– which is exactly what he wanted. He posts a posthumous YouTube video instructing his billions of followers to take advantage of the drone-free power void and seize control of the United States.
Treyarch has been pretty firm that the “Menendez dies” ending of Black Op 2 is canonical, although his promised Cordis Die uprising fizzles out.
2035
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is set a decade after the end of BLOPS 2. Frank Woods has finally gone to that old soldiers’ home in the sky and David Mason is still dorkily calling himself Section and leading a new team named “Specter One,” with old faces like Harper and Marshall and new ones like the bionic 50/50.
The world is still shaken from the drone incident. The Guild has shed its shady beginning and is reborn as a powerful tech giant offering protection in uncertain times. In 2035, the dead Menendez shocks the world with a prophecy and a threat: in three days, your streets will run red with your blood. He’s presumably referring to a new fear-based macguffin that pushes minds to the edge of consciousness with typical Black Ops trippiness.
It’s a “five minutes into the future” setting, a touch more sci-fi than Modern Warfare but closer to a tomorrow that seems just around the corner. It’s not the first time that Black Ops has moved forward in the timeline, and it’s nowhere close to the giant leap taken by Treyarch for Black Ops 3.
2062
Set in 2062, Black Ops 3 is the odd duck in an already pretty weird franchise. It depicts a surreal, Phillip K. Dickian future that’s been forged in the fallout of Cordis Die’s drone war, where the old geopolitical order has collapsed and optimized into two bloated megafactions locked in endless proxy wars. New technology makes air supremacy obsolete. Mechs roam the battlefield, and wallrunning supersoldiers interface directly with the grid.
Black Ops 3’s campaign is ambitious and strange, but it feels less like the next chapter in the Black Ops saga and more of an optional epilogue, the kind of ending you’d reload a save to avoid. There’s connective tissue to the larger mythos, but none of the classic characters or grudges survive the time skip. Also, BLOPS being BLOPS, most of the action turns out to be the digital experiences of a disembodied dying consciousness inside a simulation.
While there’s no reason to doubt its canonicity, Black Ops 3 is not the focus of Black Ops 7– The latest title has far too much unfinished business in the past to linger in the far-flung future. Still, the slow drift towards sci-fi is undeniable, and it makes total sense: Black Ops has spent the last 15 years strip-mining the shadow wars of the 20th century, and there’s really only one direction left to go.
Will Black Ops lose its psycho wetworks swagger if it moves beyond the current day? Is there still more juice to squeeze from our clandestine past? Or is it time for Treyarch and Raven Software to invent something entirely new? After all, if we learned anything from Call of Duty: Black Ops, it’s that identities are anything but permanent.
