One of my longest-standing beefs with Call of Duty is that its single player campaigns rarely allow you to feel like you’re living in them. The series has produced its fair share of great levels — 4’s “All Ghillied Up” and WW2’s “Liberation” are two personal favorites — but it’s rare for a COD campaign to live in my mind after I roll credits.
Call Of Duty Is A Series You Play, But Don’t Inhabit
That is, in part, because the games’ narratives often feel like stones skipping across water, briefly touching down for a mission, before taking off again and landing somewhere completely different. The character you play as can shift from level to level, and the story is often told through flashes of newspaper clippings and voice-over. Though I’ve gotten accustomed to playing the new Call of Duty whenever it comes out, it isn’t a series that has ever felt homey.
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So, I was delighted when I got to Black Ops 6’s safe house and found that Woods was invested in fixing the place up. At this point, the changes I have available are small and utilitarian, like revamping the shooting range in the yard or building a workbench for weapon tinkering. So far, so functional. But the game lets you explore the house in its entirety, including bedrooms and balconies, so I’m hoping the changes you can make get more expressive as the game goes on, and more operators move in, too.
This isn’t the first time that a Call of Duty game has had a safe house that you return to repeatedly over the course of the campaign. I enjoyed it in Black Ops: Cold War, too. But I especially got a kick of Black Ops 6 delivering you to the house, then immediately allowing you to poke around the building and its surrounding grounds. I found a blacklight that reveals special symbols on the piano that seem to indicate which keys to play in order to open a secret room, but I haven’t cracked how to do it yet. Having that thread of mystery has me invested in getting to know the house, top to bottom.
There’s Nothing Better Than A Home Base
I love a home base in games and, really, in any artform. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus towered over the first of MachineGames’ reboot entries, in my mind, because it gave B.J. and crew the Eve’s Hammer, a Nazi sub that the resistance stole and repurposed as a home base. Each crew member’s room reflected their priorities and personality, and you’d often happen upon interesting or funny conversations in the common areas. I enjoyed the missions, but I cherished each opportunity to hang out with my Nazi-killing pals.
The Eve’s Hammer even boasted a palette-swapped version of the original Wolfenstein (now called Wolfstone 3D) that was accessible via an arcade cabinet on the ship. Since the Hammer was originally a Nazi ship, the final boss was B.J. himself.
Mass Effect 2 brought the Normandy back, despite it having been destroyed, so that Shepard still had a place to fraternize with their crew and just hang out between missions. The Outer Worlds let you chill on The Unreliable with your crew, too, as Knights of the Old Republic did something similar. Come to think of it, I guess this is kind of a must-have for a sci-fi RPG.
Home bases are important in other fiction, too. I loved the Harry Potter books growing up, in large part, because the movies had painted such a vivid picture of Hogwarts, and depicted how it changed throughout the seasons. Jerry’s apartment in Seinfeld, the Double R Diner in Twin Peaks, Central Perk in Friends, Luke’s in Gilmore Girls — these recurring locations help make a setting feel real, familiar, and like home. I still need to see how much Black Ops 6 will deliver on this, but it gets big points for doing it at all.
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