Black Ops 7 arrives at an inflection point for the long-running franchise. The connected era ushered in by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022) has had its ups and downs over the past three years, but the community seems to be at its wits' end.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is a sequel to last year's installment – something that doesn't usually happen in the CoD release schedule, which in the past has hopped around between mini-series and development studios. In a first for CoD, the two games were developed concurrently by Treyarch and Raven Software.