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‘Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’ trailer with Ronald Reagan has fans upset about stale bad Russia trope

'Black Ops Cold War’ reunites players with legendary operatives Alex Mason, Frank Woods, and Jason Hudson as they’re pulled into a high-stakes conspiracy

On Wednesday, August 26, Activision, Treyarch, and Raven Software dropped the trailer for their much-anticipated video game ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’. The game is all set to release for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 13, 2020. The exact launch date for next-gen platforms is yet to be announced, but the game is said to release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in Holiday 2020, "depending on when consoles are available to consumers," according to Activision.

‘Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’ will take place after the events of the original story. ‘Black Ops Cold War’ reunites players with legendary operatives Alex Mason, Frank Woods, and Jason Hudson as they’re pulled into a high-stakes conspiracy. Joined by a new cast of characters and faced with threats from the past, players will uncover a subversive plot with devastating global implications.

The trailer takes us through several high-octane action scenes, and we even get to see Ronald Reagan, talking to the Black Ops team about Soviet Union’s tactics. According to Activision, “‘Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War’ fuses elements of 1980s pop culture through a mind-bending conspiracy story, where deception and subterfuge are the norm in the gripping single-player Campaign. In this sequel to the original 'Call of Duty: Black Ops', players encounter historic figures and learn hard truths as they battle around the globe through iconic locales like East Berlin, Turkey, Vietnam, Soviet-era Moscow, and more.”

“As elite operatives, players attempt to stop a plot decades in the making as they follow the trail of a shadowy figure named Perseus, who is on a mission to destabilize the global balance of power and change the course of history,” said Activision. 

As per Activision, beyond the Campaign, players will bring a wide selection of Cold War weapons and equipment into the next generation of Multiplayer combat and an all-new Zombies experience.

On social media, fans of the game franchise had varied reactions to this trailer. While many seemed excited about the game, some seemed unhappy with the same Cold War trope that has been part of American pop culture for ages now being used again. One Twitter user wrote, “Russians are bad, Ooo no russian agents, russian hackers, russian gopniks, suka bljat, ooo no russians russians... run they want to kill you, they want to invade everywhere and killl everything so run run, russians vodka russian russian putin russians russians russians russians.”

Another wrote, “People over hype cod every year, it’s the same nothing is fun about it anymore.”

One Twitter user noted, “gamers will lose their s*** about how games are too political when they include women but not bat an eye when they put ronald f***ing reagan in the middle of the plot.”

Another fan said, “Watching #BlackOpsColdWar trailer and thinking how long is it until they turn ‘know your history’ into something completely historically inaccurate about the USA vs the Soviet Union. I give it until the actual release. After MW's Highway of Death, I'm weary of it.”