Call of Duty's Fallout Crossover Should've Always Been The Template
A golden crossover that should’ve happened ages ago.
Call of Duty is teasing its next big crossover, and it's a doozy. The trio of protagonists from Prime’s Fallout TV series will be playable characters in Black Ops 7, an inspired new addition to the series’ plethora of pop culture crossovers.
The official Call of Duty Twitter account has shared a short video featuring three recognizable silhouettes from the post-apocalyptic video game adaptation: one of Walton Goggins' Ghoul, Ella Purnell’s Lucy MacLean, and Aaron Moten’s Maximus, complete with his Brotherhood of Steel Power Armor. The 10-second teaser features the fan-favorite map Nuketown behind them, a pitch-perfect place for these characters. The three skins and new map will be part of Black Ops 7’s “Season 01 Reloaded” event.
Treyarch did not share whether these characters will be part of a premium season pass or a free one. But it's a neat crossover between two major video game franchises under the Xbox umbrella, with mainstream cultural appeal. In fact, I’d argue that had Call of Duty stuck to thematically sensible crossovers like Fallout, the series could have avoided one of the biggest gripes its fanbase has had over the last year.
It’s been well documented that, coming off the heels of Call of Duty’s best game in years, developer Treyarch burned up much of that goodwill by releasing questionable cosmetics season after season. Call of Duty seemingly had no problem sacrificing its visual identity in an effort to have the cultural cachet of competing live service games like Fortnite.
I don’t think that effort was entirely bad. Including characters from grounded shows like Squid Game or iconic films like The Terminator is both outlandish and pretty cool. However, inserting literal cel-shaded, proportionally accurate cartoon characters like Beavis and Butthead and Roger from American Dad took things over the line. It’s the equivalent of having a Bluey appear as a guest character in the next Mortal Kombat game.
Making matters worse was the inclusion of celebrity caricatures. The addition of Nicki Minaj and Cody Rhodes in past games was already testing the limits of what players were willing to accept, but at the very least, their in-game representations were true to their real-life personas. In last year’s Black Ops 6, the inclusion of Seth Rogen in a technicolor marijuana suit came off as needlessly tacky when the real-life man has never gone that far despite his absolute love and investment in the recreational drug.
Black Ops 6’s tonal hodge-podge ended up being for no one. The game looked ugly as sin to the average new player. It also created a dissonance for long-time fans who took the series’ military fantasy somewhat seriously.
Who was this skin for exactly?
Treyarch told the community earlier this year that it planned to tone down the unpopular direction of the game’s multiplayer going into Black Ops 7. And they’ve struck a great balance with Fallout being its first big event.
Though Fallout is a far-fetched science fiction series about the downfall of humanity, at the very least, it doesn’t feel like that much of a leap visually. Maximus’ power armor isn’t that far removed from the exoskeletons we’ve seen in Call of Duty games past and present. Lucy is basically a cute doomsday prepper, the kind I could see standing next to a paranoid Call of Duty protagonist. And the Ghoul is basically a Call of Duty zombie turned face. The show is as gloriously violent as Call of Duty, making it less jarring than unloading the blammer into the supporting cast of Chasing Amy.
From a pop culture standpoint, these characters are also relevant to the Call of Duty fanbase. These are characters from a fictional video game universe. The average Call of Duty gamer has probably heard of or even played a game in the Fallout series. And if they haven’t, they’ve at least heard of the critically acclaimed show over the last year. Unlike Beavis and Butthead or Jay and Silent Bob, Fallout isn’t some nostalgic relic from 30 years ago. It’s more popular now than it was when it debuted in the late ‘90s.
The Fallout franchise is more popular now than a bunch of fictional characters from the mid to late 90s.
Finally, the Call of Duty and Fallout synergy just makes sense because they’re owned by the same company. Xbox has spent the last decade buying up beloved gaming series for billions of dollars. So it’s ludicrous that this sort of cross-promotional thing hasn’t happened more. Why wasn’t the Doom Slayer added to Call of Duty before Doom: The Dark Ages? Where’s Marcus Fenix or Joanna Dark after the now-canceled Perfect Dark reboot was announced? Can we have Banjo Kazooie and Crash Bandicoot gun charms? An Outer Worlds 2 calling card?
The trillion-dollar corporation owns enough video game IP to create its own mini-metaverse that doesn’t feel as forced and creatively bankrupt as Black Ops 6’s most infamous additions. If it's not going to make new games in the series it's sitting on, at least acknowledge their existence in the world’s biggest first-person shooter.
To me, the Fallout crossover is a step in the right direction. It’s the perfect middle ground between what players hated in Black Ops 6 and the direction its developers wanted to take the multiplayer in. Activision and Treyarch would be wise to continue this trend in the seasons ahead.
