Whenever a new game in a long-running franchise is announced, many players wonder how its returning features will work. For example, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War recently showed off gameplay for its Zombies mode with fan-favorite features like the Pack-a-Punch machine. However, quality-of-life updates are just as important, and Black Ops Cold War has a big one for console users.
The latest entry in the Black Ops series will include a Field of View (FOV) slider on all platforms, according to a Tweet by developer Treyarch. In other words, players will be able to adjust the height and width of what they can see in-game, with more visibility possible based on the aspect ratio of one's television or monitor. Based on the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War gif Treyarch provides, using a larger FOV "may result in lower framerate and some graphical issues."
While some may consider this to be a relatively small benefit, it may make a big different in a first-person shooter that scatters potential combatants all across the battlefield for players to find and eliminate before they are killed. It also helps to even the playing field in multiplayer matches, as titles like Call of Duty: Warzone offering FOV sliders only to PC players has been criticized in the past.
The FOV slider will be available under the "Display" section of Black Ops Cold War's options menu, and other accessibility features such as colorblindness modes and removing motion blur can be seen in Treyarch's Twitter post. Including options such as these will make the game more open to players with visual impairments, similar to Twitch recently adding scalable text sizes.
While additional features like FOV sliders and accessibility modes are ultimately beneficial for both players and developers, other changes made in Black Ops Cold War are receiving more mixed receptions. Professional Call of Duty players have taken issue with the Ninja perk, which will now make footsteps quieter rather than outright silent like in previous titles.
Even with these kinds of quibbles on the competitive front, Activision and its developers appear to be focusing on making the upcoming Call of Duty game more accessible and open to a larger audience. On top of new features like the console FOV slider, Black Ops Cold War has character creation in its campaign so players can design their own protagonist, including a gender neutral pronoun option.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is set to release November 13 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.