The recently released Call of Duty: Warzone 2 is being well-received by fans, who are becoming increasingly familiar with the new pace of gameplay and the plethora of fresh game mechanics that the title possesses. In a sensible move, the sequel maintains a lot of the core framework of its popular predecessor, but adds new twists and additions that help to set it apart.
In Warzone 2.0, players can enjoy brand-new gameplay experiences in the way of DMZ and third-person playlists, but the core battle royale formula still has lots of exciting new things to offer. One of these new changes to core gameplay concerns the franchise's famous Gulag respawn system, with the new AI-controlled Jailer offering the potential for teamwork between enemies in the name of a mutually beneficial outcome.
The Gulag System of Warzone
With how popular the genre of battle royale games are in the contemporary gaming industry, it is imperative for installments to the genre to have their own wholly unique aspects of gameplay to stick out and become successful. It can be said that the primary way in which the Warzone franchise does this is through the use of the famous Gulag system. Upon death, a player in Warzone gains the opportunity to respawn by being sent to the Gulag, in which players fight against each other to the death in tense 1v1 arenas with identical equipment and weapons.
If victorious, a player then redeploys back into the lobby they were originally killed in, with the Gulag only being available to a player once per round and shutting once a game enters its ending phases. This system has proven to be very popular within Warzone due to the faster pace of gameplay that it fosters, and appears again in Warzone 2, but with a very interesting twist.
Warzone 2.0's Gulag and the Jailer
The Gulag system in Warzone 2 has undergone many changes, some of which have proven to be quite controversial. For example, the Gulag of Warzone 2 is now 2v2 as standard, as opposed to the original 1v1 system. Many fans do not like this, as it adds an RNG element in which players are dependent on a random teammate to help secure victory and redeployment, whereas before the responsibility was solely placed on just the player.
However, there is a certain aspect of this new 2v2 formula that makes for a fascinating added dynamic to Warzone 2's gulag. After a certain amount of time has elapsed in a Gulag fight, an AI mini-boss known as the Jailer enters the arena, and it is a high-health high-damage enemy that offers a commendable level of threat. If this Jailer is defeated, all surviving players in a fight will be granted redeployment, regardless of what team they are on or who killed the Jailer.
Given the high health of this AI, it is essentially necessary that both teams work together to kill the Jailer, making for tentative on-the-fly alliances between opposing players. Given the well-received addition of proximity chat in Warzone 2.0, opposing players are able to negotiate these alliances with each other in-game, with the new Jailer system only boosting other big changes to the new release. While the new 2v2 Gulag of Warzone 2.0 may be inherently controversial, it remains that fostering an environment where players may work together to kill an AI like the Jailer adds for a fantastic social element to an otherwise quite solitary aspect of the Warzone formula.
Call of Duty: Warzone 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.