Is Black Ops 7 at risk of cannibalizing its own audience with Endgame and Zombies? Treyarch says that "player-driven pacing" is a key difference between the two co-op game modes

Black Ops 7 Big Preview — (Image credit: Activision)

Call of Duty has never offered so many different ways to play as it has in 2025. Let's look at your options in Black Ops 7. There's a narrative-based campaign, which not only supports four-player co-op but has now expanded to feature a full 32-player PvE Endgame epilogue. There's classic multiplayer, with maps designed to support core 6v6 activities and larger 20v20 skirmishes. For the battle royale fanatics, Warzone continues to evolve. And then there's the return of Zombies, with Treyarch offering both its largest round-based map and the return of smaller Survival Maps for the first time since Black Ops 2.

That's a lot of content available on November 14. So much that it makes me wonder whether Treyarch is at risk of diluting the core appeal of Zombies, splitting the potential audience up with all the work it has put into the co-op experiences in campaign. I took this question to Kevin Drew, the design director at Treyarch who has overseen development of both Zombies and Endgame.

Drew tells me that there's room for both co-op focused experiences in Black Ops 7 because Zombies and Endgame offer fundamentally different experiences. "A key difference between round-based zombies and the campaign is player-driven pacing. It's the idea that you can comfortably go at your own pace in Campaign, while Zombies is pushing you."

We'll get back to that distinction in a second, but I want to provide some context that I think is vital to understanding the broader creative decisions which inspired the creation of Endgame.

In our conversation, Drew tells me that the new mode is the result of "a lot of learnings from Black Ops Cold War's Outbreak and Modern Warfare Zombies." He adds: "We realized we were trying to expand our Zombies audience with these big map offerings, and we actually created two groups [of players]. So, this year, we'll see if groups that crave a certain way of playing align closer to Campaign or Zombies."

Black Ops 7 screenshot — (Image credit: Activision)

As for what Zombies ultimately offers that Endgame does not? "You just never get to have a break in zombies," Drew laughs. "You get 20 seconds before they're back at you. Where in Endgame, you can just kind of chill – look at your tac-map, decide where you want to go next." It's an interesting distinction, particularly as we know little about what Endgame will ultimately look like.

All we know right now is that Endgame sees eight four-player squads land in the city of Avalon. As you dispatch enemies and complete assignments in this PvE mode, you'll upgrade your Operator with new skills and abilities – every action ultimately contributing to your Combat Rating.

Big Preview

Two military characters stand back to back in a Call of Duty Black Ops 7 map firing on approaching squads of enemies, with the GamesRadar+ Big Preview orange frame — (Image credit: Activision)

For more exclusive coverage on the latest Call of Duty, be sure to read my Black Ops 7 hands-on preview to learn more about this year's multiplayer offering.

Squads who reach a Combat Rating of 60 will be able to team up and breach a final zone of the open world – where success will lead to closure on the wider Black Ops 7 story. Failure to extract in any of your runs means losing all of your progress. Hearing that pacing in Endgame can be 'kind of chill" wasn't what I was expecting from a mode with influences in the extraction shooter and roguelike genres.

Regardless, Drew says that "players who aren't looking for that kind of pressure from Zombies, I think they might enjoy our co-op campaign and Endgame a lot more. That's my hope." Steve Bianchi, lead game designer at Treyarch, adds: "Call of Duty is all about offering so many different ways to play. So I think that Zombies and Endgame just gives more variety to people, which is our goal."

Here's how you can access the Black Ops 7 beta on October 2, and a full list of all the Black Ops 7 rewards you can earn from playing.