The latest Call of Duty teaser seems to confirm a Cold War setting for the upcoming game. pawntakespawn.com is a site that went live on August 10, presumably created by Activision. It depicted a small room with a blank television and some other small additions – a telephone, a computer, and a strange map on the wall. On August 14, the television turned on – just static, but if you click the tape labeled “1961-62 v.1” directly on top of the VCR, one of many videos will play. They all focus on the same topics – Fidel Castro, socialism, and the threat of nuclear war.
This strange chain of events is yet another promotional stunt Activision has pulled to tease the latest title – just a few days ago the publisher mailed out boxes to various sites and streamers, containing slide projectors and slides seemingly pointing to a location in the Black Ops games. By coordinating efforts to figure out the meaning of the slides, fans were able to identify several cryptic references to the 1972 World Chess Championships, a theme that links back to the name of the original teaser website – “Pawn Takes Pawn.”
There’s also a sticky note stuck to the bottom of the television on the Pawn Takes Pawn website – entering what’s written on it into the website’s URL takes you to different pages. “tangledweb” takes you to short note on how wars are won before they’re fought, and “emc2” redirects to another sticky note. Currently, the emc2 note has the date 8/14 marked as “Day One: 1961-62”, matching the tape found on the original site. 8/15, Day Two, is presumably coming sometime on the 15th.
But what does this all mean for Call of Duty? Based on the themes we’ve seen so far with what’s available on Pawn Takes Pawn, it seems the protagonist of the newest game was brainwashed and involved in the assassination of John F Kennedy, and the videos on the T.V. seem to point towards the nuclear crisis and Cold War as other themes. While we don’t know very much now, there’ll definitely be more info coming out soon, so stay tuned for teasers to come.