Activision has officially announced that 2021's mainline Call of Duty title is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, the studio which brought us Call of Duty: WWII. We also have official confirmation that Warzone integration will survive into this next cycle of the series, meaning whatever sort of game the project codenamed "Vanguard" will be, it will leave its mark on the battle royale.

While we don't know what the setting of the upcoming title will be, pretty much every rumor and leak is suggesting that we'll be returning to World War 2, which lines up with Sledgehammer's previous work in the franchise. WW2 remains one of the most popular historical settings in media, with is huge set piece battles and morally unambiguous villains.

If Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is anything to go by, Warzone integration will mean shared weapon and progression ecosystems, shared operators, and most importantly a redesign of Verdansk and a new map pulled directly from the new game.

Following the recent in-game nuclear strike, Verdansk was retooled to fit the 80's setting of Cold War. While in-universe, the fictional country of Kastovia sits a bit too far south to realistically have been part of the Eastern Front during World War 2, the sort of light historical skewing we've seen in the series before can make it work. For this reason, we're also skipping the Eastern Front in this lineup.

Much more interesting, however, is the prospect of an entirely new map based on a famous theatre of war during WW2. Since we saw the introduction of Rebirth Island during the Black Ops Cold War cycle, it stands to reason that Warzone would get a new World War 2 map whenever "Vanguard" is released.