Black Ops 7: The Return of Menendez and The Guild

Call of Duty: Black Ops series has always focused on covert missions, betrayal and unfinished wars; the seventh game takes off with the same themes but with more vigorous elements. 

The story is set in the year 2035, where the world has relapsed into the chaos of war, with the infamous Raul Menendez, who had been believed killed, coming back to the picture with a mission to send the world back into the darkness. 

His statement is clear: fear will come back.  

The new life of Menendez renews old animosity, but the threat looming over him is not limited to him. The Guild, a mighty technological company that claims to protect humanity, is the result of the corpses of the previous hostility. Its rise creates a rivalry of not only weapons, but also ideologies, i.e., of freedom versus rule.  

The Populist Icon of a former Arms Dealer

The story of Raul Menendez begins in a previous part, Black Ops 2, where he first appears in 1986 as the ruthless leader of the Menendez Cartel. 

He pulls some strings to take custody of CIA agent Frank Woods, only to leave him in the hands of death. In one of the attempts to rescue Alex Mason, the friend and partner of Woods, the operation ends in disaster. 

In the resulting chaos, Woods accidentally shoots Menendez’s sister, Josefina, the only person Menendez had shown any affection for.  

This single loss turns Menendez into a more dangerous one. Driven by grief and revenge, he passes over to being an arms dealer and becomes a charismatic figure in the eyes of the people. 

Under the nom de plume, Ulysses, he forms the movement Cordis –  Die and uses technology and social media to turn the general dissatisfaction into an insurgency. As a result, he becomes a pioneer of the poor and oppressed, and at the same time, he is conducting covert plans against world powers.  

A War That Never Ends

The battle against Menendez gets personalized as a generational fight. David Mason is the oldest son of Alex Mason, who pursues retributive justice for his father and world peace. Together with Woods, he follows Menendez and supposedly ends his rule. 

However, the continuous peace in the Black Ops continuum is hard to come by.  

In 2035, David Mason goes back to the fray, and his experience has made him wise but weary of constant war. It is the reappearance of Menendez that makes the cynicism of Mason even more apparent, especially when The Guild comes in claiming that it was protecting the civilization. 

Under the leadership of CEO Emma Kagan, The Guild sits in the position of the protector of humanity, though their motives remain ambiguous.  

The Guild and Fight of the Future

The Guild represents a new kind of power, i.e., technological control and not the traditional military or governmental control. It was founded on a rogue network in Avalon, but now exists as a ubiquitous international security firm. 

Even though it claims to provide security with the help of monitoring and cutting-edge technology, it is rising similarly to the manipulative behavior that Menendez mastered.  

Together with his JSOC cadres, David Mason along with Harper, Leilani 50/50 Tupuola and Eric Samuels is determined to bring out the truths. Their journey into the Guild structure goes deep, to where they find traces of a weapon that can turn anxiety into anarchy. 

Faced with this new reality, the boundaries of heroism and evil start to be blurred.  

Toward Endgame

Black Ops 7 campaign consists of eleven intensive cooperative missions, concluding the game with Endgame, the final portion that takes place in the city of Avalon. 

Members are faced with dangerous zones with a mixture of poisonous and strongholds as JSOC struggles to eliminate The Guild at all costs.  

Black Ops 7 continues the narrative of loyalty, betrayal, and struggle existing in the series. With the world on the edge of its seat, the players must make choices about which people to trust and which ones to fear, as the past cannot give them a break.