Call of Duty: WWII will feature Operation Cobra, one of the biggest bombings of World War II

This article contains affiliate links: if you buy through them, SavePoint may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t change what we write.

Listen up: Call of Duty: WWII, developed by Sledgehammer Games and announced on April 26, 2017, was going to take the player into one of the heaviest operations of World War II. In a conversation with GameStop at the end of May, Glen Schofield, the game’s director, and Michael Condrey, the studio’s co-founder, revealed some campaign missions, and the one that stood out was Operation Cobra.

For those who don’t remember history class: seven weeks after the landing in Normandy, Allied troops were still stuck in the region, unable to advance. The way out was an American offensive that began with one of the largest aerial bombings of the war. The numbers are staggering: on July 25, 1944, near Saint-Lô, around 3,000 Allied aircraft took part in the initial attack, including fighter-bombers, medium bombers and 1,800 heavy bombers of the United States Eighth Air Force. The inaccurate bombing also killed 111 American soldiers, among them Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, the highest-ranking American officer killed in combat in Europe.

According to the studio, it was the first time Operation Cobra appeared in a video game. Besides it, the campaign would feature the landing on the Normandy beaches and the Battle of the Bulge.

The campaign follows Private Ronald “Red” Daniels, of the US 1st Infantry Division, from D-Day at Omaha Beach to the crossing of the Rhine in March 1945. And the series was returning to its roots: no boosted jumping or wall-running, just grounded combat, and no automatic health regeneration, so the medkit and the squad made a difference.

What came next

Call of Duty: WWII arrived on November 3, 2017 for PS4, Xbox One and PC and was a smash: it made 500 million dollars in three days. Critics liked it overall, praising the campaign, although some found the formula repetitive. The game also brought the Nazi Zombies co-op mode, with an alternate-history story, and received new maps throughout 2018.