Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - How to Unlock All the Campaign Endings

If you purchased Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War over the weekend, and took some time to play the [...]

If you purchased Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War over the weekend, and took some time to play the campaign, it's likely that you've already beaten it, or you're at least pretty close. While this campaign features an inventive and thrilling story, it doesn't take all that long to beat. However, as plenty of players are starting to discover, there are actually multiple endings to the campaign's story, which means that you'll have to play it a couple of times in order to get the full experience.

There are three main endings to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and while the game emphasizes the fact that your decisions change the outcome, there is really only one or two major choices you need to make at the very end of the game in order to achieve the different endings. We'll break them down below, but know that we'll be operating with full spoilers from here on out.

Ahead of the final mission, it's revealed that your character, Bell, was actually an operative working for Perseus. Adler and his team took you in after you were shot and used some kind of CIA mind-control drug to insert memories into your head and give you an entirely new persona. They gave you a fictional backstory in order to use one of the enemy's assets against them. The mission to stop Perseus and all of the nuclear warheads hinges on a decision you make: Whether or not to tell Adler the truth about Perseus' location.

Through a memory, you learn that Perseus is hiding out at the Slovetsky Monastery. Adler asks for the location of the villain, in one last-ditch effort to stop the nukes from going off all over Europe. You have the choice to tell the truth, or tell Adler that Perseus is at Duga.

Telling the truth will give you the "best" ending, and the one that feels like the truest ending for the game. We say "best" because it's the ending that involves not blowing up most of Europe. You will travel with Adler and the team to Slovetsky and take out a radio signal, stopping the bombs entirely. Later, after you've recovered from your injuries, Adler takes you to a remote location overlooking an ocean, and asks you to make one more sacrifice for the greater good. Working to tie up any loose ends, Adler pulls out his pistol and begins to aim it at you, while your character simultaneously aims a gun at him. In slow motion, you both move to shoot at one another and the screen suddenly cuts to black, keeping you from seeing who pulls the trigger first.

There are still two endings left, each branching off of the decision to lie to Adler. Once you lie, you can make a move to set up an ambush on Adler by using a nearby radio to get word out to Perseus that the team is making its way to Duga. Once you arrive at the location, you'll be ordered to kill the other agents. This concludes with a fight between you and Adler in which you kill him with a knife. The man thought to be Perseus joins you and informs you that there is no one named Perseus. He then sets off all of the bombs around Europe, and there's a cinematic sequence in which Ronald Reagan has the entire mission scrubbed from the record, keeping the US from being linked to the project.

Interestingly enough, that is the only scenario in which your character explicitly survives the game, though it comes at the cost of an entire continent. The third ending arrives if you choose to lie to Adler but don't use the radio to contact Perseus. After arriving at Duga, Adler realizes that you've lied. He kills you and the bombs across Europe are still detonated.

There are a lot of other decisions that can be made throughout the game, and they are all addressed in a debrief after the game has been completed. However, none of them actually change the way things turn out when all is said and done.

Which ending did you first discover in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War? Let us know in the comments!

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