Call of Duty 'cosmetic toggle' will cleanse Warzone of its Party City aesthetic

Warzone is trying something new

  • In Warzone, a "cosmetic toggle" that will disable legacy character skins at a client level
  • With this toggle, players will instead see operators from Modern Warfare 4, making the game stylistically cohesive
  • This toggle only exists within Warzone, as Modern Warfare 4 itself won't carry forward any cosmetics from past games.
PC Gamer headshot - MOrgan Park
Morgan Park

This time last year, Call of Duty had to look itself in the mirror and admit that all the ugly crossover skins had gotten out of hand. The company committed to a clean break with Black Ops 7: No old skins would carry forward, and future cosmetics would have to fit the Black Ops universe to make the cut. That lasted for about three months, when a CoD x Fallout collaboration arrived and all bets were off again.

This new toggle is, without a doubt, a positive change for CoD that I personally never expected to happen. If I were a Warzone diehard, I'd turn this on from day one and never look back. It's a shame, though, that this toggle appears to be only a temporary vacation from tacky outfits.

Since, according to this blog post, skins from Modern Warfare 4 aren't filtered out with the toggle, Warzone players will still be subject to whatever future attire is destined for the new game. So Warzone will only be stylistically cohesive for as long as Modern Warfare 4 is. By the time Season 6 rolls around, we might have Timothée Chalamet in Dune gear or Travis Kelce running amok in Warzone, and the toggle would be rendered pointless.

That is, unless Infinity Ward makes its own commitment to non-goofy cosmetics between now and launch, or expands the toggle to exclude all store outfits. I've reached out to Activision for clarification on how this will work.

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Morgan Park
Staff Writer

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.

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