Even though Warzone 2.0 has only been out for a short while, proximity chat is already a completely insane new feature. The brand-new Call of Duty battle royale started today about an hour sooner than expected, and there are several new elements to sort through, including a completely redesigned inventory system, a tag-team gulag, and proximity talk, often known as toxicity in your vicinity.
In a video, FaZe Clan member ZooMaa demonstrates how effective proximity chat can be at eliminating opponent team members while also talking so much that they become flustered and choke. During ZooMaa’s stream, an adversary yells, “Come here buddy, I hear you dude.” ZooMaa responds by smack-talking him and asks him repeatedly, “Where are you?” after which they have a comical shouting and shooting match.
TimTheTatman, a well-known Call of Duty streamer, has undoubtedly already added his voice to the proximity chat debate. In a video he posted, in which he orders an opponent to “peep the head” before headshotting them, he refers to the new feature as “content.”
Although it won’t really matter if you have your in-game chat turned off or your microphone muted, it is unclear how near you must be for proximity chat to activate. But when it does begin to function, it will be clear that this is the kind of feature that will only increase disorder, arguing, and, frequently, toxicity. Will playing against guys in this game becomes even more intolerable? Maybe. Will I continue to bother others in the same way? Oh, yes.
My buddies and I received a bounty contract during my first Warzone 2.0 quads match, and we were told where to find an enemy player to kill so we could collect a tidy sum of money. As we got closer to the spot on our tac map, it was obvious that the enemy had climbed to the very top of the tallest structure nearby when he learned there was a bounty on his head. His voice suddenly burst out in my earpiece as we ascended it in pursuit of him, and I screamed his name in the bottom left-hand corner.
He cried, “Get the fuck away from me!” with increasing panic. I sang back, “I’m coming for you, darling.” Until we flushed him out, my squad started singing “we’re coming for you” like ghosts of schoolchildren from the 19th century. “God dammit,” were his final words.
