Black Ops 4 Gestures highlight a new feature of the Call of Duty franchise, popularized by other shooters such as Fortnite and Overwatch. These gestures, or emotes, are a cosmetic feature that players can use to communicate with other players. In order to gain access to them, they must first be unlocked in-game. Here’a list of all the gestures and emotes currently available in Call of Duty Black Ops 4, complete with details on how to unlock them.
All Black Ops 4 Gestures – All Emotes and How to Unlock
At present, there are only six gestures available in Black Ops 4. The first five are unlocked immediately after the player sets up their Multiplayer account and are as follows:
Bravo
Oh Snap!
Sitting Bull
Unstoppable
Good Job
The sixth emote is called “Zombified” and must be unlocked by ordering a specific meal from Burger King. This is because the emote is tied to a promotion being run between Activision, Burger King, and DoorDash.
If players order the Burger King Nuketown Whopper Meal or the Nuketown 4-Piece Crispy Chicken Tenders Meal through the DoorDash delivery service, they will receive a redeemable code in an email from DoorDash. Redeeming this in-game will award the player the Zombified emote, which was shown on the official Call of Duty Twitter page:
Dominance delivered.
Get the ‘Zombified’ gesture by ordering @BurgerKing’s special Nuketown Meals on @Doordash. More details here: https://t.co/q00i3e5XRr #BlackOps4 pic.twitter.com/17xfNWUMio
— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) October 17, 2018
All Black Ops 4 Gestures – Future Emotes
It was recently announced that Black Ops 4 would be opting to implement a “supply stream” mechanic instead of featuring the supply drops seen in previous iterations of Call of Duty. It is likely that there will more gestures and emotes will me made available to coincide with the addition of the supply stream to Black Ops 4.
One of the main reasons supporting this is the fact that at present there is room in the gesture inventory for more emotes. There are only six in the game at present, which is less than the number of slots the player is given to equip gestures. Therefore, it seems that Treyarch fully intends to add more gestures in future. Even a full inventory would defeat the purpose of having a fixed number of slots, as the inventory is usually constituted by the gestures players choose over other ones. With that being said, it is likely a substantial amount of new emotes will be added to Black Ops 4 in the near future.
Also, given the fact that players cannot spend COD points yet, it is likely that players will be able to purchase certain gestures and emotes soon. It would make sense for this to be a method of attaining them, as the in-game currency can be used to unlock cosmetics without compromising the game’s nature as F2P.
It is also noteworthy that all of the emotes in the game at present are “common,” implying that this is but one tier of several under which cosmetics will be ranked. Therefore, the emotes that will be added soon will more than likely be differentiated by rarity tags.
All Black Ops 4 Gestures – Rare Emotes
Although there are no rare emotes at present, there will likely be several different kinds of emotes added to the game soon. For instance, in Overwatch, players can open loot boxes which contain cosmetics of various rarities: common, rare, epic, and legendary. Common is the lowest tier and appears often, whereas legendary is the best and also the most rare. Black Ops 4 goes out of its way to label the six current emotes as common, implying that the gestures added at a later date will have the possibility to be more than common.
The addition of more rare emotes will likely coincide with the various upcoming changes to Call of Duty listed above, such as the addition of the supply stream and the activation of COD points.
All Black Ops 4 Gestures – Changes to Emotes
Although the gestures and emotes in Black Ops 4 are intended to be purely cosmetic, it was recently discovered that their use can be manipulated in order to afford players a competitive edge. This is due to the fact that players can peek with emotes in Black Ops 4.
Due to the fact that the game is a first-person-shooter and that the emotes change the angle to third-person, a player who emotes next to a corner will be able to manipulate the camera angle in order to see around it without placing themselves at risk. This was exploited in Destiny before, resulting in emotes being banned from competitive play. Fortnite is already in third-person, so emotes offer no benefits in this way, and emotes in Overwatch leave the player far too vulnerable to be used in this way, as the animations are long and can’t be cancelled.
It is likely that emotes will either be changed or removed from competitive Call of Duty in the near future in order to keep the competition fair and FPS-centered.
At present, the only gestures available for Call of Duty Black Ops 4 on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 are the ones mentioned in this article. However, it is likely that more will be added to the game sooner rather than later, and will need to be unlocked in specific ways, unlike the five that the player gets automatically when they register for Multiplayer.
