Treyarch wants a branching campaign for its near-future shooter.
As expected, there’s a new Call of Duty coming out this fall, this time with Treyarch at the helm. But while Treyarch head Mark Lamia calls Black Ops 2 the “worst-kept secret in gaming,” he also thinks it was the “best-kept secret” as well – because the new COD has things that “nobody saw coming.” We saw some of it coming, like the game’s near-future setting in 2025 and the use of fictional military gadgetry like armed quadrotors. But speaking with Activision’s social media guru Dan “One of Swords” Amrich, Lamia and the Black Ops II team laid the info out on the table.
The bulk of the game’s single-player (and its multiplayer) will take place in 2025 as previously mentioned, as a third party brings the United States and People’s Republic of China to the brink of open war by manipulating both sides. However, a good portion of the campaign will bring us back to the tail-end of the Cold War in the 1980s. In the past, players will see how 2025-era antagonist Raul Menendez became a villain and perhaps even sympathize with him before watching him commit atrocities in the “present” day.
Treyarch hopes to have a more character-driven campaign this time around, with Batman Begins writer and The Dark Knight storycrafter David Goyer on board to flesh out the heroes and villains. “We wanted to create the most compelling villain that Call of Duty has ever seen,” said game director Dave Anthony, which admittedly shouldn’t be hard. The game will also deal with the father-son relationship between Black Ops protagonist Mason and his son David, the main character in the 2025 sections – and answer questions about just how much of the Black Ops story was in Mason’s head.
Perhaps most interestingly of all, though, is that Treyarch intends for the Black Ops II campaign to branch and diverge depending on player actions. This could be something minor that changes a section of gameplay – one level, escorting the President, has the player either rappelling down to join the squad or covering them from afar as a sniper – or a potentially major choice that changes the story. Even failing a mission in Black Ops II might not end the game, but would rather send the plot in a different direction. Considering that the “on-rails” aspect of COD‘s campaigns has been frequently maligned, this could be a welcome change.
The campaign will also include something called Strike Force Operations, which are non-linear single-player missions that give players options regarding the role they want to take. In a mission to clear out ground defenses so that an aerial gunship could blast a target, for example, the player could play the role of device operator flying armed quadrotors and other drones, and then to another member of the team to engage in a firefight on foot. The “Overwatch” mode would let players watch the action from above, guiding it in a manner more like an RTS, before zooming down to a soldier to get into the action.
Treyarch intends to give the game’s engine a visual overhaul with new lighting and texturing, though it’s unlikely that we’ll see the sort of upgrades that would compete with the glorious terrain destruction of the Battlefield 3 engine.
Curiously, Treyarch didn’t talk much about the series’ ridiculously-popular multiplayer. “Multiplayer is no longer a one-size-fits-all solution,” said game design director David Vonderhaar. “We’ve stripped the game back a lot and started from a very core place.” Whether or not they’ll still keep that damned Last Stand perk in the game remains to be seen.
There will, however, be zombies. “I’m not going to hide it from you – it’s a Treyarch game, we’re making Zombies,” said Lamia, but he wasn’t inclined to elaborate. “Zombies is its own game and it deserves its own time.”
Also, they brought a horse into the motion capture studio. An actual horse. Black Ops II will feature the highest-of-the-high-technology combat equipment, and it will also feature horses. Just throwing that out there.
