Who is this Raul Menendez guy and why does he want to blow up the planet?
I have no idea what’s going on in this Black Ops 2 “Villain Trailer.” I’ve never played any of the Call of Duty games (well, not since 2003) and even if I had, the partly-near-future Black Ops 2 seems so far removed from the previous game that such experience wouldn’t serve me particularly well anyway. Part of my confusion stems from the fact that I can’t quite make out what Captain Candyman is saying in the middle part of the trailer, because he apparently doesn’t realize that his raspy whisper is being drowned out by the increasingly loud background music.
Fortunately, we have Wikipedia and according to that, Menendez is a bad dude who’s trying to incite a full-on shooting war between the U.S. and China, who have settled into a high-tech Cold War-style conflict. He’s also apparently the “messiah for the 99 percent,” which I assume means the tiny fraction of the population who are disaffected enough by globalization, the wealth gap and whatever else fires their jets to actually go out and “do something” about it, rather than the vast majority of people who don’t actually want to see the planet turned into a cinder.
The whole thing has a vague Command & Conquer ring to it, in fact, with Raul replacing Kane as a charismatic psychopath determined to lead his followers to a new world order. Command & Conquer: Renegade 2 isn’t the worst idea ever, although I don’t actually think that’s what we’re in for here; Call of Duty takes itself way too seriously for that. On the other hand, the “Nuketown 2025” preorder bonus looks like it was lifted straight out of Fallout 3, which takes me right back to where I started: I have no idea what’s going on here.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is being created “in collaboration with” David S. Goyer, who co-wrote Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises (along with Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys and Kickboxer 2, so take from that what you will) and comes out on November 13 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U and Windows.
