Mark Lamia is starting to freak me out.

He's telling me about the future--or, specifically, he's talking about the future of warfare and how that plays into the scenario they're building for the campaign in Treyarch's next release, Call of Duty: Black Ops II. After talking to P.W. Singer, an author and director of an institution that gets paid to worry about such things, the team at Treyarch is building a plausible version of the year 2025. By spinning out from today's ideas about how wars are fought and the resource struggles likely to be causing problems by then, much of the next Call of Duty game is concerned with China's hold on rare earth elements, the 17 elements that go into making all sorts of modern devices, from your iPhone to the batteries in today's hybrid automobiles to, well, all sorts of high-tech military items. In fact, it's not hard to conduct a headline search or two and discover all types of talk about China's stranglehold on these increasingly vital substances, and it's even easier to find people talking about the eventuality of a new Cold War rising out of all this. And that's today. By 2025? Well... like I said, Treyarch's argument sounds pretty convincing.

It's funny, because I was prepared for this trip to be a sad confirmation of my expectations with regards to the future of the Call of Duty franchise. Or, more specifically, my interest in the future of the Call of Duty franchise. Over the past couple of years, Activision has published Call of Duty games that are positively competent. Fine games if you're into that sort of thing, but the last couple of years have really left me wondering if I was still a part of that group. It wasn't until I started thinking about writing this story, for example, that I decided to finally toss Modern Warfare 3 back in to download all the maps and stuff that had come as a part of the Call of Duty Elite subscription that I definitely wasn't using. And as far as the actual gameplay and multiplayer is concerned, I suppose I'm still on the fence. But after hearing Treyarch's pitch for its story and the sorts of things the studio has planned for Black Ops II's campaign, I'm definitely excited enough to look forward to seeing how the next chapter from Frank Woods, Alex Mason, and Jason Hudson. Their story, though, will play out in the 1980s.

The bulk of Black Ops II will put you in the boots of David Mason, son of Alex Mason, who ran the show in the previous game. The younger Mason is hunting down a bad guy by the name of Raoul Menendez, who first started stirring up trouble when Reagan was in office. The game will open with David Mason heading to a CIA facility known as "The Vault," where the agency keeps people who are too important or crazy to be walking around the streets. It's here where Mason finds Frank Woods and confronts him about his and Alex Mason's past with Menendez. This sends the game flashing back to "old" Cold War as you'll see 1980s Afghanistan and other hot spots that show you what the original Black Ops crew did after Vietnam. Rather than giving you all of the '80s stuff up front, the game will flash back and forth between the past and the future, where Menendez has become the type of action movie villain that would take control of the entire US drone fleet and turn it against both us and China.

So what will warfare look like in 2025? Well, for starters it'll look a whole lot nicer. Treyarch has put in a lot of work on the renderer, and overall, the whole game looks a lot sharper and more detailed, while still running at 60 frames per second. Facial animations looked especially nice, better showing off some of the performance capture that the team has been doing, which includes mocapping horses for that '80s Afghanistan level. But there are plenty of more futuristic things to deal with, as well. In 2025, unmanned drones will apparently rule the battlefield, giving you more targets to shoot at that aren't just your standard soldier. In the downtown Los Angeles level that was shown, Mason went up against the CLAW (Cognitive Land Assault Weapon), which looked like a big, bear-sized robot with a turret mounted on its back. You'll be able to get in on the action, too, by deploying quadcopters with extra-mini miniguns mounted on them. You'll be able to order your drones around a bit with new squad controls. Grenades also look a little different, so in Treyarch's future you'll be launching grenades out of an arm-mounted cannon.

OK, what's the other big knock against the Call of Duty franchise? Seriously, when you're on a message board talking mess about it, what's the thing that everyone brings up? Right, the scripted part where it's totally on-rails and almost completely out of your control. That part is also being addressed in a few ways, which means that Black Ops II will have a branching campaign with multiple outcomes--or at least varying shades of a similar outcome. It's hard to get a read on how different things will actually be in the final game. Some of these changes are extremely simple--for example, the Los Angeles mission has two on-screen icons at one point, allowing you to either rappel down from a broken freeway to help cover the President as she makes her way through an increasingly-hot battlefield or you can choose to stay up on the freeway and snipe as the rest of your crew covers her escape. That sniper rifle, by the way, can see targets through walls and penetrate cover via a charged-up shot that expends more ammo than a standard shot.

That's a minor change, obviously. But it gets bigger. Things you do in the game will impact the overall state of the United States' cold war with China as well as the level of success that Menendez achieves. Some of these changes will be choice-based, but others will hinge on player skill. The clearest example of that on display to us was a Strike Force mission, which takes the campaign in a pretty different direction. These missions are attached to the story, but put you in the role of a team of SEALs who are out to capture a set of objectives. How you achieve these objectives is sort of up to you, giving the game a bit of a sandbox vibe, but overall it looked like a multiplayer sort of map overhauled to give it a set of single-player objectives--points that need to be captured, and so on. If you like, you can stay in the role of a soldier and run around, just like any other Call of Duty game. But you can also pop out of that soldier and get above the battle in "overwatch" mode. From above, you can order your forces around the map like a mini-RTS or pop into any unit to take direct control. This means you can directly control quadcopters, assault drones, and other non-human units. If the unit you're controlling is destroyed, you'll have to find a new unit to control and play continues as normal. But here's the catch: if you run out of units, you fail the mission and the action continues on. Those SEALs didn't capture that objective, and that will have some sort of impact on the overall story. You'll certainly be able to take multiple attempts at the Strike Force scenarios in case you want to ensure a specific outcome, but the idea of hitting a fail state and continuing onward is pretty exciting. At the very least, it's definitely not something I was expecting to find in a Call of Duty game.

When you finish the campaign and see "your" ending, the game will give you some sort of indication as to the points in the game that put you on that course, with the goal being to drive people to play the campaign more than once to see what changes if you play it differently. Again, this isn't the sort of thing that is completely foreign to video games, but in the context of a Call of Duty game, it sounds pretty cool. That Los Angeles level also has you freely flying a VTOL jet in jet mode above downtown LA as you attempt to keep the hacked drones off of the President. It doesn't look like the sort of thing that turns the action into a full-on flight simulator, but it definitely looks more dynamic than some of the diversions that have popped up in previous COD games.

So what about the multiplayer? Other than confirming that all the MP will be set in 2025, they're not really talking about that right now. But the goal for the multiplayer team is to revisit every single system and rebuild any that need rebuilding. This sounds like it could be more than the typical annual shift in how the progression works and what sort of perks you can equip, but it's hard to say. The team is attempting to build a multiplayer game that allows the people who just want to get in and shoot stuff up with their friends to have a good time without alienating the budding professional crowd that wants to shoot people in the face at MLG events. Combat Training will return and Zombies will also return as its own full mode.

Without more hard details on how the multiplayer mode is coming along, it's hard to know if Black Ops II will recapture the hearts and minds of lapsed fans like myself. But I can definitely say that I'm very interested in seeing how Treyarch's campaign ideas play out. Unsurprisingly, we'll all be able to find out in November... assuming that some fiendish villain hasn't taken over or our own unmanned Predator drones and bombed us all back to the Stone Age before then, of course.

Hear more about the game and my trip to Treyarch in this podcast we recorded!

Mark Lamia is starting to freak me out.

He's telling me about the future--or, specifically, he's talking about the future of warfare and how that plays into the scenario they're building for the campaign in Treyarch's next release, Call of Duty: Black Ops II. After talking to P.W. Singer, an author and director of an institution that gets paid to worry about such things, the team at Treyarch is building a plausible version of the year 2025. By spinning out from today's ideas about how wars are fought and the resource struggles likely to be causing problems by then, much of the next Call of Duty game is concerned with China's hold on rare earth elements, the 17 elements that go into making all sorts of modern devices, from your iPhone to the batteries in today's hybrid automobiles to, well, all sorts of high-tech military items. In fact, it's not hard to conduct a headline search or two and discover all types of talk about China's stranglehold on these increasingly vital substances, and it's even easier to find people talking about the eventuality of a new Cold War rising out of all this. And that's today. By 2025? Well... like I said, Treyarch's argument sounds pretty convincing.

It's funny, because I was prepared for this trip to be a sad confirmation of my expectations with regards to the future of the Call of Duty franchise. Or, more specifically, my interest in the future of the Call of Duty franchise. Over the past couple of years, Activision has published Call of Duty games that are positively competent. Fine games if you're into that sort of thing, but the last couple of years have really left me wondering if I was still a part of that group. It wasn't until I started thinking about writing this story, for example, that I decided to finally toss Modern Warfare 3 back in to download all the maps and stuff that had come as a part of the Call of Duty Elite subscription that I definitely wasn't using. And as far as the actual gameplay and multiplayer is concerned, I suppose I'm still on the fence. But after hearing Treyarch's pitch for its story and the sorts of things the studio has planned for Black Ops II's campaign, I'm definitely excited enough to look forward to seeing how the next chapter from Frank Woods, Alex Mason, and Jason Hudson. Their story, though, will play out in the 1980s.

The bulk of Black Ops II will put you in the boots of David Mason, son of Alex Mason, who ran the show in the previous game. The younger Mason is hunting down a bad guy by the name of Raoul Menendez, who first started stirring up trouble when Reagan was in office. The game will open with David Mason heading to a CIA facility known as "The Vault," where the agency keeps people who are too important or crazy to be walking around the streets. It's here where Mason finds Frank Woods and confronts him about his and Alex Mason's past with Menendez. This sends the game flashing back to "old" Cold War as you'll see 1980s Afghanistan and other hot spots that show you what the original Black Ops crew did after Vietnam. Rather than giving you all of the '80s stuff up front, the game will flash back and forth between the past and the future, where Menendez has become the type of action movie villain that would take control of the entire US drone fleet and turn it against both us and China.

So what will warfare look like in 2025? Well, for starters it'll look a whole lot nicer. Treyarch has put in a lot of work on the renderer, and overall, the whole game looks a lot sharper and more detailed, while still running at 60 frames per second. Facial animations looked especially nice, better showing off some of the performance capture that the team has been doing, which includes mocapping horses for that '80s Afghanistan level. But there are plenty of more futuristic things to deal with, as well. In 2025, unmanned drones will apparently rule the battlefield, giving you more targets to shoot at that aren't just your standard soldier. In the downtown Los Angeles level that was shown, Mason went up against the CLAW (Cognitive Land Assault Weapon), which looked like a big, bear-sized robot with a turret mounted on its back. You'll be able to get in on the action, too, by deploying quadcopters with extra-mini miniguns mounted on them. You'll be able to order your drones around a bit with new squad controls. Grenades also look a little different, so in Treyarch's future you'll be launching grenades out of an arm-mounted cannon.

OK, what's the other big knock against the Call of Duty franchise? Seriously, when you're on a message board talking mess about it, what's the thing that everyone brings up? Right, the scripted part where it's totally on-rails and almost completely out of your control. That part is also being addressed in a few ways, which means that Black Ops II will have a branching campaign with multiple outcomes--or at least varying shades of a similar outcome. It's hard to get a read on how different things will actually be in the final game. Some of these changes are extremely simple--for example, the Los Angeles mission has two on-screen icons at one point, allowing you to either rappel down from a broken freeway to help cover the President as she makes her way through an increasingly-hot battlefield or you can choose to stay up on the freeway and snipe as the rest of your crew covers her escape. That sniper rifle, by the way, can see targets through walls and penetrate cover via a charged-up shot that expends more ammo than a standard shot.

That's a minor change, obviously. But it gets bigger. Things you do in the game will impact the overall state of the United States' cold war with China as well as the level of success that Menendez achieves. Some of these changes will be choice-based, but others will hinge on player skill. The clearest example of that on display to us was a Strike Force mission, which takes the campaign in a pretty different direction. These missions are attached to the story, but put you in the role of a team of SEALs who are out to capture a set of objectives. How you achieve these objectives is sort of up to you, giving the game a bit of a sandbox vibe, but overall it looked like a multiplayer sort of map overhauled to give it a set of single-player objectives--points that need to be captured, and so on. If you like, you can stay in the role of a soldier and run around, just like any other Call of Duty game. But you can also pop out of that soldier and get above the battle in "overwatch" mode. From above, you can order your forces around the map like a mini-RTS or pop into any unit to take direct control. This means you can directly control quadcopters, assault drones, and other non-human units. If the unit you're controlling is destroyed, you'll have to find a new unit to control and play continues as normal. But here's the catch: if you run out of units, you fail the mission and the action continues on. Those SEALs didn't capture that objective, and that will have some sort of impact on the overall story. You'll certainly be able to take multiple attempts at the Strike Force scenarios in case you want to ensure a specific outcome, but the idea of hitting a fail state and continuing onward is pretty exciting. At the very least, it's definitely not something I was expecting to find in a Call of Duty game.

When you finish the campaign and see "your" ending, the game will give you some sort of indication as to the points in the game that put you on that course, with the goal being to drive people to play the campaign more than once to see what changes if you play it differently. Again, this isn't the sort of thing that is completely foreign to video games, but in the context of a Call of Duty game, it sounds pretty cool. That Los Angeles level also has you freely flying a VTOL jet in jet mode above downtown LA as you attempt to keep the hacked drones off of the President. It doesn't look like the sort of thing that turns the action into a full-on flight simulator, but it definitely looks more dynamic than some of the diversions that have popped up in previous COD games.

So what about the multiplayer? Other than confirming that all the MP will be set in 2025, they're not really talking about that right now. But the goal for the multiplayer team is to revisit every single system and rebuild any that need rebuilding. This sounds like it could be more than the typical annual shift in how the progression works and what sort of perks you can equip, but it's hard to say. The team is attempting to build a multiplayer game that allows the people who just want to get in and shoot stuff up with their friends to have a good time without alienating the budding professional crowd that wants to shoot people in the face at MLG events. Combat Training will return and Zombies will also return as its own full mode.

Without more hard details on how the multiplayer mode is coming along, it's hard to know if Black Ops II will recapture the hearts and minds of lapsed fans like myself. But I can definitely say that I'm very interested in seeing how Treyarch's campaign ideas play out. Unsurprisingly, we'll all be able to find out in November... assuming that some fiendish villain hasn't taken over or our own unmanned Predator drones and bombed us all back to the Stone Age before then, of course.

Hear more about the game and my trip to Treyarch in this podcast we recorded!

Future robot looks so bad.

@Coolarman said:

first

Great comment!

Horses!

@Ramboknife: I feel like such a douche for doing that

So when do we find out that Jeff is a sleeper agent?

first

I'm not a CoD fan but I'm glad they are least trying something different for a change.

That actually sounds pretty great. I have never had an interest in the Call of Duty series, but the changes they're making to the tried-and-true formula have me intrigued.

This write up got me way more excited than the trailer did. I'm in now.

What's this strange emotion? Excitement to play a new CoD game, I am not used to this feeling.

If It's not the Call of Duty I expected, then it might be interesting xD

It definitely looks interesting I'll give them that... it also has a synthy soundtrack which I'm kinda digging.

So damn excited for this to be honest. I just hope The Cold War setting doesn't become the new Modern Day shooter setting and I hope it doesn't become as played out because it's actually one of the most interesting settings in a FPS I have seen in a while

@Sackmanjones said:

@Coolarman said:

first

I hope you die a thousand deaths Just kidding I dont give a damn

LOL. I really didn't want to do it but I wanted to see what kind of response I can get

Very interesting. Maybe even a little bit exciting? I don't know. I liked Black Ops, so maybe Treyarch knows what's up when it comes to Call of Duty nowadays. I will definitely keep my ears peeled, and I'm sure we'll see plenty at the Microsoft Press Conference.

Wow, this actually sounds really great. Not sure if this is because of already low expectations. But damn, this sounds good. Not Call of Duty good, really good.

I won't believe it until I see it, my money is on another by the books COD game.

Hm. Eh, I don't know.

Squad management? Branching storyline? Vehicle, nay, VTOL control?? ...WHAT IS HAPPENING?

@Coolarman: You know the fact that you made the first comment means you can go back and edit that comment so then you can at least tie it in just a little bit to the article!

Technology!!!

I was done after MW3, mostly to see how that story arc ended, but I'll actively watch this now, assuming it'll actually make the campaign worth the $60 it'll cost me. NOT a day 1 purchase just yet but I am very interested in seeing how this goes.

Wow, pretty cool I am really happy to see them making some serious changes. I don't know if I will be buying it, but this definitely has me interested.

Oh hey the future of Call of Duty is in the future...

Hm. Weird. In any case I think future is a great direction for CoD, not only because the Modern Warfare setting is getting old, but CoD is so ridiculous already that for the past few games I've felt like the 'realistic' setting has been hindering it. With a more futuristic setting they can have a lot more fun with things. Still, weird. Are you sure this is Call of Duty? Doesn't sound like Call of Duty. Treyarch, you silly geese.

Assuming direct control.

Sounds exciting. As someone that plays CoD for the campaigns, this is the sort of weird shake up I'm looking for. I liked Black Ops but skipped MW3 for whatever reason. Probably won't skip this, though, since I like what Treyarch brings to the table when it's their turn.

Almost seems better at this point if they do the single player & multiplayer as different entities as there's such a gulf between them (where people tend to stick to one or the other on favorites of each game). Personally I'd be happy with a $30-40 solid single player long campaign (almost bioshock 1 in length of gameplay) & have a separate $20 multiplayer only thing. Might not be a good idea but would give them a better idea of what people love recently about the CoD franchies.

Hmm. I was about to forward this article to my younger (13) brother, who's a goddamn nut about CoD, but the thing is, despite playing an insane amount of hours of the last few games, I'm not sure he's ever finished one of the campaigns. He might not even had started the last one. It's 100% multiplayer for him. He probably wouldn't give a crap about anything in this piece.

So I'm kind of surprised/impressed that they're actually putting some real thought into the new campaigns when I feel like their bread and butter is really the other side of the series. If I were in those shoes I'm not sure I'd even bother.

What??? This actually sounds interesting. I was expecting it to be the same old boring stuff they always do.

am I in this one?

After watching the trailer and reading this, I'm actually totally stoked about where they're taking this. I am feeling tired of the gameplay (though I did really enjoy MW3's multiplayer,) but if they can find cool ways to reinvigorate everything else, I'm very interested.

I am so unbelievably excited for this, because this is exactly what Call of Duty needs. A future setting, even if based in some rooted-reality, lets the developers be infinitely more creative with the weapons, maps, and equipment they make. Couple that with Treyarch's legitimately great ideas and concepts for multiplayer and... man. I cannot wait until November.

It would be hilarious if CLOPS unexpectedly pulled a Valve and was delayed until 2025.

What? A villain tricks two superpowers locked in cold war into fighting each other?

Bull-shit!

Interesting. I'm intrigued by where they are taking the story. The rest of it... well, not too original for the genre. If the story turns out well, I may buy it. Based on previous CoD games, it will be adrenaline filled, but ultimately shallow.

Multiple endings huh? Sounds interesting.

I...am kind of interested in this idea?

What?

Damn just when I think I'm done with CoD they keep reeling me back in. I'm digging the branching story seems cool

Well this certainly wasn't what I expected when I heard Black Ops II, but if it had to be done, TreyArch are the team to do so. Black Ops was a great leap for Call of Duty in terms of features and things to do by introducing new game modes and the gameplay upload feature, emblem editor, and the much awesome Zombies.
 
It was a kick in the teeth to see Modern Warfare 3 retain pretty much nothing from Black Ops, and I can only imagine that trend will continue, but as long as some advancement is made, I'm in.

Well they sure have some slightly higher goals. I'll wait until I see more before getting too excited though.

I mean, nothing there is really a new idea, right? And Treyarch's stories aren't really anything great.

Ok, I'm back in

@Dalai said:

CLOPS

[](/manspike)

Ok, yes yes yes this sounds cool.

But is it still going to play like CoD4? Because it's the running around shooting a million guys in 30 seconds that makes me not like Call of Duty.

@nintendoeats said:

Ok, yes yes yes this sounds cool.

But is it still going to play like CoD4? Because it's the running around shooting a million guys in 30 seconds that makes me not like Call of Duty.

You must hate Bad Boys II, therefore you hate fun. Do you hate fun, son? Because that's what this sounds like to me. A bunch of liberal, hippie, treehugging bullshit. You hate fun, you liberal treefucker! You fuck trees! You treefucker!

"That sniper rifle, by the way, can see targets through walls and penetrate cover via a charged-up shot that expends more ammo than a standard shot."

.. You know.. 10 years from now when they invent those bullets that you charge up to increase their mass and velocity. You've probably heard them talk about that stuff..

As for the new cold war... pfs.. If the US wants a cold war, sure, it'll happen. If not, then we'll all be fine. It's not like china is gonna go "no, we don't want to sell to you, effectively making a limitless amount of money, we'll rather just keep it all to ourselves." Hell, they're already building everything needing those resources to begin with..

I'm retaining skepticism. I want a definitive verdict before I ever buy another one of these games because I am so tired of them. Plus these screens just remind me that Call of Duty is looking old. New consoles, guys. It's time.

They are trying. Just introducing the RTS/Sandbox elements, if only into targeted segments of the game is a big step for them. One thing I really like about treyarch. I felt Vinny kind of got it right one time about Black ops exploiting movies and other media They are trying to stay just barely on this side of fantastic/dramatic/ even ridiculous. They don't want the clown award, but they do want some freedom and latitude.. So they will exploit tropes like the good-die-young on a Apocalypse Now river raid set to Sympathy for the Devil, orThe James Bond dive to the ocean floor Evil laboratory, whatever glows in the dark is potentially good for treyarch. And that is wierd because for this I consider them actually advancing beyond the MW format, and they were second dog.

I guess I should emulate Woods, and only be suprised that yes..he's alive?

goty guys

This could be potentially awesome.

@Napalm: I was always partial to Roy Rogers myself.