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Call of Duty is by far the best known shooter franchise.
But it's not known for its shocking innovations.
Usually, all we got was a slightly different story
and some adjustments in the weapons and kill-streaks.
Ward visited Treyarch, the studio that made World at War and Black Ops.
And what he saw there was, surprisingly enough... surprising!
That's right! In LA I visited Treyarch,
the studio that is making the new Call of Duty, Black Ops II
The presentation started with the producers saying
"Ok, you probably saw this one coming"
But this game is going to be totally different.
A lot of publishers and developers are like Peter Molyneux
and they all promise new stuff all the time.
But in this presentation I saw a lot of stuff that made me go:
"Ok, finally a new Call of Duty that is really exciting."
First off, the setting. It's going to be totally different.
For the first time ever, Call of Duty is visiting the future!
The year 2025, to be precise.
And now you're wondering, are we going to get lasers and stuff like that?
No, actually Treyarch has based the setting on actual facts and developments.
They have done a lot of research and came to the conclusion
that a new Cold Ward could break out in the year 2025.
How will that happen?
Well, at this moment China is a big player on the political world stage.
They produce 95% of all the 'rare earth elements', resources that are used in your
hard disc, your telephone, in the gold plating on plugs, new types of energy...
but of course also in new weapons.
And because China produces 95% of that resource, some problems arise.
Treyarch showed me a video of Obama speaking to the World Trade Organisation
in march 2012.
He filed a complaint against China
supported by Japan and some European countries.
Because China has a monopoly on these elements, they can basically shut down
the world's economy and the production of new technology.
So they are working with the setting that China is a powerful country
that holds the whole world in its grasp.
That's where the story takes place.
[The story]
Black Ops II is a direct sequel to the first Black Ops.
But Black Ops II takes place in 2025, so how does that work?
At the start of the game it turns out that Frank Woods
survived the events of Black Ops I.
You play a couple of missions from the late eighties
but the story soon skips to 2025.
Here you play as the son of the protagonist of the first Black Ops game.
It turns out this "Mason Junior" is also part of the Black Ops squad.
In that future a bad-guy called Menendez, who you also encounter during the 80s,
has hacked a 'drone facility'.
These drones are a big part of future warfare, but they can be hacked.
Even now, Americans use drones to assassinate people in Afghanistan,
but Menendez decides to hack a drone facility and send the drones to
big American cities.
And you, being Mason's son, are forced to fight these drones and
protect the cities against Menendez.
But just as you think things couldn't get worse
the drones retreat and instead start to attack China.
This is when all hell breaks loose on an unbelievable scale.
I haven't played the game, but I did get to see an entire mission in LA.
Menendez and his drones attack the city and you're in a vehicle with the president.
The vehicle is under fire and you have to kill all the attacking drones.
It's just as exciting as you're used to from the earlier Call of Duty games,
it's just as fast and adrenaline-pumping.
But after you have killed the drones with a turret, you continue on foot and
you get a gun that allows you to see through walls.
In Modern Warfare you had a gun with a heat sensor, but this one
actually sees through walls.
Treyarch is warning campers in the multiplayer, because in the future
everyone can see you. There's not really a way to hide yourself anymore.
While running through the streets and killing soldiers on foot,
I noticed that the fights have more 'layers' than the other CoD games.
Of course there's the ground troops, but there's also the drones flying around.
This means you have to keep an eye on them as well.
Farther away in the sky you also see planes and choppers fighting eachother,
so there's much more layers to a fight.
You can also control the drones. I saw a scène where you use a little computer
on your arm, by using the d-pad on your controller.
You use this to add drones to the standard gameplay.
But at the end of the fight, some sort of airplane hovers in front of you.
After you get in, you fly through the city, even though it was on-rails.
So from the ground, the fight switches to the drones and from there
to the sky. But still all in the same city and area.
The visuals were breathtaking.
The sun shining through the clouds and the smoke...
It was all very intense, so the gameplay is going to be great.
[Multiple endings]
You're probably wondering: 'Why in the hell are you rambling on so
long about the singleplayer?!'
'It's a new setting, but it isn't that different..'
'And why aren't you talking about the multiplayer? That's also important!'
Well, what I didn't talk about yet in the singleplayer and what is really
revolutionary for Call of Duty -not for games in general-
is the fact that this game will know multiple endings!
Multi.. Multiple endings?
Yes, you can complete several missions in a different manner.
And not only because you make a particular choice in the game.
But also there are people who can die in the game, during missions, which
-obviously- won't be around and available for you in later missions.
And thus creating a different ending.
So what does that mean?
You'll have the regular missions like a normal Call of Duty game.
But in those missions, you'll make different choices, some people may die
and you won't be going back to a checkpoint to try again and prevent that.
And that means that on a politic level in the world, with three parties: China, USA
and the villain Menendez.
The choices you make and the skills you have, decide how the ending will look like.
And that's not all, they also put in a complete new gamemode in the
singleplayer.
The gamemode is called Strike Force and imagine, it's not like in the singleplayer
when you are going through a lineair storyline.
No, you're being dropped in a sort of open world/multiplayer environment.
You get a particular amount of units, a number of infantry, drones,
for example the tank, the attack drones, flying drones,
you also have a big walking tank which you can control.
Yes, you can take direct control over these units, you can control a soldier, or
in a drone, or in a complete different drone.
And you can switch between them!
For that you go to a sort of Overwatch mode, where you've got an overview.
It's not completely like a RTS, but you are hovering above the battlefield.
Like that you can position all of your units.
So when you're playing this Strike force Mission, you don't have to control an
individual unit.
You can choose to control a particular unit, but you can also play it completely
from the overview mode.
So like that, you're playing a strategic mission, with a particular amount of units.
And the special thing about it is ofcourse the overwatch mode
and the unit switching.
But what's also very important, is that you can fail these missions!
That means, that you didn't succeed and that there will indeed be a change in
the storyline.
To be short, a long story about the singleplayer,
which is completely turned upside down.
A singleplayer in which they added all kinds of new elements.
So I can almost say that this looks a lot more like a profound RPG, with lots of
more replay value than we've ever seen in a Call of Duty game.
And that's why I'm this enthousiastic about the singleplayer.
And then the multiplayer, the information everyone is waiting for.
I don't know much about it, because they will organize a seperate event for that.
But they told me was that the multiplayer will take part completely in 2025.
So you will be able to fight with drones and ofcourse high tech weaponry.
But just like in the singleplayer, they also broke down the multiplayer to the core.
They wondered themselves, what is holy? Which things can't be tampered with?
And which parts can we get rid of or change.
From that point they created a new multiplayer,
of which I didn't see anything yet.
What they wanted to accomplish, is that they want it to be more e-sports friendly.
Blizzard is an example to them with their work in Starcraft 2 and e-sports.
They've been to MLG and watched what people do with Black Ops I.
And they want to make the game more appealing for audience.
And they will be making changes in order to make that happen.
What they also want is make the game less 'one size fits all'.
That the players who are less skilled and don't play that often, have to compete
with the superskilled and elite players.
That it will be a more balanced game. Something for the casual player,
but also for the hardcore player.
Furthermore they want to support more different playing styles.
Ofcourse you had the different strike packages in Modern Warfare 3.
But I got the idea that they will take it a little further.
I don't dare to say if that means that you can choose to be an engineer,
a medic or something like that.
But it is clear to me that the multiplayer will also get a thorough change.
One of the reasons a lot of people played so much World at War or Black Ops I,
is the Zombies.
Treyarch would be crazy -and they agree with that- to throw out the Zombiemode.
And that's why they kept it in, solely because the fans wanted it.
And because the fans wanted it, they asked themselves:
Why wouldn't we make it even bigger and better than what it already was?
It means that the Zombiemode will get much bigger than you are used to now..
So if you're fan of Zombies, you should be really happy.
But again, I haven't seen any of it yet. What I do know is that for the first time
the Zombiemode will be running on the multiplayer engine.
I don't know why exactly, but they will have more freedom in that engine.
And they will implement more social elements in it, so it will be more fun to
rank against each other, share with friends and that sort of things.
So one thing is clear; Zombies are back and it will be bigger and better than ever.
And if you're waiting for the Zombies, you should be really happy!
I've been praising the changes in Black Ops II for a while now.
They're obviously all just stories and I've also seen some things.
But because they're taking such risks, I've been getting a good feeling about it.
But the question a lot of people are going to ask and judge this game about, is:
Will there be a new engine? How will the graphics be?
Well, I can tell you one thing: there is no new engine.
But that doesn't mean that it's going to look the same.
No, the last two years, they've been working on the engine.
The render-techniques, lightning and animations
have been improved in such a manner that it looked a lot better.
That's what I also noticed in a singleplayer level,
the particles, the smoke, the light was better, so everything looked a lot more colorful.
Not as grey and gloomy as before, I was really fed up with that too.
Everything just looked a little tighter and better, it almost looked like hires textures,
or at least better quality textures. or at least better quality textures.
I saw a lot more emotions in the faces, you even could compare it to LA Noire.
They even had a horse!
They had an actor sitting on a horse, and captured it full performance it's like they
also did in Avatar.
In the beginning of an Afghanistan level I saw several horses running around
and it looked so good, that I'm really curious that when I'm actually going to
play this game.
At the moment I've just seen that it got played.
And I'm curious how that's actually going to feel.
Because now they pointed everything out to me, like: 'Look at this, there's actually
sand between these cracks, and this has particularily changed.'
I'm wondering if I'm playing the game, this also stands out and I'm going to notice it.
What I noticed before they pointed all these things out to me,
when they showed me the singleplayer level, I noticed the improved particles,
smoke and lightning and that it all looked better.
When they showed me the jet flying through the city, it looked breathtaking.
And you could say, 'This is the same engine, what a *** game!'
But I think this game has so much change.
It has the same engine, but despite that it makes a lot of steps forward.
This could be the game -and they will have to prove that- that makes the same
step as Modern Warfare 1 did in comparison to Call of Duty 3.