14 DAY TRIAL // A lot of Call of Duty fans were surprised to see that the upcoming Black Ops II will be set in the near future, but the team working on the game says that the plan was in place since the first title in the series was launched.
Mark Lamia, the leader of the development team for Black Ops II at Treyarch, told the Official PlayStation Magazine in the United Kingdom that, “From the very beginning, going to the near-future was on the table for us. We really wanted to do something fresh and exciting and new and create this epic fiction. Black Ops doesn’t talk about a timeframe, Black Ops is about what you’re doing.”
He added, “It’s about being in black ops and these deniable operations and I think the dark mystery we presented in Black Ops comes through dramatically in the characters, the story, the setting, it’s more about that than any particular timeframe.”
Much of the narrative that takes place between the events of the first and second games in the Black Ops series will be used to set up Raul Menendez, who is described as the most interesting and powerful villain in the history of the Call of Duty franchise.
The antagonist is set to be able to control robotic vehicles and air drones that the United States military forces use and then create chaos all around the world while he seeks to attain his own mysterious goals.
Players in Black Ops II will need to fight both drone forces and human enemies as they try to stop Menendez while also stopping counterattacks from the other superpowers of the near future.
For the first time in the Call of Duty series, players will be able to influence the game’s narrative and its ending by choosing different Strike Force missions.
Black Ops II will be released on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC and will be out on the apparently lucky November 13.