Black Ops 2

[El Fangel]

Killing the attacker is top priority.
Saving the person is second.

If you can't do the first, attempting the second is best.

[Miotch]

Then you both die and in comes a PAVE LOW.

And Req, if you can SAFELY revive your team mate then yes, by all means do it, but just trying to save your team mate for the sake of him not dying is retarded and going to get you killed.

[Miotch]

I love how we're discussing something that won't even be in the next game.

[El Fangel]

Yeah lol.

Accolades in MW3, I have 211 highest K/D ones. Out of 645 matches.

Roughly 1/3 games, I have the best K/D because I play to get kills but not get killed.

[Verbose Minch]

Originally Posted by Miotch For the record this is a stupid argument, but hey, may as well point out why this is stupid. The killstreak argument generally goes out the window though when you're talking about reviving someone. When if ever does someone get put in last stand and a team mate revives him before the attacker is dead? If anything the killstreak argument would work against what you're both saying, because when you try to revive someone there's a good chance you're both going to die if the attacker is still alive. Dead attacker = ended kill streak.

Why would you revive someone if the attacker is still alive?

[El Fangel]

If it's a sniper, ill leave tgeguy to die.

[Miotch]

Originally Posted by Verbose Minch Why would you revive someone if the attacker is still alive?

I'm not sure, but we were talking about reviving someone to stop their killstreak, which is why I was discussing that. If he's dead the whole killstreak argument is moot.

[G]

New Call of Duty set for world reveal during NBA playoffs on May 1

by Ben Gilbert (43 minutes ago)
11

Like Madden and Punxsutawney Phil, the annual reveal of a new Call of Duty game isn't what we'd call surprising. It is, however, quite a thrilling notion to many millions of people the world over, which is why we're here to tell you that, yes, another Call of Duty game is getting ready for its big reveal. According to a new countdown timer on Call of Duty's official website, said game will be revealed during the NBA playoffs on May 1 via TNT (apparently the station's "Drama, period" slogan also applies to sports playoffs).

Given the nature of the Call of Duty series, it's very likely that 2012 will see the launch of the next Treyarch-developed CoD title (2011's Modern Warfare 3 was a collaborative effort lead by Infinity Ward). And what might Treyarch be working on? Many (many) indications point to a sequel to 2010's immensely successful Black Ops, but we'll see for sure on May 1

[LoDownM]

Picture is a dead give away for Black Ops 2.

[G]

Bet they make it a trilogy

[El Fangel]

Galil, Ak, Gas Grenades and Napalm strike and I'm happy.

[D Mac]

And the Stoner 63 and Commando.

[El Fangel]

Yes, loved the Stoner.

[Miotch]

How many times are you going to buy this game?

[El Fangel]

I can't predict the future any better then you can.

[Miotch]

So 5.

[El Fangel]

Alright, I will buy it five times in total.

[Emperor Smeat]

Based on a couple of leaked images and a teaser by Activision, Black Ops 2 will end up being farther ahead in terms of timeline than the Modern Warfare series. Not completely futuristic but "near future" in terms of setting and weapons.





http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...in-game-shots/

[G]

[El Fangel]

Well that's interesting. A November release on a tuesday. That normal?

[LoDownM]

Yes.

[El Fangel]

Thought Blops came on a Thursday.

[LoDownM]

Nope. Was a Tuesday, only Arcade/PSN games come out on Thursdays.

[El Fangel]

I bought it that Thursday. Looked at receipt #1 of 76

[G]

99% of releases are on Tuesdays. I thought we had this discussion before. Every CoD has always come out on a Tuesday.

[El Fangel]

I just explained why I though Thursday. Is that not good enough for you,G? Is it?

[LoDownM]

http://callofduty.com/uk/en/blackops2

There's a reveal trailer, but it wouldn't load for me. But looks like Black Ops 2 is Official.

[LoDownM]

Looks like someone realized they fucked up, page doesn't work anymore.

[G]

[LoDownM]

Nice.

[Blitz]

Looks sexy. I'm in.

[El Fangel]

Sick.

[G]

Is that an old Mason. I can't remember much from the story or who was what. I do remember the name Mason.

[LoDownM]

That was Woods in the trailer. Was with Mason through the entire game almost.

[Emperor Smeat]

Yeah has to be Woods since the only other guys who were with Mason as long were Reznov who is already dead and Hudson but the old guy is missing the scar on the head.

[LoDownM]

It also says it's Woods in the trailer right at the beginning.

The Vault
Sgt. Frank Woods, USMC (Ret)

[Blitz]

Originally Posted by Destructoid Call of Duty: Black Ops II (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) Developer: Treyarch Publisher: Activision Releases: November 2012 Black Ops II is a direct sequel to Black Ops, meaning that they've taken their finely crafted historical fiction and have pulled it into this next game to create a huge time-spanning narrative, stretching from the Cold War era in the late 1980s to their new fictional cold war, taking place around 2025. Treyarch's game director, Dave Anthony, once again sought assistance from Hollywood's David Goyer, writer of Batman Begins, Dark Knight and the upcoming Superman: Man of Steel film, for the story. They teamed up to craft this multi-generation story starting some 18 months ago, and they're finally ready to show a bit of it off. The full details on how this will all work out are still scarce, but we do know that you'll play as characters from Black Ops in this sequel. Contrary to popular belief, Frank Woods is still alive, and you'll see some of the story through his eyes. Note that somehow he is alive in both time periods of the game, too. Alex Mason, the protagonist of the first game, is also back, and you'll play some segments of Black Ops II as him. In the game's future 2025 setting you'll play as David Mason, Alex's son. Treyarch assures that this future world was built to be plausible. They worked with 21st century war expert Peter Singer, the author of "Wired for War," to get a solid view of what future warfare might look like. What they learned is that robotics and drones would play a big part in future war, and that Moore's Law would figure heavily into how weapons will change. Singer also shared a vision of what future global tension and conflicts might surround, and it is not oil. Rare Earth Elements are just now becoming newsworthy. Some 17 metals make up these elements, and they're used in the creation of many key technologies in our lives, including mobile phones, tablets, and computers. They're also key in the creation of new energy technologies like hybrid car batteries and wind turbines, not to mention in future war applications, like stealth tech, laser guidance and drones. As it stands now, China mines and controls 95 percent of the world's REE. Just last month President Obama announced a challenge with the World Trade Organization along with the EU and Japan against China for recent export restrictions on these valuable minerals. Treyarch has crafted their story for future global tension around this potential issue of the throttling of these elements. In the bit of story we were able to witness, this cold war gets hot when villain Raul Melendez creates the first spark. Melendez manages to break into the military infrastructure, digitally hijacking America's remote controlled robots, drones, missiles and other military intelligence. Through this hijack he is able to send our own drones into many major American cities, including Los Angeles, where the President is. David Mason, son of Black Ops' Alex Mason, is there on assignment with the President, and quickly finds himself fighting through the war-torn city. The demo opens to the President, Mason and other soldiers in a vehicle, speeding down L.A.'s freeways as it's being attacked by low-flying drones. They're working to get her to a shelter, but vehicle fires, gunmen, and chaos from the city evacuation are making it difficult. Fire and explosions are also hindering progress, but they're nothing compared to the downed helicopter that takes out part of the freeway bridge, sending the convoy vehicle tumbling. The first-person gameplay starts here, with Mason crawling out of the wrecked vehicle, jumping over debris and immediately into a vehicle-mounted turret to take down incoming drones. Barely escaping before this vehicle tumbles over the edge of the broken bridge, Mason immediately starts sniping distant attackers, providing cover for the President and her escort team. Being a future rifle, the scope lets Mason see through walls and automobiles, and the energy pulse gunfire can actually penetrate these surfaces to hit the enemy behind them if charged long enough. (Your days are numbered, campers.) Later in the stage Mason finds himself in downtown Los Angeles, which has been transformed into a war zone, apparently waking up from a blackout. He comes to just in time to see a policeman ripped apart by machine gun fire from a quad bot with a machine gun on its back. This walker goes down after a few hits with explosive rounds, but a truck comes crashing through some of the wreckage to release even more of the same bots into the area. Mason makes his way into a shopping center near the Staples Center and convention center, fights his way through heavy fire, and makes his way out the other end just in time to see the 110 building come crashing down on its side, causing a quake-like rumble throughout the city. Now all of downtown is on fire, and the visibility is low due to smoke. Mason finds a jet and climbs in to continue his mission from the sky. In the jet, Mason hovers up and flies out to take down drones from the sky, firing cannons and missiles as he weaves through Los Angeles' skyscrapers. He does his best to fly down the streets to provide cover for the President's convoy, but soon finds that he has to take the jet into high gear to chase down attackers. Things seem to be going well until he collides with a drone, sending him out the cockpit in a parachute. As mentioned earlier, in the background of this hijack attack by Melendez on America is a cold war with China. The situation becomes even more complicated when he decides to redirect the attacking drone fleet to China's major cities, effectively using these powers as pawns for his own endgame. The downtown Los Angeles demo for Call of Duty: Black Ops II is easily one of the most impressive live gameplay demos I've ever seen. The action and tension never stopped for a second; I actually felt stress in my neck and upper back from just watching! There was a nice variety of gameplay that flowed from one type to another, but it all was paced so beautifully that it didn't seem segmented. It was big, loud, cinematic and thrilling -- and we're only talking about 15 minutes of play here. Up until this point, death in the Call of Duty titles has had little meaning or significance, as players could simply restart after dying to try to complete an objective. This changes with Black Ops II, as your performance in the game will influence the story in meaningful ways. Studio head Mark Lamia explained that main story characters, squad members, and villains will live or die depending on what you do and how you perform. Your choices and mission performance will directly impact the ending, having some effect on the cold war between America and China. Lamia says that everyone will get different results, and in the end they're going to show you how things could have been different. You'll guide the narrative through your decisions and performance in a new type of level called Strike Force. These levels turn around the classic CoD structure, bringing sandbox-style missions to the mix. In between standard story missions, operations will inform you of other conflicts that need Black Ops attention, and you'll choose from several of these Strike Force missions to proceed. In these, your success or failure will have some effect on the underlying cold war story. This means that it's entirely possible to completely fail the mission and have the game's story continue. As mentioned earlier, you'll find out in the end how your performance might have changed the outcome of the cold war. These sandbox-style missions are unique in that players are able to approach the objectives in whatever way they'd like. They're free to use whatever troops, weapons and methods that are presented to them. If a player wanted to oversee the level as a general the entire time, they could, but a player that would rather play it just as they have with every other Call of Duty, with gun in hand, could just as easily. Either way, the results of this mission will affect the geopolitical arc of the game. A play-through of one of these stages had a team taking out cargo on a Singapore dock by hacking into a defense system. Using the overhead command view, the player was able to jump into any player or vehicle on the play field, doing whatever was needed to complete the mission. There was a constant flipping between soldiers, small remote bots armed with machine guns, flying drones, and a larger robot, leading up to being able to call in an air strike to destroy the cargo and complete the mission. What's interesting is that if any one solider or drone were to be destroyed, the player could "go into" another to continue the mission. If all play possibilities are exhausted, the player fails the mission. Treyarch is not quite ready to talk full details on Black Ops II multiplayer, but Design Director David Vonderhaar was on hand to tease with as many tidbits as he could. The multiplayer will take place in 2025 exclusively, and Vonderhaar says the motivation for that is purely gameplay. They're thinking about how future technology will apply to weapons, attachments and killstreaks, but now also to robots and drones. He says that this new technology has opened up some creative possibilities, letting them do things they would have liked to before, but couldn't justify. Vonderhaar also stressed that eSports is a big agenda for Treyarch. They want the game to be as competitive as possible as the culture moves into the mainstream. They also realize that making Black Ops II enjoyable to watch as a spectator is important. Finally, clean, efficient social media tools have influenced the way the multiplayer team thinks about interfaces. It sounds like we can expect concise menus with high visual impact in multiplayer. Oh, and zombies are coming back. No details were given, but we were told to expect even more ways to play zombies. We'll hear more on this at later date, says Treyarch. Black Ops II is shaping up to be the best looking game on consoles. Dan Bunting, Director of Online, showed off some impossibly beautiful stage examples in a presentation. He says that their goal was to bring PC quality graphics running at 60 frames per second to home consoles, and if these stages were any indication, they're going to knock that goal out of the park. Through revamped systems and improved pipeline processes, a coastal island off in Yemen looked photorealistic. Bunting showed off new lighting engine abilities that permit very natural looking bounce lighting in dark areas, with lights shining through windows and doorways realistically. The new lighting along with new texture blending techniques made for remarkably detailed surfaces, like sand that had blown into the cracks and crevices on a cobblestone street. HDR techniques had sun glaring on the side of a weapon, and water looking hot white from the sun. For a contrast, a close-up look of war-torn L.A. was also shown. High-resolution textures made for some incredibly detailed rubble and wreckage. The texture blending technique made the toppled over skyscraper look eerily real, with its contorted rebar and crumbled walls strewn everywhere. The detail packed into each scene was almost overwhelming. Just as impressive is the new animation technology the motion capture team is using for Black Ops II; new technology allows a degree of motion capture so detailed that a comparison video of the same performance using Black Ops' tech looked primitive. The new tech is so good that raw capture data applied to a model looked much better than the old techniques after a week and a half of tweaking. One especially impressive demo showed a female making a video call to a loved one, with the camera close to her face. Realistic movements like brow quivering, lips sticking together, and eyes tearing up were easily noticeable. In the pursuit of convincing performances they even brought in a horse to the mo-cap studio for capture. Seeing a finished cutscene from Black Ops II really brought it home: they've left Uncanny Valley far behind, and now nothing is standing in the way of full cinematic immersion. Visiting Treyarch's offices, I could feel it: This team is fired up. It was clear that creative forces are working every angle to make Call of Duty: Black Ops II something so much more ambitious than its predecessor. It all centers around a huge, multi-generational narrative with branching story lines, and it's paved with their famed super-cinematic gameplay, and the all-new Strike Force sandbox-style levels. And the twist is that it's all set in 2025, which is just futuristic enough to be believable, but not so much that you're being hit over the head with off-the-wall sci-fi. It's running at 60 frames per second, looking and sounding better than anything in recent memory, and it's packed with new weapons, mechanics, enemy types and gameplay experiences that takes the franchise into brave new territory. Treyarch is clearly excited about what they've created, and after seeing it for myself it's safe to say that you should be, too.

[Fignuts]

Technically the series narrative goes all the way back to WW II, with Resnov being in World at War.

[El Fangel]

A gun that shoots through and sees through walls. I am fairly apprehensive about that. Otherwise looks awesome.

[RoXer]

Let's Talk About the Future of Call of Duty

Sharper graphics. Branching campaign. Open-ended level design. This isn't the Call of Duty sequel you were expecting.

By Jeff Gerstmann | May 1, 2012

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.