{"id":39547,"date":"2012-06-11T12:30:34","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T10:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=39547"},"modified":"2012-06-11T15:14:33","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T13:14:33","slug":"black-ops-2-the-most-provocative-shocking-engaging-cod-game-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/39547-black-ops-2-the-most-provocative-shocking-engaging-cod-game-ever","title":{"rendered":"Black Ops 2 the “most provocative, shocking, engaging” CoD game ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there’s one thing you can expect from the Call of Duty franchise, it’s… a new game every year. Call of Duty is totally dependable like that. But this time around, developer Treyarch<\/a> is planning to “break expectations”. Not with the annual iteration thing, that is, but with the way the game is played.<\/p>\n

“The key mantra from the start was: surprise. We want to surprise people at every step of the way while they’re playing this game. Break expectations,” director David Anthony<\/a> told CVG in an interview at E3<\/a>. “When they’re playing this game, whether it’s from a story point of view, character development, gameplay types, the actual structure of the campaign itself – just when people think that they’re starting to get to grips with it, we like to pull the rug out from under them a little bit.”<\/p>\n

One of the most significant changes from previous games is that, where before you could simply keep trying a mission until you won, in Black Ops 2 there are “consequences” for failure in the Strike Force missions, presented at points along the game’s main campaign.<\/p>\n

“We have this whole geo-political Cold War going on between American and China in the future of 2025, and your performance in those Strike Force levels will actually influence the outcome of that conflict. We spend a lot of time making sure that those outcomes are meaningful,” he explained.<\/p>\n

“With the branching storylines we wrote for the game, as you’re playing, you’re going to get to the point where you start realising that what you’re doing has a material impact on the life and death of significant characters within the story. Like, you could have someone on your squad, who is a very key member of that squad, who may live or die depending on what you’re going to do. We like to create these emotional conflicts within the story.”<\/p>\n

Although he wouldn’t give away any secrets about the game’s inevitable twists and turns, he also promised that “Black Ops 2 is going to be the most provocative, shocking, engaging story that a Call of Duty player has ever seen.” Terrorists doing something appalling enough to make it onto a Fox News Special Edition about how violent video games are corrupting children, while really being nothing more than jingoist pro-American propaganda? You read it here first.<\/p>\n

The game’s out in November 2012.<\/p>\n