Call of Duty: Black Ops

Black Ops III's story was heavily criticized for being difficult to decipher without text that was hidden in easter eggs which couldn't be properly read without the use of outside tools. That's more to do with the delivery than the actual story itself though. If they were going to double down on that in Black Ops 4, then I'm not too bummed about the lack of campaign. Not what I really buy these for anyways.

To be frank, I felt the stories for GHOSTS and ADVANCED WARFARE both sucked.

As well as completely lacked resolution.

Black Ops III also hadn't anything to do with the previous games.

The stories in Call of Duty are overwhelmingly generic techno-thriller excuse plots. I would be absolutely thrilled if Activision put serious effort into worldbuilding for the series. Well-written characters, a myth arc, actual fucking themes- these are things that would make Call of Duty interesting again. Even if the gameplay changed as little as it does between different iterations of the series, if it actually had a good plot with memorable characters and a detailed, immersive world, I'd probably play every entry in the series.

You kinda just described BLOPS III, Gault.

Yeah it's no Mass Effect or Fallout: NV, but they actually put in a mini-codex that could be read whenever at your home base during the campaign, and had various entries unlocked as the story progressed. It was also somewhat similar to how the internet worked in GTAV; you could spend quite some time jumping from one website to the next, getting a slight taste of the politics of how both the future versions of NATO and the Warsaw Pact worked, along with their own attempts at propaganda and cover-ups. This also included some of the dumber or mundane things in society, such as the top-trending funny Youtube videos of that (future) year, the most anticipated children's toys, upcoming fictional blockbusters, etc.

Problem was... the campaign proper basically never touched most of that nuance built into the backstory, and made both major factions extremely generic. The most nuance you got within the story probably involved the major bio outbreak in Singapore that forced the United Nations to seal off the city, while the future! Warsaw Pact kept smuggling in both aid and weapons to make that area a long-term thorn in the West's side.

edited 20th May '18 11:57:26 PM by SgtRicko

Yeah, they clearly put a lot of work into the world they built, but the main event blew. The characters were just totally bland and/or unlikable.

I felt Modern Warfare and Black Ops 1 as well as 2 had superior stories.

The whole conflict with Russia was actually quite ambiguous with a anti-war slant in MW.

The surprise with the fact you were the guy who killed Kennedy wasn't quite Bioshock but had some real poignance.

Raul Menendez was a superiorly written villain. He was a guy I couldn't quite disagree with 100%.

edited 21st May '18 1:30:03 AM by CharlesPhipps

There was once a time when they weren't. That stopped somewhere around the time the first Black Ops and Modern Warfare III came out.

I think both of those were still pretty decent plots.

Even if MW 3 survived solely by inertia.

Ugh... personally, MW 3 was the lowest point of the franchise for me.

It suffered from an utterly stupid, stupid plot where Russia is suddenly capable of fighting (and winning) against the entirety of NATO, along with having tons of sleeper agents and spec ops groups abroad AND somehow turned into a neo-nazi ultranationalist state with a known terrorist in charge, AND somehow the only sane guy in charge is ironically their President... who has his cabinet executed via a complicated airborne boarding procedure upon his own version of Air Force One. It also signaled the end of those shocker moments that Infinity Ward was originally known for, thanks due to it being the utterly dumb idea of simply killing an American family on vacation in Britain. When, you know, they could've used just about any British family on the streets witnessing the events and it would've worked just fine. Only plot that was less realistic or logical was Ghosts, and that's due to the whole ridiculous idea of Venezuela somehow managing to achieve superpower status while the rest of the planet goes into a massive recession that cripples any action from them.

At least Black Ops had a good plot twist that took advantage of player expectations from your typical Co D title, it made World at War part of the canon, and the plot had few ridiculous or weak moments. Plus, it eventually led up the sublime BLOPS II.

I actually liked the Black Ops story because of that Cold War spy thriller deal. Everything else, it was clear said story wasn’t the biggest focus.

At least WW 2 got me to watch Band of Brothers and The Pacific (with a pre-Punisher Jon Bernethal of all people).

I really liked the storyline from WAW to BLOPS 2. Menendez is one of the few villains i actually liked and even quite agreed on a few things.

Although i guess the best storytelling COD has ever done would be Zombies. At least Treyarch is always doing justice with that mode.

Modern Warfare 3 wasn't a bad story, it was a worthy popcorn movie in terms of quality. It wasn't a Halo or Warcraft III kind of deep narrative or characterization, but it was far superior to Ghosts and onward.

But you could definitely tell there was a lot of drama surrounding its development in the finished product. Very few of the plot threads and characters from Modern Warfare 2 returned and it had very little to be connected with it. Which was completely unlike Modern Warfare 2 which tied into the first Modern Warfare campaign excellently.

Of course, I'm not sure you could've beaten the Tough Act to Follow that was MW2 without resorting to Michael Baygasms or generic escalation. It was basically the Wham Episode of FPS gaming as we knew it.

Well, I remind people that Makarov was an Ultranationalist and the Ultranationist government was the group which was in charge of Russia. The President was just the "moderate" faction of the extremist Neo-Soviets. Part of what made Mw 2 so good was the fact that the "bad guys" won in Call of Duty 4. The military turned on the President because he was trying to make peace with the United States after the disastrous military invasion of the East Coast.

(Yes it's ridiculous but it's still fun)

A hardliner coup of an already hardline government is hardly new. I also like to think Makarov's plan of, "Let's hit Europe now so they'll HAVE to surrender" was every bit as stupid as it sounded and got as many people killed as it probably would have in RL.

edited 21st May '18 9:39:14 PM by CharlesPhipps

Teaser for the next game, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

And now the full trailer

Rare event to see Reagan depicted so serious

Edited by jormis29 on Aug 26th 2020 at 7:28:44 PM

So, is this a reboot like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) or an interequal set in-between the first two Black Ops games?

Interquel.

So judging from the trailer, here are the locales that will be visited: - Southeast Asia during the 1960s/70s. - Some kind of Middle East desert that's too flat to be Afghanistan. Iran in 1979? - East Germany in the 1980s.

Hmm, I wonder how they will try to continue the Zombie mode story considering this is a Black Ops game and it was mentioned that they have zombies.

Black Ops 4 ended the zombies mode story on a very bitter note and most of the original characters died or were dying. They would need to have an entirely new cast here, which might not go over well with old fans, or bring the old casts back somehow which could disappoint newer fans.

Fun fact: that teaser trailer composed of Stock Footage originally had a few seconds of the Tienanmen Square "Tank Man". It's since been removed after the Chinese government complained about it. So much for "KNOW YOUR HISTORY" eh?

It's affecting all sorts of other games too - even retro titles from 1992.

1992 Neo Geo Game Just Had Its "Taiwan" Names Removed

Given that I was told that this will be an interequal, I didn't even think the Tank Man footage was needed as that was in 1989 and should this game really be a prequel, it has to end prior to 1986 because that's when Alex Mason and Jason Hudson went to Angola per Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Speaking of which, if this will be an interequal, will it finally resolve stuff from the first Black Ops didn't resolve like how Mason was involved in JFK's assassination and its connection to a secret plot within the CIA, Weaver having a sister, and Daniel Clarke having a brother living in Apartheid South Africa?

Edited by HallowHawk on Aug 27th 2020 at 6:17:57 PM

So Facebook has apparently deleted Warzone streams featuring the Black Ops Cold War trailer because they "promote COVID conspiracy theories".

Other websites are also upset by the Bezmenov interview, calling it an "alt-right conspiracy theory".

Flat "What".

Know your history indeed

Yet they can't be arsed to deal with all the Neo-Nazis on their platform...