The Champions League Final between Bayern Munich and Chelsea FC will be the event that the next Black Ops 2 trailer will debut. If you live in the UK you can watch it on ITV or Sky Sports 1 this Saturday, May 19. Don’t fret if you’re not a resident of the UK because the trailer will be put online shortly after, and shortly after that we’ll post it up in here.

Via CoD Wiki

Treyarch’s game design director David Vonderhaar posted a tantalizing insight into Black Ops 2 today. It’s a simple ‘announcement’ voice-over sound file from Black Ops 2′s multiplayer, but what it hints at is interesting. The announcement says “Objective parameters obtained. Well done”, which means that we have a new multiplayer game mode to look forward to in Black Ops 2 that’ll require you to obtain / complete multiple parameters in order to complete an objective and win the round / game. Interesting!

Check out the sound file below and leave any ideas you may have as to who the voice actor is in the comments.

Classified multiplayer Faction voice-over

Source

Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia sat down with Activision’s Dan “OneOfSwords” Amrich in his latest podcast to talk about Black Ops 2′s engine, among other things.

The top and bottom of it is that Black Ops 2 is using Black Ops’ engine but it has been upgraded to meet the current game’s design goals. You can check out the part of the discussion where Lamia talks about Black Ops 2′s engine below.

People always ask me, “Is this a new engine?” I liken it to people who live in an older house that has been remodeled. Just because you’re remodeling the house and it will look new or it will have a new kitchen, you don’t tear out the foundation, or break out some of the framing. You might even go as hardcore as replacing the plumbing, and we will do that sort of thing, as an analogy. It’s a gross simplification, but it’s one way to say that. There’s a lot of good still in that foundation that you wouldn’t get rid of, and we don’t. We look to advance in the areas that support our game design.

Engines, each time they get touched, they change. The creators alter them; they don’t modify what they don’t need to, and then they alter what they need to. You can’t make a competitive product if you’re not upgrading that engine along the way.

I think the whole thing about a new engine…sometimes that’s a great buzzword. Well, I have a new graphics engine — is that a new engine? Where does it start and stop? Elements of the code, you can trace back for a very very long time…but whole parts of the code are entirely new. Two areas we did focus on for this game were the graphics and the lighting — a pretty significant amount of work is going into that.

I think what people are asking for is for us to push. They want us to make a better-looking game; they want things. I don’t think those are things people can’t ask for. We asked ourselves that very same question — we wanted to advance the graphics. I think the questions are valid. The answer may not need to be an entirely new engine, but you might need to do an entire overhaul of your entire lighting system. The trick is, we’re not willing to do that if we can’t keep it running at 60 frames per second — but we did that this time. So this is the Black Ops II engine.

Via OneOfSwords

If day-one pre-order numbers are anything to go by, publishers Activision and developers Treyarch can put their big Black Ops 2 reveal down as nothing but a huge success. Day-one pre-order numbers for Black Ops 2 on the UK Amazon store are around 3x that of its 2010 predecessor, the original Black Ops, as fans rushed to order the game after watching the Reveal Trailer.

“Set to be one of the biggest games of the year, it’s great to see so much enthusiasm and anticipation for Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” said Amazon UK’s video games manager Graham Chambers speaking to mcvuk.

Over on the U.S Amazon store, Black Ops 2 pre-order numbers were even more impressive with 10x the day one pre-orders of Black Ops!

“Pre-orders from day one of Black Ops 2 were more than ten times the amount of pre-orders for the first Black Ops on its first day of availability,” Amazon US told Joystiq.

You can pre-order Black Ops 2 here.

In a recent tweet from the official Call of Duty Twitter account, they say “Zombies are coming…… Where’s your shotgun?” with reference to this image. So you can probably expect the young lady featured in the poster to be one of the characters from Black Ops 2′s new and improved Zombies mode.

Here is the beginnings of the Black Ops 2 weapons list. The weapons in the list are those that have been confirmed so far from trailers and promotional media in the run-up to Black Ops 2′s release. New weapons will be added as-and-when they are confirmed.

Assault Rifles

• AN-94
• M4A1
• M16
• XM8

Sniper Rifles

Sub-Machine Guns

• MP7

Light-Machine Guns

• M249 SAW

Shotguns

• Unknown Shotgun

Pistols

• KRISS KARD
• M1911

Launchers

Grenades

Equipment

Get the skinny on the game’s single player in this Black Ops 2 campaign interview.

It’s time for yesterdays Black Ops 2 reveal trailer to get picked apart looking for the details that weren’t so obvious at first-glance. The analysis video below is courtesy of  Join Brian Altano and Anthony Gallegos from IGN. So sit back as they put Treyarch’s latest through the Rewind Machine!