Lots of New Black Ops 2 Details Drop – Strike Force Operations, Zombies Revealed

One of Black Ops 2's Strike Force Missions in action

Activision’s Dan ‘OneOfSwords’ Amrich revealed a whole bunch of new Black Ops 2 information in a blog post titled “What I Know About Call of Duty: Black Ops II” today, outting everything that the ‘insider’ knows, and is allowed to reveal about Treyarch’s 2025-set shooter. You can head here to read the long-form post, or check out the bullet points below for the main details. Firstly, though, you need to know about the new ‘Strike Force Operations’:

Black Ops 2 Strike Force Operations

New ‘Strike Force Operations / Missions’ are open sandbox levels within the campaign, almost like a tactical strategy game!

Strike Force Operations “have a very meaningful influence on how the story progresses,” says Dave Anthony. In these missions, you choose which mission to play and who to play within them – you can swap people within the squad, or you can also just control the drones — be the quadrotor, if you want – or you can be in Overwatch mode and control from a top-down perspective, almost like a tactical strategy game. But at any point, you can pick a soldier on the field and zoom in instantly to take their place. These are open sandbox levels with clear goals — the one I saw took place on the Singapore docks, clearing out defenses so that a gunship could come in to destroy the place — but Strike Force Operations are not linear, so if you replay it, it will be different. Mark Lamia cites these as an example of “the team wanting to give the player new experiences inside the campaign. On every single front, the team is not resting on its laurels.”

And here are the rest of the details revealed by Amrich in short form.

• The game’s official title is Call of Duty: Black Ops II, not “2″
• Black Ops II is split between the Cold War of the 1980s and the second Cold War taking place in the year 2025
• The main villain is called Raul Menendez
• There’ll be branching storylines and player choice
• You’ll be able to pick paths during levels that better suit your play style or sense of adventure
• You can fail missions in Black Ops II, and that will divert the main story. In some cases, people will live or die based on your success or failure on a mission, and that will affect the story’s outcome
• At least one female character will be in the game
• The visuals have been overhauled
• The PC version will take advantage of DX11 cards
• The new Zombies is a huge world, running inside the multiplayer mode.
• There are “a lot of new Zombie game modes” [source @5:10]
• The ‘traditional’ Zombies mode will return
• Treyarch are using the multiplayer engine for Black Ops 2 Zombies. It “could” handle 8-players and double the amount of Zombies – C&V
• Black Ops II”s multiplayer has been stripped back a lot and started from a very core place with a goal of supporting the broadest range of players and play styles
• The Combat Training system has been revamped for new players
• There’s a new sniper rifle that uses millimeter wave technology, the same tech that airport security scanners use to see through walls. The same rifle also uses charged shots to sling ammo at high velocity, giving you the option to shoot through different density walls depending on how long you prime the shot