For a first-person shooter, there is not any higher honour than a musical theme from Trent Reznor. It is solely ever been bestowed on two video games: Id Software program‘s Quake, and Treyarch’s Black Ops II. Each have been studios on the peak of their pop cultural powers, commanding the sort of crossover attraction that publishers dream of however hardly ever obtain. In 2012, a brand new Name Of Responsibility marketing campaign was nonetheless a catalyst for water-cooler dialog, together with one in Reznor’s studio. “I believe I’ve performed all of them,” he informed USA As we speak on the time, “except one or two which will have come out after I was on lengthy touring jaunts.”
The theme Reznor composed for Black Ops II is a muted, bass-led temper piece. It growls greater than it barks, and when it lastly bites – with tooth, to make use of the language of 9 Inch Nails – it comes as a shock. “There may be lots of reservation and angst and sense of loss and remorse and anger effervescent underneath the floor,” stated Reznor. “So it did not make sense to have a gung-ho, patriotic-feeling sort of theme track. It has to really feel weighty.”
In that clarification, and over five-and-a-half minutes of business unease, Reznor captures the character that distinguishes Black Ops from its friends within the COD canon. This can be a sub-series composed from the disjointed recollections of traumatised troopers. Within the authentic Black Ops, Treyarch appeared over the CIA’s historical past of overseas intervention and psychological programming with a distrustful eye. Within the sequel, it catalogues the generations of ache left behind by the folks weaponised in these conflicts.
The marketing campaign’s main protagonist is David Mason, son of Alex Mason, the latter of whom starred in lots of the most troubling scenes of the unique Black Ops. In truth, Mason Sr is an early member of triple-A’s distant fathers membership, which many have prompt is a symptom of the crunch that takes sport builders away from their very own households. The Final of Us’ Joel would be part of the next yr. “Return to the military,” a younger David mutters cattily in a gap cutscene. “Such as you did when mother died.” In these early hours, Black Ops II frequently returns to the failed states the place Alex Mason made his mark, for higher or worse. The person is the Forrest Gump of morally doubtful US missions: title a coup or invasion, and he was there, taping someone to a chair.
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In contrast to the Trendy Warfare video games, nonetheless, Black Ops II is not all in favour of telling a world story. Although it hops between continents and nominally issues a brand new chilly conflict, the sport specialises in manhunts – very like the real-life JSOC organisation that Mason Jr grows as much as be part of. Whether or not in Angola, Panama, Afghanistan or Yemen, the native ideologies and energy struggles at play are backgrounded in favour of issues private to the Mason household. Within the early Name Of Responsibility video games you a minimum of had a way of what you have been preventing for; in Black Ops II you might be merely preventing in direction of. And the factor you might be greedy for is Raul Menendez.
This story is one in all a cycle of revenge – one which continues till after the credit roll.
Menendez is the kind of villain who insists that you’re the identical, you and he – although in equity to the Nicaraguan arms seller, he does differ the wording considerably. “We’re the identical, David,” he purrs. “Formed by these now we have misplaced.” Menendez has misplaced his sister, Josefina, to Alex Mason’s squad throughout a raid in Nicaragua; David has misplaced his father in a vengeful and slightly convoluted plot by Menendez. Like an Aeschylus tragedy yelled over the sound of machine gun fireplace, this story is one in all a cycle of revenge – one which continues till after the credit roll.
These private motivations fold neatly into the working lives of black operatives, and mirror the darkish CIA historical past Treyarch faucets into: People preventing wars that are not their very own for ulterior motives. In principle, they need to assist glue collectively the plot too, focusing your consideration on the characters, slightly than the factions and time durations the protagonists cross by way of.
In fact, although, Treyarch turned in a deeply complicated marketing campaign – one by which a easy story is informed in essentially the most sophisticated doable trend. Not solely is sport director Dave Anthony keen on non-chronology, however he laces dialogue with the acronyms and codenames which are half and parcel of COD’s navy fetish. Batman screenwriter David S Goyer will get a credit score, however after dealing with The Darkish Knight’s many transferring components with deft coherence, the juggling act falls aside right here. It says a lot that in Black Ops II’s closing mission, a basic we have by no means seen or heard from earlier than pops up within the nook of the display to remind us what the state of the world was and who the most important gamers have been.
Worse, Treyarch fumbles when dealing with the non-public tales it so desperately needs to inform. In a single degree that finds Menendez freed by none aside from Manuel Noriega – for no Black Ops sport is full with out a cameo from a real-life dictator – you management the villain as he single-handedly cuts by way of a military to reunite together with his sister. “Rarrrgh,” he screams, greater than as soon as. “Josefina!”. It is an ungainly sequence to play, as the sport upends the same old guidelines of hit factors and motion, turning Menendez right into a rushing tank in a bid to mirror his protecting bloodlust.
At factors the mission restricts your weapon alternative to make sure messy takedowns, and flushes the display with crimson filters. At others, a nonetheless picture of Josefina’s childhood face flashes embarrassingly throughout your imaginative and prescient, frozen in time earlier than her disfigurement in a horrible fireplace. You must admire Treyarch for trying such outsized romanticism in a navy shooter, nevertheless it’s a heavy-handed portrayal of trauma, to say the least.
Time and again, Black Ops II establishes Treyarch as each the trashiest and most experimental COD studio on Activision‘s roster. This was the sport that dared to interweave its important missions with a hybrid RTS mode referred to as Strike Power, by which you might zoom out to chicken’s-eye view with a button, and choose to play as one other soldier, turret or automobile as a substitute – taking Trendy Warfare’s perspective-swapping shtick to its most excessive conclusion. Strike Power did not work very nicely, because it was predictably tough to command the battle as you participated in it, and did not return for future entries, however we will not fault the daring on present.
Ditto the branching story, a lot of which is perhaps information even to those that have performed the marketing campaign by way of. Black Ops II’s selections fluctuate between the hokily overt – handing you a gun to decide on who lives and dies, not as soon as, however thrice – and delicate to a fault. One variation to the plot hinges on whether or not you choose up a selected file present in Menendez’s compound in 1986. One other relies on your catching as much as a kidnapped scientist throughout a rescue mission, and with no express timer, you are left with little indication that you’ve got tilted the sport’s ending in dramatic trend. Within the context of a collection that usually performs like an interactive theme park journey, it is genuinely surprising to be taught that your success or failure in a mission wasn’t predetermined.
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The rescue mission marks a excessive level within the marketing campaign, as Mason Jr and associates go to a floating island resort named Colossus. Successfully a super-yacht scaled as much as the scale of a metropolis, Colossus is a hideaway for the one per cent, and the only place the place Treyarch’s imaginative and prescient of 2025 convinces. The spectacle is breathtaking, and the mission’s brutality is juxtaposed playfully with calming lodge muzak. It feels as if a studio with the dial caught to 10 would possibly lastly have discovered dynamics from Reznor. The mastery collapses minutes later, nonetheless, in a nightclub shootout. As terrorists open fireplace on civilians, Treyarch strikes the capturing into slow-mo and pumps up the Skrillex. In an age when membership shootings have turn into part of our horrible actuality, enjoying the scene for type feels tone-deaf within the excessive.
For essentially the most half, the longer term setting is an excuse for Treyarch to let unfastened with its devices. In 2025, no door is just unlocked, however willed open by a wrist pad with the design sensibility of an N-Gage. Typically you will be wanting down in your protagonist as they faucet away at a brightly colored display, by way of an implied AR show that itself fills your peripheral imaginative and prescient with illuminated traces and indicators. Black Ops II is lacking the grounding minimalism that guides the easiest science fiction.
Nonetheless: you’ll be able to’t say Treyarch would not know itself. Its second chilly conflict begins when China bans the export of uncommon earth components – successfully chopping off America from its drones, and presumably additionally the computer systems and televisions that the studio loves so dearly. Each Name Of Responsibility developer has to discover a international disaster that personally retains it up at evening, and Treyarch invented its personal worst nightmare. By the tip of the sport you are within the developer’s LA yard, explicitly stopping the demise of capitalism.
Whether or not that nightmare is one shared by its viewers is one other matter. Menendez leads a well-liked motion towards the super-rich and is, so far as the world is aware of, a peaceable activist. The concept that a determine like that may even be a narco-terrorist on the facet – nicely, it is a paranoid right-wing fever dream. It is small surprise, then, that after the sport’s launch, Anthony was snapped up by a Washington assume tank devoted to imagining non-traditional threats to America. Treyarch’s nightmares turned out to be these of the US institution.
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