Treyarch: We Never Do Anything Gratuitous
Black Ops II developer denies doing it for the kicks
How can Treyarch's director David Anthony make the follow-up to the 'biggest entertainment launch in history' with Black Ops II? One thing - and let's all bear this in mind - the team won't be using are gratuitous images or events.
"Let me tell you something: the team and I never do things that are gratuitous for the sake of it. I really don't want to do that, because I don't think there's any emotional or dramatic impact to that, other than the shock value of it. So we generally try to steer away from that kind of stuff."
Let's all remember that one for later reference. So, what can we expect from the game?
"In terms of Black Ops 2 being violent, what's interesting to me is that it's different to previous Call of Duty's. In those, 95% of the time you were up against humans, and human vs human is just about as violent as it's going to get, right? In Black Ops 2, you're actually going to spend a fair proportion of the game fighting against machines. We're offering a different kind of experience, one that previous Call of Duty's have never really engaged with before."
Fighting machines, not fighting people. That's a change. Then there's the branching storyline elements:
"So," he says, for no real reason "in the previous games, there's never really been a concept of failure. I mean, you can fail to get to the end of the level, but the failure has no consequence. You'll keep trying and keep trying and keep trying, and eventually you'll get through it. With Black Ops 2, it's going to feel completely different. You'll be playing one of our Strike Force levels and, whether you succeed or fail your mission in that level, will have consequence in the game. So 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."
Source: CVG
"Let me tell you something: the team and I never do things that are gratuitous for the sake of it. I really don't want to do that, because I don't think there's any emotional or dramatic impact to that, other than the shock value of it. So we generally try to steer away from that kind of stuff."
Let's all remember that one for later reference. So, what can we expect from the game?
"In terms of Black Ops 2 being violent, what's interesting to me is that it's different to previous Call of Duty's. In those, 95% of the time you were up against humans, and human vs human is just about as violent as it's going to get, right? In Black Ops 2, you're actually going to spend a fair proportion of the game fighting against machines. We're offering a different kind of experience, one that previous Call of Duty's have never really engaged with before."
Fighting machines, not fighting people. That's a change. Then there's the branching storyline elements:
"So," he says, for no real reason "in the previous games, there's never really been a concept of failure. I mean, you can fail to get to the end of the level, but the failure has no consequence. You'll keep trying and keep trying and keep trying, and eventually you'll get through it. With Black Ops 2, it's going to feel completely different. You'll be playing one of our Strike Force levels and, whether you succeed or fail your mission in that level, will have consequence in the game. So 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."
Source: CVG
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