Interviews// Treyarch on Call of Duty: Black Ops II

The announcement of Call of Duty: Black Ops certainly surprised the world in two ways. Firstly, it wasn’t set in World War II. Secondly, it wasn’t pandering to the Modern Warfare experience. What Treyarch did was slip right in between those eras, focusing on the Cold War and the covert operations that took place during that period. Now, of course, Black Ops II is following that up by... being set in the future.

There are a lot of explosions in an LA demo that tasks the player with protecting the US President. Director of communications, John Rafacz, explains to me where the sneak has gone - and why the game’s new Strikeforce mode is an innovation that tries to answer criticisms that suggest that the Call of Duty single-player experience amounts to a linear, throwaway experience. Hold tight - the franchise, it is expanding.


SPOnG: The original Black Ops was notable for its emphasis on practically invisible operatives engaging in higher-than-top-secret missions. So there was a lot of sneaking around and undercover activity. In the Black Ops II demo, we saw a lot of explosions and city-wide action that would be difficult for a civilian to miss. When does the ‘Black Ops’ part of the title become apparent here?

John Rafacz: [Pause] So, the... Black Ops style of storytelling is the difference between history that you know, and the operations that are off the books. Now, technically, in the LA level, you participated in one those operations. You were part of a detail protecting the President of the United States. Information about what it’s like to protect the President, that’s not everyday kind of stuff.

LA is unique in the sense that it takes place about 70 per cent, maybe 80 per cent of the way through the game. So there’s a lot of stuff going on, and that comes to the fore. So yes, a lot of action going on.

What we thought was interesting, following this through, was that - we’re talking about the near-future, and Black Ops II is the first game that hasn’t really benefited from volumes of research written on things before it. With two-thirds of the game taking place in the near-future, it was necessary for us to create a plausible yet authentic world that we could all identify with and relate to. Even though it hasn’t happened yet.

Having said that, there’s still a great deal of research that went into creating the past and the Cold War 1 stuff that we touch on as well.


SPOnG: I’m curious to know what research you had to do in order to present a believable near-future like this. What were the kind of things you looked into?

John Rafacz: The research that we did was broken out into different pieces. There’s the Cold War 1, past stuff - and we worked with a handful of advisors including Oliver North, Hank Kiersey. For the near-future stuff, we worked with a guy named Peter Singer from the Brookings Institute. Throughout the spanning of all time frames, we worked with a couple of special operations guys, whose stories you’ll never hear about. Those are actually the guys we can’t talk about [laughs].

But Singer was instrumental in helping us wrap our heads around what we thought of as ‘near-future’. We needed someone like that because... you and I can sit and talk about what next year looks like in terms of war and technology, and we’ll be on the same page. Talking five years out from now, we’ll probably be 50-50 in agreement. 13 years from now, and you and I would be on separate books.

So when we went to Singer, we showed him what we were doing and asked, ‘is this a bit too much like laser beams and science fiction? Are we going too far?’ Singer actually said, ‘You’re not going far enough’. Everything you saw in the demo today is either in use in some form, in advanced testing stages or on a prototype table somewhere.

To put things into perspective... thirteen years ago, you could spend millions on dollars on a mainframe that has the processing power of the Xbox 360 that you can get for $300 today. Singer helped us understand how that form factor and technology is carried out over the next 13 years, and he provided us with some real-world understanding and rules about how to remain plausible and authentic.


SPOnG: The first thing I thought of in terms of competition here is in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. There’s also Medal of Honor, which reinvented itself a couple of years back to become a more modern shooter. How do you see Black Ops II telling a tale in a different way to these games?

John Rafacz: The best way to think about it, is that... Treyarch has always been about crafting the best possible experience that we can. It’s never been about anyone else other than topping ourselves. That’s really what the guys have always done - there are thirty, fourty million fans and on any given night, Call of Duty will fill about 250 Madison Square Gardens with people that will play multiplayer. Those are a lot of people, and a lot of expectations.

That’s really what we think about, and when you look at what we’re offering, it really speaks to that. A single-player campaign that provides innovations like Strikeforce levels, new ways to tell a story; Zombies, which will be bigger than anything we’ve done before in that mode; and multiplayer that is equally ambitious. So, each mode seeks to cater to those expectations, while pushing them at the same time. The only way to wrap your head around a mind-boggling number like 40,000,000 is to quite literally work day and night doing the best you can.


SPOnG: It’s great to see some things like the Strikeforce mode that augments the single-player experience. But were you guys concerned at all about comments that suggest Call of Duty is quite a linear and straightforward experience? Do you think you’ve addressed that with Strikeforce modes?

John Rafacz: Strikeforce levels certainly speak to anyone that might levy that criticism against the single-player campaign.

But yeah, keep in mind, when you talk about the core Call of Duty experience and the fiction we’ve created - and the story we intend to tell - there is a certain ride that we’ve got to go on. A ride that we want to take players on and have an experience.

At the same time, we’ve also found a new way to help craft the fiction that surrounds that story with Strikeforce levels. It adds a sense of non-linearity, and for some of those that may only play single-player, it also adds elements of gameplay that might feel a little bit like multi-player in some respects. You are in a sandbox, and there are objectives within, and you have the ability to play with all the toys - yet doing that, all in a meaningful way, that does impact the story.

With regards to Strikeforce levels, I think it’s really important to have the right expectations - we’ll all share the core single-player experience, but the success or failure that you encounter in these additional levels will ultimately shape the geo-political fiction that wraps the conclusion of your game. So, we’ll all play for the same present, but yours will have different gift-wrapping paper on it than mine.


SPOnG: The Call of Duty franchise - particularly Modern Warfare - has usually flirted with some form of controversy. Do you think that moving into the future kind of alleviates the fear of being caught in something similar?

John Rafacz: ... Hmm... Good question [smiles]. You know, I think that with Black Ops II, if we find ourselves embroiled in a controversy, it is by no means by design. We’ve really looked to craft a fiction, a story, an entertainment experience that gives Call of Duty fans something that they’ve never had before. That’s really where we’re coming from. Maybe something happens along the way - I dunno [laughs]. But it’s certainly not by design.


SPOnG: Thank you very much for your time.

John Rafacz: Thank you!