Campaign/ General Info
* Black Ops is not finished as of yet, and Josh was unsure of the total length of the campaign portion.
* While the story is deep, Treyarch wanted to make sure that it wasn’t so complex that players couldn’t follow it. The story is told from multiple perspectives but will all tie-in at the end of the game.
* The motion capture system that Treyarch used enabled them to capture the character actor’s body movement, facial expressions and voice at the same time. This enabled the actor to truly put themselves into their roles and provides a more cinematic experience. The facial movement can be seen in the footage for the mission Payback when Woods says, “Do you see that Hind? We’re gonna take it!”.
* Black Ops will not support XBOX Kinect nor PlayStation Move – though it is possible that future Call of Duty games will support these technologies, if it “makes sense”. The game will also not support 3D technology.
* While Black Ops will not feature fully-destructible environments, many of the setpieces used in the game are, in fact, destructible. However, the mission Payback, in which you pilot a helicopter, does feature fully destructible environments while you are piloting the Hind. Players can use the weapons in their helicopter to destroy huts, bridges, buildings, etc.
* In reference to the Hind piloting, Josh Olin said that Treyarch said they wanted the controls to be intuitive in such a way that it felt like a “Call of Duty helicopter”. The altitude is controlled for you, but outside of that restriction, you are in full control of the chopper.
Chopper seen in the mission Slaughterhouse
Multiplayer / Co-op
* While Treyarch has made significant changes to the Multiplayer experience, the core fundamentals of MP have stayed the same. Much of Treyarch’s emphasis has been in Customization and Personalization.
* Treyarch is still considering a beta, Josh said it was neither on the table nor off the table. Their decision will be based on their necessity, desire and the value that it has with the community.
* Community feedback is essential to Treyarch and has been since World at War. Josh said that many features in the game were born of direct community feedback. One example given is when a player is in an objective match, such as Domination: when your crosshairs come in direct line with an objective marker, such as the symbol “A” for Flag A on Domination, it often becomes impossible to see what you are aiming at. Treyarch’s solution was to have the objective marker fade out when your crosshair is directly in line with it, enabling you to target your enemies accurately. While this is a smaller bit of community feedback, Treyarch has also included killstreak rewards in Black Ops that came from community feedback, as well as weapon balancing issues and weapon attachments directly from the consensus of what we, the gamers, want to see in Black Ops.
* Treyarch has stepped up their anti-hacking efforts in a big way. They have employed additional security, making it more difficult or impossible for hackers to access system functions that aren’t intended to be accessed. They are also including in-lobby security measures, enabling them to combat hackers actively if the need arises.
* Josh said “There’s a vehicle component to multiplayer, but it’s not something we’ve done before and I don’t think that fans will be expecting it.”
* As well as saying, “There’s some ‘new modes’ in multiplayer that people will really like.”
* Black Ops will feature localized matchmaking – meaning that players can select a particular region to search for games in. A decision like this will potentially eliminate the lag experience between gamers on different continents.
* In reference to a question about Nazi Zombies, Josh shrugged his shoulders, gave a sly smile and said, “Nazi Zombies was two years ago, come on!” possibly referencing a new form of the Undead? It is unlikely that Josh was denouncing a Zombie mode, judging by the context of the comments.
Gamescom is still going in full force, and won’t stop until August 22nd so be sure to stay tuned to CoDBlackOpsNews where we’ll be bringing you all the latest intel as soon as it drops!
On a last note, outside of the Gamescom world, Josh Olin recently said, in an interview with Digital Spy, that players are going to be extremely surprised at what they have to show us with the Multiplayer Reveal on September 1st.
“…I think that the players are going to be very, very shocked when we reveal our stuff.” – Josh Olin, Community Manager, Treyarch
Big, big thanks to CoDBlackOpsNews senior forum moderator, MrZackk, for tirelessly compiling all of the latest Gamescom info and to forum member MaD-SkiLZZ for pointing out the YouTube interview!
Speaking of the forum, be sure to check it out to discuss all the latest Black Ops news, and if you’re wondering about pre-order pricing, have a look at our pre-order page, as well!
Sources:
http://www.nowgamer.com/news/3990/gamescom-2010-black-ops-has-local-matchmaking
http://www.nowgamer.com/news/3991/gamescom-2010-black-ops-launch-bigger-than-mw2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsFq4yEOjJs
http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a263776/black-ops-online-reveal-to-be-shocking.htmlKlik om te vergroten...
