Although Black Ops brought a lot of new elements to Call of Duty, what the game didn’t do is innovate on the gameplay front. In Black Ops 2, however, not only does the game bring a fresh take on multiplayer and single-player, including an all-new SP zombie mode, Treyarch decided to go deep into the innards of the franchise – all in an effort to give players a new, innovative experience.
Said Treyarch head Mark Lamia:
I’ve got no complaints with Black Ops. Black Ops did what we wanted it to do. It had a lot of personality and character, and I think people enjoyed the creative aspects of it, they enjoyed the balancing. When you played Black Ops there’s a lot of interesting gadgets and weapons to play with.
We had customisation in the game, we had the theatre, the emblem editor, the maps, the settings, the locations that we created, all that stuff really came through. But one of the things that it didn’t do, is it didn’t look at the gameplay and say, ‘hey, let’s significantly innovate upon some of these core systems.’ They were more like refinements and changes to proven core COD gameplay.
The reason why I talk about the personalisation and the customisation, while that may have been cosmetic in Black Ops, it’s now your gameplay in Black Ops 2.
You can kind of see how, as a studio we’re really into empowering the player to try and give them some unique aspects – to interject their own personalisation and customisation into the character. You can see that evolution, taking things like camos and emblems to the next level and putting it into the core systems. You’re going to go into games and people are going to play it in ways that you never saw it played before, with their own creative classes.
With the flexibility of that system you’re going to see that happen with players across the board. The rewards systems and core systems have changed. We’re not just rewarding people who can get kills, we’re rewarding people who are playing to the mode objectives, as well as people who are getting kills.
Clearly in order to stay alive in the game you’re going to need to be one of those people, but not just for that. I think that is going to be a fundamental change to the way that people play those games. Black Ops 2 isn’t just the next COD game – it really is a major step for the franchise.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 sees a release November 13th globally on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. A PS Vita version dubbed Black Ops 2 Declassified, will be released in tandem.

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To me, he said a lot but didn’t say anything special. I can tell you my next shit will be innovative (something you’ve never seen before) but it isn’t innovative. Yay, I can add buttons and stuff to my wardrobe. Give people what they really want and deserve……. DEDICATED SERVERS! They don’t listen to the players, they only listen to the sound of cash flooding in.
I think it’s awesome that Treyarch finally made it, graphically, above MW4 standards, but I’m just so frustrated with ALL these companies saying “it’s innovative”. What hasn’t everyone seen already??
im sorry dude but BO2 is as innovative as a cucumber!
gotta love it how developers constantly shit on their previous games too, just goes to show how much self respect they have.
Nick, but they did try to change a lot of things. I mean like everyone last year and the beginning of this year said that MW3 was too much of the same old MW2 and did not innovative any thing. Also most of the reviews were rigged, the most famous one I think is IGN.
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Black Ops 2 tries to innovate and what I’m seeing is that they are trying very hard to not fail like MW3. First every one says that MW3 was too much of the same, then people say BO2 is too different, then people say BO2 is exactly the same as all the other CODs. I mean what’s your problem?
Also whoever lives in the UK and cant find a care package in Amazon or anywhere else: http://www.game.co.uk/en/call-of-duty-black-ops-ii-exclusive-care-package-185507
Here you go.
MW3 should have been an expansion instead of a full priced game because little changed. Black ops 2 will be way different graphically and “place in time” wise that it has to be a new game. I can not see what they can do to innovate the game. Sounds like they focused on getting better rewards for playing objectives yet killing will still reign until they reduce it’s importance, maybe by half or don’t even count k/d, in the objective based play. If people want to cry about that then they should stick to TDM. Rant over……