Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops wasn't a very innovative game. As a matter of fact, it was little more than a cloned version of Modern Warfare 2 with a new campaign. Little else beyond the single-player missions were different from Infinity Ward's games. It wasn't a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but it hardly brought anything new to the table.
Things are going to be different with Black Ops 2. This time around, Treyarch intends to innovate the hell out of the formula by introducing an all new character customization system and a Zombie Mode that takes the once novel feature and gives it its own dedicated campaign aboard a tour bus that takes players from one zombie-infested location to the next.
"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," said Mark Lamia in a recent interview with the Official Xbox Magazine.
"We had customization 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."
Things are going to be very different in Black Ops 2. "The reason why I talk about the personalization and the customization, while that may have been cosmetic in Black Ops, it's now your gameplay in Black Ops 2," Lamia said.
"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 personalization and customization into the character. You can see that evolution, taking things like [camouflage] and emblems to the next level and putting it into the core systems."
It goes without saying that players bored of the old Call of Duty formula will have plenty to look forward to in Black Ops 2, as the game is going to be more than just another yearly entry in the long-running franchise.
Black Ops 2 will be out for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 13.
