Treyarch just made a huge statement regarding Call of Duty Black Ops 6’s backstory, with huge consequences to its future.
CharlieIntel explained the 411 on Twitter:
“Just to clarify: Treyarch developers confirmed that what happened in the 1989 missions of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is canon to that of the story of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
Alex Mason is dead.”
We’ll talk about these events below, so we won’t be able to avoid sharing spoilers for Call of Duty Black Ops 2.
Call of Duty Black Ops 2 was about this batch of US surveillance agents fighting Raul Menendez, one of the franchise’s most memorable villains. Raul tricks the game’s heroes, so that Frank Woods kills Alex Mason.
Alex’s death was also shocking, because he was the playable character in the first two Call of Duty Black Ops games. Treyarch definitely set this up as a shocking moment that would shake up the franchise, but we didn’t quite really feel the consequences of these events.
That’s partly because in Call of Duty Black Ops 4, Alex is mysteriously brought back to life, in a strange set of circumstances involving a new faction, called Project Blackout. These events may have served the gameplay of that sequel, but it gave fans this notion that whether Alex really died or not doesn’t matter.
But with this arrangement, we’re looking at a world where a paralyzed Frank Woods has to live with the knowledge he had killed Alex, and now has to train new soldiers who should replace them both. This new game also exists in a world that has been irrevocably damaged by Raul Menendez, and that informs this world of subterfuge, where you can’t trust the US government itself.
But above all else, setting Call of Duty Black Ops 6 in this timeframe also allows Treyarch to add even more to the backstory for the Call of Duty Black Ops universe. They could make use of this to share even more story details that we weren’t aware of when the previous Call of Duty Black Ops games came out.
What is the true nature of the international invasion for Call of Duty Black Ops 6? Does everything that happens here connect back to Raul Menendez, or are there ‘new’ enemies that we will learn about for the first time with this title? The answers to these questions may demonstrate why Call of Duty Black Ops 6 ended up being one of the biggest games in the franchise, with the longest development of its recent titles.
