When Black Ops 2 was first unveiled, Treyarch touted mission non-linearity, allowing players to essentially fail missions but continue playing through the campaign.
Today, Treyarch's director of communications John Rafacz explained to NowGamer that the game wouldn't have the kind of non-linearity that one would expect from an RPG. Rather, your mission successes and failures would be tabulated at the end of the game and you would be presented with the results of your actions.
"Those success and failures are catalogued so that – at the conclusion of your single player experience – if you have succeeded at all your Strike Force levels, you will have a different geo-political 'wrapper' around the conclusion of your game," said Rafacz.
"This wrapper would be different than the one I would have seen if I played through and failed all of my Strike Force missions. Now, succeed or fail, if you want to go back and replay them, or choose different Strike Force missions, you can do that."
In other words, the endings would be much like the Fallout series' slideshows, which depicted the outcome of your actions.