With Call Of Duty: Black Ops, Treyarch Fell Into The Rabbit Hole And Never Got Out

As GameSpot’s Black Ops review described, “The blurry edges of your consciousness conceal information that must come to light, and the erratic visual effects and eerie audio echoes that accompany your interrogations sometimes bleed into your mission memories, which creates a great tone of uncertainty that plays out in surprising and satisfying ways.”

The narrative shifts between different characters, taking us through sequences like a bloody prison break from a gulag and brutal missions in the jungles of Vietnam, weaving an intricate story of paranoia and political intrigue. Plot twists are abundant, and all threads eventually converge for an explosive finale.

Black Ops takes the Michael Bay action movie sensibilities of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare campaigns while fitting them into the molds of political thrillers like The Manchurian Candidate. Previous Call of Duty games drew clear visual inspirations from World War II movies such as Saving Private Ryan and Enemy at the Gates. Similarly, Black Ops took notes from Vietnam War films, including Apocalypse Now and Platoon, with one sequence essentially lifting the famous Russian roulette scene from The Deer Hunter.

But despite its setting and the incorporation of real-life figures, Black Ops lacks a meaningful message about Cold War politics. It offers no critiques or insight on the powerful people pulling the strings–John F. Kennedy is just the guy who gives you your mission, and Fidel Castro is a “bad guy” for you to kill. And the story doesn’t engage with the atrocities of the Vietnam War–instead, the Vietnam setting is just another opportunity for you to shoot nameless expendables.

The campaign, which includes story contributions from The Dark Knight writer David S. Goyer, is filled with gratuitous violence, over-the-top slow-motion action, and idiotic clichéd moments like a character dramatically donning his sunglasses indoors before an electric guitar riff plays. It is ultimately a thrilling theme park ride themed on the 1960s, with historical figures as its animatronic figures to sell the illusion.

Even so, the Black Ops campaign was a bold shift for Treyarch and the Call of Duty series. While Infinity Ward and fellow Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games have jumped around different subseries and stories within the franchise, Treyarch has stuck to the Black Ops storyline ever since, launching its seventh Black Ops entry this month.

With each subsequent Black Ops game, Treyarch doubled down on the twist-filled and complex nature of its narratives. Black Ops 3 in particular went off the deep end, with an incomprehensible story involving cybernetic neural interfaces and nanotechnology. With 2020’s Black Ops Cold War, the subseries returned to its roots, featuring a back-to-basics espionage thriller story that involved brainwashing and a brief appearance by Ronald Reagan. And now with Black Ops 7, the series is heading back to the far-flung future for a campaign full of trippy, mind-bending visuals.

I haven’t even gotten a moment to touch on Black Ops’ multiplayer modes, which were chock-full of fun new features like the top-down Smash TV-inspired Dead Ops Arcade, the franchise’s first theater mode, customizable emblems and weapons (novelties that disappeared in future installments), and compelling Wager Matches with modes like One in the Chamber and Gun Game.

Whereas Treyarch used to build on Infinity Ward’s work, the other Call of Duty studios have since taken cues from Treyarch’s work on Black Ops. By expanding on the Zombies mode from World at War for Black Ops, Treyarch established the Easter egg-filled cooperative mode as an essential third pillar for Call of Duty moving forward, even being included in non-Treyarch entries like Infinite Warfare, WWII, and Modern Warfare 3. And in Infinite Warfare, Infinity Ward actually utilized the wall-running and boost-jumping movement system from Black Ops 3, in a rare case of role reversal between Infinity Ward and Treyarch.

It’s worth noting that Black Ops 1 released during a tumultuous time for the franchise–in between the release of the 2009 blockbuster hit Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, Activision dismissed the studio heads of Infinity Ward, leading to litigation and an exodus of employees from the studio. It would take years for Infinity Ward to rebuild, requiring assistance from Sledgehammer Games for Modern Warfare 3 and absorbing fellow Activision studio Neversoft while making Call of Duty: Ghosts. Whether Treyarch aimed to or not, the studio proved with Black Ops that it could fill the void left by Infinity Ward, and it’s just as capable of putting out a game-changing entry in the franchise.

Call of Duty: Black Ops will be remembered for bringing us Nuketown, the numbers, and Frank Woods, all permanently etched in the tapestry of Call of Duty’s larger history. But more than anything, Black Ops 1 should be admired for throwing more at the wall than any Call of Duty game that would follow.