Scott Tortorice
Senior Member
Dave Thier, a contributor to Forbes, gets it:
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Is One of the Best Told Stories in Videogames
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Is One of the Best Told Stories in Videogames
Erik Kain, also a contributor to Forbes (and I believe a rising star in the world of VG journalism), had this to say:Call of Duty is bad because it takes place in a corridor. Call of Duty is bad because there is little player choice. Call of Duty is bad because people buy it and they should know better. Black Ops 2 is a tired rehash of everything that came before and Activision should be ashamed.
These arguments float around the Internet every year, at about this time, because Call of Duty is an annualized franchise and this is also bad. Like social games, Call of Duty became very popular and so it became accepted knowledge that this was because it is terrible. I see where those arguments come from, but I just can’t get behind them – nearly every year, Call of Duty proves that it’s one of the only franchises that knows how to tell a tight, effective story on the level of more established media.
But all told, as far as the stories in Call of Duty games go, this was one of the most interesting I’ve seen. There are a handful (but only a very small handful) of choices the player can make, and these choices can lead to different outcomes at the end of the game.
I only played through the campaign once, so I’m not privy to the alternate endings yet, but my ending was pretty good actually. Very dark.