30 Days Until Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 isn’t the same thing you’ve seen before. On top of familiar modes and mechanics we’ve all come to associate with the franchise, developer Treyarch’s attempting to create the most ambitious Call of Duty to date, and they’re willing to radically alter core parts of the game’s design to accomplish this. Within weeks we’ll be jumping into the future and the past, fighting our way through a world on the brink. 30 days from now we’ll finally be playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

We’re excited to get our mitts on Black Ops 2 for a few reasons. First and foremost is the sheer scale of its production. When it comes to games, Call of Duty is synonymous with big-budget production, and Treyarch’s spared no expense in creating the next Black Ops. When their sound design team needed to record the sound of a falling car they didn’t simulate it, they bought a car, rented a crane and dropped it to the ground. When they decided they wanted to make Black Ops 2 the best Call of Duty narrative yet they teamed up with screenwriter David Goyer, who created Heath Ledger’s Joker, to give it some extra punch. They also didn’t pursue an overly sci-fi take on the future of warfare, but instead worked with military advisers and scholars like P.W. Singer in order to paint a dishearteningly plausible take on the way wars may be fought within our own lifetime.