Forced to Go Rogue. Hunted from Within.
Welcome to Black Ops 6, releasing worldwide on Friday, October 25.
Developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6 is a spy action thriller set in the early 1990s, a period of transition and upheaval in global politics, characterized by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the United States as a single superpower. With a mind-bending narrative, and unbound by the rules of engagement, this is signature Black Ops.
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Initial Intel: Campaign: The Black Ops 6 Campaign takes players to a new point in time – the early 1990s. In true Black Ops fashion, the fictional story builds on the history of the time, thrusting you into a strange and clandestine conspiracy where a shadowy force has infiltrated the U.S. government. Anyone who resists is branded as a traitor, forcing players to go rogue for the first time to fight the very machine that created them. Nothing is what it seems, and the truth may be hard to fathom, drawing you ever deeper into intrigue, distrust, and mind-bending psychological revelations. This is true, signature Black Ops style.
Initial Intel: Multiplayer: Offering a massive amount of content at launch, expect 16 brand new Multiplayer maps on Day One, including 12 Core 6v6 maps and four small-sized Strike maps, the latter of which are unique, stand-alone locations designed to be played in 2v2 or 6v6 matches. Multiplayer is also where you’ll test your skills and learn how to move like an action hero, with innovations like Omnimovement – allowing you to sprint, slide and dive in any direction – as well as Intelligent Movement (sprinting, mantling, and crouch assists allowing you to focus on achieving incredible and complex maneuvers with ease), increased enemy hit zones, an incredible lineup of gear, HUD optimizations, and the return of Theater Mode and Classic Prestige!
All designed to ensure this game is the ultimate Black Ops Multiplayer experience.
Initial Intel: Round-Based Zombies: Black Ops 6 also marks the epic return of Round-Based Zombies, the fan-favorite mode where players will take down hordes of the undead. Expect two brand-new maps at launch, and an impressive number of secrets to discover.
Ready to immerse yourself in the clandestine world of Black Ops 6? Watch the Black Ops 6 Direct, then read on:
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Campaign: Detailed Briefing
Development on the Black Ops 6 Campaign is led by Raven Software, in partnership with Treyarch. Following the events of Black Ops Cold War, expect a dynamic and intense spy thriller, a mind-bending story where you’re never sure who to trust, and what is real, all set against the backdrop of the early 1990s. With the Campaign taking place in the years after the Cold War, longtime fans will recognize that this timeframe is directly connected to the 1980s flashbacks revealed during Black Ops 2 – the aftermath of which has left our heroes in dire circumstances.
The Black Ops 6 Campaign takes place at a time of great change and turmoil. The Soviet Union was crumbling after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. The US was the only remaining Superpower. The Gulf War dominated headlines. There was a growing mistrust in government – reflected everywhere across the music, television, and pop culture of the time.
A tangled web of illicit activities, clandestine operations, and off-the-record missions, all part of a gripping narrative where you never quite know who to trust. This is the return of Black Ops.
Rogue Elements: Campaign CharactersBlack Ops 6 blends the rich and gritty history of previous Black Ops titles with both returning and bold new characters – and veteran Frank Woods acts as the through-line in our story. Across the Campaign, we see a different side of Woods following his traumatic injury at the hands of Raul Menendez. He’s been pulled from the field, and you’ll interact with him as he adjusts to a new role within the CIA.
His protege is Troy Marshall, who has been making a name for himself in the field. Marshall is a methodical leader, driven by a strong moral compass. With a single-minded focus in overcoming adversity and a stubborn streak that can sometimes border on recklessness, it isn’t surprising that Woods and Marshall share common ground. Both men are working with another new face in Black Ops 6, CIA handler, Jane Harrow. She is a born leader, fearless and brilliant, and helps manage their relationships within the agency.
Woods’ ability to operate in the shadows has always been hugely valuable to the CIA – whether they want to admit it or not. Meanwhile, Marshall can make tough calls in the field, as Harrow trusts him implicitly. However, when an operation goes wrong, Woods and Marshall are suspended and ultimately forced to go rogue….
They soon realize they must trust each other to get to the bottom of what’s going on, and this must be done without any of their usual resources. They must build their own team of rogue agents, recruiting two intriguing new characters in Felix Neumann, a technical genius, and Sevati Dumas, a mysterious assassin.
With a mixture of new and familiar faces, a legendary wildcard also returns to the fight – the infamous Russell Adler is back! While his allegiances and motivations remain unclear, this former ally may have become a new and daunting enemy.
Areas of Operations and Encounters
Mission variety is a key component in the twisted, covert world of Black Ops 6. Raven Software has created individual missions from the ground up, with each one also offering diverse methods in the way you approach and execute them.
For example, one mission involves you infiltrating an old sewer system underneath an opulent casino in southern Europe, and these catacombs are one of many locations that are more ideal for stealth, where only the muffled yells or crumpled falls of the enemy can be heard, before you tactically reposition topside to pull off an audacious heist in the casino itself. Other areas are more appropriate for large-scale battles, such as a full-force assault on a palace in the Iraqi desert.
Within every mission, the Black Ops 6 Campaign focuses on the methods you can employ to achieve victory as well as replayability, giving you the freedom to navigate through them as you see fit. This naturally extends to combat, but even affects the conversations you have, as operatives talk, barter, and manipulate their way into a variety of different outcomes, some drastically different and dependent on the choices you previously made.
These outcomes can also change depending on how you utilize and interact with the abundance of environmental obstacles. Black Ops 6 leans into the time period with era-specific interactions and equipment, from lock-picking and computer hacking to keypad code-solving and other puzzles to ponder.
This extends to the impressive collection of gadgets from the early 1990s, along with the Campaign-specific tactical and lethal equipment you can choose, always with the option to ramp up (or de-escalate) the action. Expect several brand-new items as well as some returning favorites from the Black Ops universe: the classic RC-XD (Remote-Controlled Explosive Device) is back, for when you need to cause an isolated explosion from a miniature four-wheeler. Or perhaps you want to drop a Tranquilizer Trap that chokes a foe out when they step near it. Then there’s the Adrenaline Stim for unexpectedly brutal takedown encounters. Drop an enemy with more than just an expert throw thanks to the Homing Knife. Or paralyze them in arcs of electrical discharge after lobbing in the Disruptor weapon.
These few examples give you an initial understanding of the depth of gameplay the Campaign offers. But where does the Rogue Black Ops team go to ground, between these missions?
Welcome to the Manor
Your central base of operations between each Campaign mission is a remote and rambling manor house perched atop a granite cliff, overlooking a brooding, choppy ocean. This impressive edifice offers more exploration and character development opportunities than the Berlin Safehouse where you met during Black Ops Cold War. Intriguingly, the Safehouse itself has a secret history; it formerly served as a KGB Black Site which was operational during the 1950s and 60s, vacated some 30 years prior to your team’s arrival.
As the wind and waves batter against the stone walls of this stately mansion, you and your clandestine team have the run of the place. Step into the gardens for a spot of target practice, uncover secrets hidden in some of the mothballed rooms, and ensure you receive a briefing from the ever-acerbic Master Sergeant Frank Woods, who resides here after receiving serious injuries in the field.
After mansion explorations are complete, you’ll usually head toward the Evidence Board – last seen in Black Ops Cold War – now upgraded with additional intel and mission briefings integral to the Safehouse. Here players can view the Campaign Outline, gain deeper insights into missions, and analyze evidence collected throughout past operations. It’s at the Evidence Board where the tactical planning occurs, as you piece together the puzzles within the storyline, before deciding on your best course of action.
Multiplayer and More: Detailed Briefing
Multiplayer is a key ingredient in the DNA of Black Ops, and the frenetic, action-hero style of play is central to the series. For Black Ops 6, every single part of the Multiplayer gameplay experience has been innovated upon, from movement to weapon firing, footsteps, progression systems, takedowns, and more.
Across our weapons, gear, Operators, maps and every other aspect of the game, a huge push has been to hit the highest visual and audio fidelity possible to allow full immersion.
Many of these features also span across the entire content offering – Campaign, Multiplayer and Zombies – and one of the biggest innovations is Omnimovement, where long-established FPS constructs have been removed, allowing you to maneuver much more realistically, and unlocking a level of fluidity and fun that has never been reached before in a Black Ops game.
Omnimovement
With Black Ops 6, Treyarch is redefining movement across the entire game. That all starts with an entirely new global system called Omnimovement.
For the first time ever, players can sprint, slide, and dive in any direction (forward, sidestepping, and backpedaling) and move like a true Black Ops action hero. This innovation immediately allows the player to move like never before and seamlessly chain combat maneuvers together, like sliding, diving and a newly enhanced supine prone, all with a full 360 degrees range of motion.
During development, Treyarch asked “What if you could sprint in any direction?”
If you can sprint in any direction, then it logically follows that you can slide and dive in any direction, too. This opened a world of new movement options. With a simple – and extremely engaging – prototype up and running, the team instantly knew this was much more than a modest improvement to the way you maneuver your Operator in combat:
This has been something that changes how you think and play the game.
With Omnimovement – and core player movement in general – it’s not just about making the player move faster, or tweaking how long it takes before you can slide cancel. This is a holistic approach to redefine what Black Ops 6 movement really means.
Intelligent Movement
Omnimovement isn’t the only movement innovation coming to Black Ops 6. There’s a new set of features known as Intelligent Movement, which is designed to drastically reduce how many buttons or keys you’re pressing to perform various movements.
The spark of the idea behind Intelligent Movement was wanting players to focus on what they wanted to achieve with movement, rather than how to achieve it. Every player, regardless of skill level, input, or experience with Call of Duty, can engage in Omnimovement and become an action hero in Black Ops 6. There are three categories that you can enable (or disable) in the Player Options: