For the past handful of years, Black Ops has been increasingly—as our own Ted Litchfield put it—suffering from a case of 'Fortnitification'. That is, whatever core aesthetic identity it had is due to vanish into the hole of crossovers and garish skins. While there's been a quiet murmuring of fury from the community over these things, these games' developers must be making an absolute boatload of money, because the cruise liner's still chugging.
In the past year of Call of Duty games we've endured a pay-to-win Groot knockoff, Nicki Minaj, and a Fallout crossover. Black Ops 6, which released at the tail end of October, has been carrying on this new tradition by throwing demons, dragons, flaming skulls, a bong gun, and a catgirl into the mix. I'm actually less upset about that last one.
But why, fans might ask? Because it's fun, reply Black Ops 6's developers. No, really. In a recent interview with Dexerto, Treyarch's associate creative director, Miles Leslie, says it's all about cramming the most 'fun' into the game.
"Fun always comes first for us," Leslie states. "Of course, we want to stay grounded in the DNA that makes a Black Ops game unique when it comes to core gameplay, but we also like to break the rules if it’s going to maximize fun for players."
I'm not entirely sure what maximising my fun would look like, given the ephemeral nature of entertainment as a concept—one could make the very salient argument that this aesthetic 180 is, at best, fun for some players and a bummer for others. Some people don't want to see a half-dragon romping around their modern military shooter before getting shot dead and summarily t-bagged by a catgirl. I mean, I've got no skin in that particular game, but even I can tell when a shark is being jumped. There's actually a shark skin, by the way.
Still, Leslie insists, it's just a natural evolution of the kind of zaniness found in the ever-popular and longstanding CoD Zombies mode: "When it comes to cosmetics, the Black Ops series naturally lends itself to some pretty outlandish themes when you consider we’re the birthplace of Call of Duty Zombies, and all of the crazy mindf*ckery that comes with the storytelling in our games, so we like to have fun there too.
"The team has already delivered some of my all-time favorite Operator Skins, and we’re only in the first season." In the original article, this is posted above an operator wearing a giant plastic rubber duck mask.
You're not about to see Nicki Minaj guest-star in the game's campaign mode, though, Leslie promises: "The Campaign has a tightly defined cast of characters with an era-specific look to them that fits the story … This is something we take very seriously at the studio, and those who remember the continuing story with Stitch and Perseus throughout Black Ops Cold War’s seasons will know what I’m talking about. That doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with cosmetics along the way!"
So—there you have it. If you were yearning for those days where Call of Duty was just about gruff-looking guys doing cool war stuff, the great engine of microtransactional nonsense isn't fading any time soon. At least Hunt: Showdown is safe—wait, why is Ghost Face here? Post Malone? What are you doing in the 1890s? Aw, man.
