This article titled “Call of Duty: Black Ops – Josh Olin interview” was written by Jack Arnott, for theguardian.com on Monday 20th September 2010 11.17 UTCA couple of weeks ago I got the chance to have a sit-down with Treyarch community manager Josh Olin and talk about their forthcoming Call of Duty release, Black Ops. Despite suffering from some London-induced allergies, he revealed a few things gamers can look forward to from the single-player campaign, and told me how the studio have handled the pressure of following “the biggest entertainment release of all time”.
For the uninitiated, could you introduce the basic premise behind Black Ops?
Black Ops takes place during the cold war, though it’s not about the cold war but about our own fictional story. The Vietnam sequences aren’t about the Vietnam war; you aren’t a regular soldier fighting in the Vietnam war, you’re in those regions specifically for an objective that has to do with our story. We’ve put a lot of focus into story; great storytelling and narrative, deep character development, complex story arcs so, rest assured, not wanting to spoil it by revealing plot details but it was a major focus for our studio with this project.
Why the cold war?
We wanted to stick to the philosophy of providing a variety of fresh new experiences to the player, so this era was perfect for that. It was a worldwide conflict so we could go anywhere we wanted to around the globe, it was a long era, so we had a variety of different weaponry at our disposal. These ‘deniable operations’, these Black Ops missions, these are the things that you haven’t heard about, that history hasn’t taught us, so it really allowed us a lot of creative freedom.
How did you research the period?
We talked to advisers like Major John Plaster, he was actually from SOG, the study and observations group, he’s a veteran of that group in Vietnam, and he was able to tell us stories that inspired a lot of our gameplay. We also talked to Sonny Puzikas, a former Russian Spetsnaz operative, so he was able to tell us about the Russian Black Ops and how that differed from ours.
How has your studio changed since the last time you worked on a Call of Duty game?
Two years ago we made Call of Duty World at War, which was a great title I think, popular in the community. That year we shipped three titles though, World at War, James Bond Quantum of Solace and Spider-man Web of Shadows. Working on three titles as a small studio hadn’t allowed us the resources and focus we always wanted to give the Call of Duty brand.
After those three games shipped, we refocused all of our studio efforts to work exclusively on Call of Duty. We had a core team that stuck around to do DLC for World at War, but the bulk of the team moved on to work on Black Ops. Now it’s been all hands on deck since the DLC wrapped in 2009, we’re all focused on Black Ops. That’s allowed us the resources we’ve never had before.
We have over 250 employees working at Treyarch, and they’re all working on this one game. It’s allowed us to have a dedicated single player team for the campaign, a dedicated multiplayer team for online, and a dedicated co-op team, all working in parallel with each other.
With World at War our multiplayer was developed after single-player was finished, so the process now is completely different. Each core element has had an entire development team-sized worth of staff working on it; they’ve been able to put a lot more focus and attention without having to be distracted by the other components of the game. It’s like three games in one with Black Ops.
What are the main differences gamers will notice between Black Ops and last year’s Call of Duty release?
The first thing they’re going to notice is the different era, the cold war era, but I think the biggest difference is that with Black Ops you have the cinematic intensity that the players have come to expect from a COD game, but what you’re also getting in telling a great story and having a great game is that the game is paced properly. We’ve put a tremendous amount of focus into the pacing of Call of Duty: Black Ops. So it’s not just white-knuckle edge-of-your-seat action the entire way through; you’d feel exhausted and it would get monotonous.
Black Ops offers stealth sections, survival horror-like sections. These build tension – making your next action sequence all the more satisfying. There’s also storytelling going on in these sections too, they help you get an idea of how lethal and exacting and precise these SOG members are, these guys are the best of the best, the most lethal special ops force in the world at the time. Those were the two purposes of the quieter sequences.
What was the most satisfying thing you could do with Black Ops that you couldn’t do with World at War?
That’s like choosing which one of your children is your favourite. It would depend which team-member you spoke to. Single-player guys would probably mention the performance capture we were able to use which James Cameron used in the creation of Avatar. We used a very similar technique as him and actually went to the same motion-capture studio in Los Angeles where parts of that movie were filmed; the ‘House of Dreams’ it was called.
Full-motion capture is a new technology that allows us to record the motions, the acting, the body movements and facial animations all in one take. It allows the actor to put himself into the character – you can see the character breathe on screen for example – and rather than piece all those parts together where it may be out of sync, everything is perfectly synchronised making the characters seem more natural and you feel a real connection with them on screen.
The multiplayer and co-op guys have been able to develop some great new modes and features with the extra resources they didn’t have before [you may want to see Keith’s posts for more info on the multiplayer mode].
Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty releases were obviously very successful. What did you think were the strengths and weaknesses of the Modern Warfares?
We looked at all the games in the franchise when we were pulling in our inspiration; we looked at feedback from the community, seeing what people are saying on the forums. For us though, storytelling is very important. We’ve believed in good storytelling since World at War.
We didn’t necessarily have the time and resources during World at War to develop the story as much as we’d have liked to, but this time with Black Ops the gloves are off – we’re all-in with this one – so it’s going to be a very complex narrative, lots of highs and lows, twists and turns.
We walk that fine line between complex and confusing, we don’t want to make a confusing game as we never want a player to not know what’s going on. We firmly come down on the complex side of it; players that do want a good story, that don’t just want a simple “good guy, bad guy, kill him” story, they will be satisfied.
You’ve spoken a lot about storytelling and one thing many people found disorientating about Modern Warfare 2 was the constant jumping between characters. Does something similar happen in Black Ops?
You’ll control multiple characters. You’ll have a voice for the first time, and every character in our game has a distinct voice and a distinct visual appearance. A ton of effort’s gone into character development, that’s going to help the immersion and storytelling we’re trying to achieve with Black Ops.
Because you’ll be playing as different characters it seemed natural to give the player his own voice for the first time – you’ll be able to hear yourself speaking lines. That’s something that’s new to the franchise, it’s important to us that if you’re playing a badass character you know what he sounds like.
The controversial No Russian garnered Modern Warfare 2 a great deal of media coverage and attention. Are there any moments you think people could react as strongly to in Black Ops?
There may be some controversial moments, but nothing is done gratuitously. Anything we put in our games is meant to further the immersion, further the plot in some way, plucking an emotional string of the player. We’ve always believed in free speech, we are making a mature game for mature audiences.
Was it a conscious decision to ramp up the gore in Black Ops?
We’ve always had that kind of gore, it was in World at War, limbs would be blown off, that’s something Treyarch’s always been keen on and we’re continuing with Black Ops.
Aside from previous Call of Duty games, what influences did you draw upon?
Too many to list but any shooter we’ve looked at. We’re big gamers at Treyarch and we play all kinds of games. We’re not just influenced by games but movies, books, the military advisers we bring in – there are all sorts of contributing factors.
What’s it like having to follow such a hugely successful release?
The biggest entertainment release of all time – it’s definitely a huge act to follow. But that’s been the goal of every Call of Duty game frankly, to ratchet the bar up across the board, Black Ops is no different.
Refocusing our studio efforts on Black Ops almost two years ago was a big commitment, putting our money where our mouth was, saying the franchise was important to us and saying this is what it takes to take Call of Duty to the next level.
Call of Duty: Black Ops will be released on DS, PC, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 on 9 November
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