" The assumption that seeing is believing makes us susceptible to visual deceptions "
- Kathleen Hall Jamieson
I choose this particular quote because a) quotes always look good at the start of things and b) Kathleen Jamieson works for a non profit that deals with examining the factual accuracy of political campaign adverts in the good old Us of A so felt it was rather apt. Now don't worry this is about as high brow intellectually as the rest of this blog is going to get.
So last night the with hardly any fanfare whatsoever Activision dropped the latest Call of duty game's "reveal" trailer so you all probably missed it. Now lets be clear here I'm happy to sit in a circle of my peers and stand up and say "Hi, my names Maccabi and I'm a CoD fanboi" so understandably I was a tad excited (understatement) especially after the release of the wet firework that is MW3.
If I'm honest in my opinion 2012 isn't likely to go down in gaming history as one of CoD's best vintages. If someone gave me the option of playing Mw3 or singing the star spangled banner on the 50 yard line at half time at the super bowl, suffering with a rectal prolapse whilst wearing a mankini...the chances are I'd already be at "and the rocket's red glare,the bombs bursting in air" by the time you read this. So like many others for the last week I have mentally been repeating the mantra of please G-d let this next game be better. So is it? well we got a reveal trailer lets see...
So CoD is a game that appeals to a massively wide audience this has always been one of it's strongest selling points, the downside to this is in appealing to such a wide audience at times is so everyone understands stuff you have to market stuff so even those of you who are forced to stick an "L" and a "R" in the insoles of their shoes.."get it". It's a simple formula year in year out, teasers are released, single player trailer is released, snippets of information leak out, multiplayer trailer is released, trailer with Micheal bay type editing and soundtrack with the "in" music cacophony of the year *read wubwub* is released ... and then we get the finished game. With elements shock horror some of us might not like as much as others (or in the case of mw3) all of us hate *cough death streaks*.
/commence rant
Which is why every year without fail, within 30 seconds of the single player trailer the interwebz is awash with comments about every aspect of the game based off this one 2 minute long single player trailer. The then what I'd term bottom feeder "news" sites then start churning out their latest headline "exclusive" confirmed? article containing anything that sounds remotely feasible and assumptions which are usually based on some nobody on twitter who hash tagged #blackops2 . This is usually followed by the video onslaught of dissection videos, dissection videos of youtube starz dissections ..who also jumped on the bandwagon early and uploaded the reveal trailer just in case anyone managed to miss the bazallion links to the official trailer., speculation videos where every other word is " possibly " and suddenly even the most far out theories ring true because *insert famous youtube starz name here* said it.
So just like every year there's actually a lot of real genuine, bone fide straight from the horses (no not THOSE horses yet) mouth FACTS. I will link to some of these at the end so you can compare notes with your tinfoil hat wearing peers. As an experiment I have trawled through the official CoD forums, a few gaming sites and read some of the comments and posts made since last night and have come to the conclusion as I said on twitter earlier "never underestimate the CoD communities ability to base assumptions of every aspect of the game off of a two minute single player trailer."
So what did I learn ?,well a lot of the people with access to the Internet are basically cretins. Blackops2 has zombie robot horses as kill streaks that fire pew pew lasers as the game is set so far into the future that even Halo is considered ancient history. Every single vehicle, palm tree and horse in the single player trailer are now "possible?" kill streaks in multiplayer, and Activision have created skynet in a desperate attempt to knock EA off the top spot for worst company in America. *inserts humorous facepalm meme which may or may not involve a cat in the general direction of anyone who posted this stuff*.
So its in the future.. oh sorry the "near" future, given that a year ago I'd scoff at someone who said they needed more than 4 gigs of ram in their home computer I'd say technology is moving along at a pretty fast pace. So Blackops2 is set thirteen years from now. Basically everything I saw in that trailer is already out there in one prototype form or another, so it's looking like a pretty accurate "near" future to me. If in thirteen years from now we are all flying around in a Jetsons like utopia where pew pew laser robot zombie horses are the norm. Then feel free to look me up and berate me for challenging your assumption that the future regardless of what the advert said, is not Orange . But actually looks like the opening scenes of a Terminator film but with added zombie robot horses that trundle around mumbling "hayyyyyyyyy hayyyyyyyyyy". If you ask me the "near" future is liable to be basically like the world is today with a slightly better wifi signel in starbucks and we'll still looking out of our windows at a torrential downpour wondering why the hell we'd get fined if we turned on our hosepipe.
Tankosaruas (©Maccabi and twotoetimmy 2012) .. its basically big trak with a gun people, big trak came out in the eighties I know i had one as a kid, I also have a remote control helicopter that fires little nerf darts.. This isnt in the realms of Ridley Scotesque sci fi people, this sort of stuff is easily possible nowadays. Hell I'm really privileged in my job to see cutting edge military technology on a weekly basis, hell back home we deploy robot snakes, snakes people ...snakes.. seriously your worried about a poxy horse.???
Trust me this stuff isn't liable to make Arthur C. Clarke rise from his grave and say fuck me that's some futuristic shit right there. I swear if I see one more Halo or starcraft comparison today ...
So There's horses big whoop de doo , if you noticed there was also a technical /pick up truck in that scene, guess what mid 80's Mujaheddin weren't really that blessed with a lot of transportation choices you people should feel lucky we even got horses it could have easily been flipping donkeys or goats dont believe me go watch Rambo 2 (which was filmed in part in Israel YES!!! i got an Israel reference in again) .. and do you have any idea how effing hard it is to motion capture a horse??? give 3arch some bloody credit there at least.
Sure it's fun to speculate (although I'd avoid day trading in the current financial climate) but please CoD community get some sense of perspective people go watch the reveal trailer again and this time do it with a post it note stuck to the corner of your screens which a message saying "this is the SINGLE PLAYER". You may find suddenly the future isn't as scary as you think.
3arch have some of the most innovative and creative minds in the business, personally whatever the future holds it's in safe hands. Let's all just kick back buy a ticket and enjoy the ride 3arch is sending us on.There won't be any more second chances if it fails. (cwutididthur)
*Footnote My views on mw3 are based on its current state, knowing what is coming up in the title updates ect I am willing to give it one more go at some point. oh and i honestly dont actually own a mankini in case you';re wondering.
Actual real fact link time!
Polygon have the lead in articles if you ask me so here's theirs
and although im off his chunkah card list (some people will get this joke)
Activisions own blogger Mr Dan Amrich (oneofswords) covers everything you could possible need to know about what has been revealed and i would assume given his track record will update this on a regular basis.
/end rant
mumbles something about Blackops 2 running off a 3arch made engine and not mw3's and wanders off in the sunset rather awkwardly due to the rectally challenged placement of his head ...to await numerous tweets pointing out numerous spelling mistakes.
