Since all previous Call of Duty games were set in the past, they set players up against human opponents (for the most part—we did have the zombies in the first Black Ops game). One thing which we didn’t have in the past was opponents which weren’t human at all, undead or otherwise. In Black Ops 2 we’ll be up against a lot of opponents which are made of metal. Machines on the ground and in the air are going to be a huge part of the new game.
“The drones are a great example of how we’re able to leverage the fiction for entirely new gameplay. You can fly the drones and fight with them,” said Mark Lamia, Treyarch studio boss. “You can play with robots on the ground. It also allows you a good demonstration of what it’s like to fight against some of that technology that’s on the battlefield. In gameplay terms, we spent a lot of time having you fight against humans, now there are these robots and drones which have different strategies to taking them out.”
Director David Anthony was asked in another interview whether he thought that robotic targets would be less engaging to gamers than human targets. After all, shooting at human targets is a more visceral experience in many ways; being human ourselves, it’s something which we can relate to. Anthony responded that everyone who had tested the game so far was totally engaged with the robotic enemies, which presented a new and interesting challenge to the gamer.