Call of Duty: Black Ops is often more overtly gung-ho and violent than Modern Warfare and other Call of Duty series. But for every Michael Bay-style blockbuster moment there are flashes of betrayal, psychological warfare, and plenty of undercover operations that skirt the grey zones of morality. But, of the 50-plus campaign missions across the Black Ops series, which is the best?
IGN sat down with senior Call of Duty Black Ops developers to ask them what their favorite campaigns are from across the entire Call of Duty: Black Ops franchise. Have your favorite missions made the cut?
Vorkuta (Call of Duty: Black Ops)
One of the most popular Call of Duty: Black Ops campaigns among the development team is Vorkuta. Three separate, senior Call of Duty devs named Vorkuta as their favorite campaign in the whole series, and for good reason.
A key mission in the very first Call of Duty: Black Ops, Vorkuta sees hero Mason attempt a daring escape from the Soviet labor camp of Vorkuta in 1963. The ensuing great escape sees Mason fleeing through the mines while fellow prisoners are dying alongside him and it culminates in an explosive motorcycle chase. As a single mission, it’s packed with action and heartbreak.
“It’s the great escape from the mine and the motorcycle chase,” says expert level designer and Nuketown creator Adam Hoggatt on why Vorkuta sticks with him after all these years.
“Vorkuta is an obvious choice,” says Raven Software lead audio designer Jake Harley. “It’s just an incredibly memorable map. Reznov leading you out from the mine, the sacrifices of the other Russian prisoners pushing the mine carts as you’re taking cover behind them. It was just an epic map that was full of a lot of action and big moments.”
“It had a lot of strong narrative and gameplay beat changes from beginning to end, especially the escape on the motorcycle. But I’m a big motorcycle guy…” adds Raven Software lead designer Damon Shubhastari.
Rebirth (Call of Duty: Black Ops)
Another popular campaign mission cited by multiple Call of Duty developers is Rebirth, also from the first Black Ops game. This mission, where a big plot twist reveals the character Reznov was actually a figment of your mind the entire time, highlighted Black Ops’ psychological thriller themes. The mission set the whole tone for the twisty, grimy world of the Black Ops in the years to come.
“That moment when you realize that Mason and Reznov are one and that Reznov was actually dead and in Mason’s mind is such an ‘Oh my god,’ moment,” says Treyarch associate creative director Miles Leslie. “It really cemented what Blacks Ops is internally, and you could feel that in the studio when we were developing it… I’d walk over to the team making it and we would talk [about Rebirth and I would just go], ‘you’re blowing my mind.’”
Judgment Day (Call of Duty: Black Ops 2)
Another of Leslie’s favorite missions is Judgment Day from Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. A tense assault on a secret Haitian facility led by Mason, this operation eventually culminates in a player choice on whether to kill the game’s primary antagonist — Menendez — or capture him alive. The player’s choice determines which ending the player gets.
“I have fond memories of people [asking me],’ Oh, you killed Menendez? How could you do that? That’s not the way,’” recalls Leslie who’d respond by adamantly explaining that Menendez “had to die.”
“It was really cool that even internally we would have these debates on the branching story,” Leslie adds.
Break on Through (Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War)
The branching paths would become a staple of the Black Ops series, with player choices leading to different scenarios. Take Break on Through, a mission from the recent Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, as an example. Unable to get the location of a nuclear bomb, Russell Adler drugs the player in the hope psychoactive chemicals will uncover the hidden location. The drug trip that ensues forces Bell to either obey or disobey Adler through a series of drug-fueled scenarios.
While the drug-fuelled interrogation was an exhilarating experience, Treyarch lead game designer Joanna Leung says that the level’s repeated use of the red doors to teleport the player through different vision quests was a personal highlight, having worked on a similar mechanic for the multiplayer map, ‘Deprogram’.
In Darkness (Call of Duty: Black Ops 3)
Treyarch senior level designer Matt Coutras fondly remembers the first campaign he worked on when he joined the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 development team.
“It was called ‘In Darkness’ and it takes place in Singapore during a bad storm. Singapore is partially destroyed and it was a cool location to go through,” he says. But as a designer, the real challenge with In Darkness for Coutras was how the map integrated the four-player co-op and how the large map allowed multiple players to explore different parts of Singapore. “You have a bunch of cool locations — from docs to a flooded subway to a downtown space.”
Brick in the Wall (Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War)
One of the first missions developed for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and a favorite mission of audio designer Jake Harley, is Brick in the Wall, a spy-thriller stealth mission where Bell and his associates hunt down one of Perseus’ men in East Berlin, meeting with informants and sneaking past Stasi guards in the process.
“I love stealth missions to begin with and I really liked seeing how the team brought East Berlin to life and just sneaking through the ghost tunnels. It was a really cool experience.”
Karma (Call of Duty: Black Ops 2)
One mission in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 called Karma sees the player entering an opulent club and fighting on the dance floor with dubstep blaring in the background.
“As an audio person, that was so cool to me and memorable,” says Harley, who says Karma is his second favorite campaign mission behind only the crowd favorite, Vorkuta.
Those are the favorite Call of Duty Black Ops campaigns according to the developers. Let us know what your favorite Call of Duty Black Ops campaigns are in the comments and keep an eye out for all the latest updates on Call of Duty Black Ops 6 right here on IGN.
Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.