Call of Duty: Black Ops III

• 1. Introduction

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  Call of Duty: Black Ops III, the 2015 shooter from the studio Treyarch, was built by a team that once looked at its own progress and saw almost nothing. In March 2026, creative director Jason Blundell recalled that moment. When the developers regrouped, they had roughly nine to ten months to produce both the Campaign and the Zombies mode. He said the team "had nothing" at that point, and he called the finished game "a miracle".

  That admission raises several questions. What was the team trying to build before it regrouped, and what was thrown away? How does a futuristic soldier story end up where the hero may never have lived at all? Why did a marketing stunt on social media make the publisher apologize? And how did a game with such a rushed middle go on to fill shelves around the world? The answers begin with a plan that never shipped.

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• 2. The Scrapped Open World

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  According to the journalist Jason Schreier, Black Ops III was first meant to include an open-world campaign. That version was abandoned partway through production, and the reshuffle left employees in a period of crunch. It helps explain why the later schedule was so tight.

  The game also arrived inside a new rhythm for its publisher. Activision had moved to a three-year development cycle, and Black Ops III was only the second game to benefit from it. Advanced Warfare was the first. Under the old system, studios had two years. Now Infinity Ward, Treyarch and Sledgehammer Games each had three. The engine was a heavily modified version of the IW engine that Black Ops II had used.

  On the 9th of June 2015, Activision confirmed that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 editions were in the works. Those were handled by Beenox and Mercenary Technology rather than Treyarch. They were stripped down, with no campaign and without the later downloadable content. Because of the missing campaign, they included a digital copy of the original Black Ops and cost 10 dollars less than the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions. Reviewers were harsher on them. IGN's Brian Albert complained about the absent campaign, poor graphics and long waits, though he still found them fun. They turned out to be the last Call of Duty games on those consoles.

  Six days later, on the 15th of June 2015, a bigger business story broke. Activision announced a new arrangement with Sony Computer Entertainment. From Black Ops III onward, all downloadable content for future Call of Duty games would reach PlayStation platforms first. This ended a similar deal with Microsoft that went back to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Even before launch, the beta rollout showed the new alliance at work.

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• 3. The Player Who Died

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  On the 27th of October 2065, a black ops operative is flown into Ethiopia. The world is in the grip of a Third Cold War between two blocs, the Winslow Accord and the Common Defense Pact. The mission is to rescue the Egyptian Prime Minister and other hostages from the Nile River Coalition. It goes badly, and a combat robot leaves the player character critically wounded. A fellow operative named John Taylor, voiced by Christopher Meloni, saves them. The player receives emergency cybernetic surgery, including a direct neural interface, or DNI. Partner Jacob Hendricks volunteers for the same procedure.

  Five years of covert work follow. The player and Hendricks are then handed to a CIA handler, Rachel Kane, and sent to a CIA black site in Singapore. Someone has attacked it, and its data is gone. The crime syndicate 54 Immortals is involved. Kane suspects that Taylor's team defected and killed the staff. The trail leads to a Coalescence Corporation facility, ruined ten years earlier in a deadly explosion. There the pair find a hidden CIA laboratory. They also find that Sebastian Diaz, one of Taylor's teammates, has been leaking classified intelligence to the Common Defense Pact.

  Diaz's DNI exposes Taylor's aim. He is hunting the only two survivors of that explosion, the company's chief executive Sebastian Krueger and Dr. Yousef Salim. In Cairo, Salim confesses to illegal experiments in which he calmed subjects by making them picture a frozen forest. Taylor's team abducts him, and Taylor executes him. When the player later links into the DNI of teammate Sarah Hall, they meet Corvus. This is a gestalt intelligence, created during the experiments to watch the thoughts of DNI users. It malfunctioned, caused the original explosion and then infected Taylor's team. Its obsession with the forest then spread to the player and to Hendricks.

  The finale unfolds in Zürich, at Coalescence headquarters. Corvus has been storing Nova 6 gas there, the same substance tied to the Singapore blast. Kane is locked in a room and killed by the leaking gas. Hendricks takes Krueger hostage and kills him, and the player kills Hendricks in turn. Trying to end their own life to stop Corvus, the player lands in a simulated frozen forest. It is a kind of afterlife that Corvus built for dead DNI users. Taylor's consciousness appears there, urging the player to purge the interface. They do, and they escape.

  Then comes the twist. Taylor's mission reports reveal that the player actually died during the original surgery. Everything afterward until Taylor's death was a simulation. In reality, Taylor and Hendricks were hunting a defector named Dylan Stone and his team. The player's mind had been living inside Taylor's. When the purge erased Corvus and the player together, Taylor regained control of his own body. The story's second telling twists that reality again, in a mode that adds the dead.

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• 4. Nightmares Mode

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  Finishing every campaign mission unlocks a mode called Nightmares, which retells the whole story with a new narrative. In it, zombies replace most ordinary enemies. The player wakes up to be told by Dr. Salim that they are dead and must recount their memories. The player describes themselves as a Deadkiller, an Undead Exterminator whose cybernetic augments make them immune to Zombie infection.

  This version is set in 2070. Ten years earlier, a CIA weapon called Virus 61-15 had spread across the Earth. It combined two substances, the chemical Nova 6 and Element 115. The dead rose, and mutated creatures known as Parasites appeared. The player is sent to find out what happened to Taylor's Deadkiller team at a Singapore facility, the original outbreak point. There they and Hendricks learn that Taylor's team has used its DNI links to switch off Quarantine Zone defenses worldwide.

  Working with Rachel Kane, the pair chase Taylor's team from Singapore to Egypt and are forced to kill them all. Hendricks catches the same virus that drove the team mad and heads for Zürich. The player then learns something about Dr. Salim. He is actually Deimos, a demigod who unleashed the undead plague. He entered the player's mind through the link with Hall, and he wants to open a portal to his home dimension, Malus.

  A second demigod, Dolos, contacts the player. She is Deimos's sister, she sympathizes with humanity and she wants him dead. She carries both of them to Malus, where he is vulnerable. With her guidance the player kills Deimos and ends the plague on Earth. The cost is permanent, because the player is trapped in Malus. Dolos then reveals her real plan. She means to kill every other demigod and supernatural being who could challenge her, and the player agrees to help.

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• 5. Thrusters and Specialists

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  Black Ops III's campaign supports four-player cooperative play, which let the designers build larger, freer levels with less of the corridor shooting. Players can change their character's look and clothing. A progression system hands out unlock tokens that must be spent on weapons and gear as missions pass. A "realistic" difficulty setting ends a run after a single bullet hit.

  Multiplayer is where the title changed most. It introduced a momentum-based movement system built around thruster packs. Players can slowly boost into the air, run along walls and slide, while keeping complete control of their gun. The Pick 10 class system from Black Ops II stayed. On top of it, Treyarch added Specialists, a lineup of 9 soldiers, each with a unique special weapon or ability. A tenth, called Blackjack, arrived in a later update. Blackjack can copy other Specialists' abilities, but is playable only briefly after a set of challenges is completed.

  Customization went further than before. A Gunsmith feature offers cosmetic variations in weapon attachments, and Paintshop lets players put their own custom prints on specific parts of a gun.

  Zombies has its own XP progression system. Its unlocks include Gobblegums, which grant temporary bonuses, and weapon kits that change the look and stats of guns through camos and attachments. Three smaller modes sit beside the big three. Dead Ops Arcade is a top-down shooter and a sequel to the version from the first Black Ops. Freerun is a parkour-inspired mode where players use advanced movement to reach a goal. The third is Nightmares. Sound was a separate challenge, and it drew in some surprising names.

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• 6. Selling the Game

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  Jack Wall, who had scored Black Ops II, came back for Black Ops III alongside Treyarch's Audio Director Brian Tuey. The band Avenged Sevenfold supplied an instrumental piece called "Jade Helm" for multiplayer. For Zombies, Wall, Tuey and sound designer Kevin Sherwood worked on the soundtrack. Elena Siegman and Malukah performed new songs for each map. To promote the game, the DJ and producer Afrojack recorded a track called "Unstoppable".

  The marketing began with Snapchat links that appeared inside Black Ops II gameplay, along with a teaser video from Treyarch. On the 26th of April 2015, the first reveal trailer confirmed the return of Zombies. It also announced beta access for anyone who pre-ordered on PC, PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. The full game came out on the 6th of November 2015.

  On the 29th of September 2015, the official Call of Duty Twitter account was briefly renamed "Current Events Aggregate". It then posted about real-world fashion and movies, and about a terrorist attack in Singapore. None of it was real. Activision later explained that the posts were fake and were meant to promote the campaign. Critics accused the company of faking news, and Activision was called "irresponsible". Jason Blundell said the team was "shocked" by the backlash, and he offered an apology.

  A calmer, much bigger ad followed that November. "Seize Glory" was a live-action trailer directed by Wayne McClammy, who had made many Call of Duty advertisements. Michael B. Jordan, Cara Delevingne and Marshawn Lynch starred. Jordan follows a man named Kevin as he runs through a battlefield, destroying zombies and robots. Activision knew that Jordan and Delevingne were fans of the series. Chief marketing officer Tim Ellis said the aim was to show that "The gaming population is so much bigger and more diverse than people may think". The pre-order bonuses and special editions pushed the same appeal in a different direction.

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• 7. Map Packs and Comics

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  The pre-order offer included a bonus multiplayer map called "NUK3TOWN", a remake of the original "Nuketown". Special editions went further. The Juggernog Edition came with a mini-refrigerator and a season pass. The Collector's Edition bonus Zombies map was "The Giant", a remake of the World at War map "Der Riese". It features the original characters Dempsey, Nikolai, Takeo and Richtofen. On the 16th of February 2016, a multiplayer-only starter pack for Windows was released.

  Awakening, the first map pack, reached PlayStation 4 on the 2nd of February 2016, with Windows and Xbox One following in March. It added four multiplayer maps, including "Skyjacked", a remake of "Hijacked" from Black Ops II. It also brought a new Zombies map, Der Eisendrache. Eclipse came next, with a remake of the World at War map "Bonzai" and the Zombies map "Zetsubou no Shima". Descent followed on the 12th of July for PlayStation 4, with the Zombies map "Gorod Krovi". Its PC release stirred controversy, because the packs would no longer be sold separately and PC players needed the season pass. Salvation arrived on the 6th of September with the final Zombies map, "Revelations".

  A fifth pack, Zombies Chronicles, was not part of the season pass. Released for PlayStation 4 on the 16th of May 2017, it remastered 8 Zombies maps from earlier games. They included "Nacht Der Untoten", "Kino Der Toten" and "Origins". In 2018, the "Back in Black" pack added remastered fan favorites "Summit", "Jungle", "Firing Range" and "Slums".

  The story also spilled onto paper. Dark Horse Comics published a Black Ops III comic, written by Larry Hama with art by Marcelo Ferreira. Its first issue appeared on the 4th of November 2015, two days before the game. A separate series, Call of Duty: Zombies, began on the 28th of October 2016. It followed the TranZit crew's search for an artifact called the Kronorium, written by Justin Jordan.

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• 8. Verdict and Legacy

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  Sales told one story straight away. Black Ops III sold over 6.6 million copies in its first week, not counting digital, and grossed over $550 million in its first three days. In the United Kingdom it beat Halo 5: Guardians to the top spot. In the United States it led NPD's figures and finished 2015 as the top-selling game. Activision said its results were significantly better than those of Advanced Warfare. By December 2024, more than 43 million copies had sold.

  Critics were more divided. Metacritic recorded "generally favorable" reviews on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and "mixed or average" ones on PC. GameSpot and Polygon each gave it 7 out of 10. GameSpot said it did just enough "to maintain the Call of Duty status quo". IGN gave it 9.2 out of 10 and called it "the biggest Call of Duty game yet". Stuart Andrews of Trusted Reviews disliked the setting and story. He said it sometimes felt like "Call of Duty: Even More Advanced Warfare".

  Looking back, opinion stayed mixed. NME called the game "forgettable", with "just too much going on and so little freedom". Critics found the campaign confusing, and Chris Freiberg of Den of Geek thought the story was weaker played solo than in co-op. Freiberg also suggested the game marked the start of the series following its rivals instead of innovating. Others reached a warmer verdict. Dan Wenerowicz of Complex ranked it fifth-best in the series in 2024. Dominic Allen of Screen Rant thought its multiplayer and Zombies were the series' best, and he named Supply Drops its worst feature.

  ComicBook.com's Cade Onder argued that the game "pushed the series in exciting new directions, even if it wouldn't maintain course for much longer". Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 arrived in 2018.

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