New Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 trailer returns to World War II – wait, what?

In the new Black Ops 3 trailer, we hear a soldier talk about getting a “perfect future,” but he doesn’t sound too happy about it. Judging from the scenery, I don’t blame him. But what is this place, and why does it look like something out of a Terminator film?

The Direct Neural Interface that allows our cybernetic supersoldiers to control their augmentations in Black Ops 3 seems like a good idea on the surface. But you have to wonder if plugging robotics into your spine isn’t going to mess you up in some pretty significant ways.

Early on in the trailer the soldiers appear to discover whatever this is. In Fallout 3 Tranquillity Lane was a mission where people lived a VR, Matrix-like fake life in pods a lot like this. One of the characters remarks that the dead bodies weren’t volunteers.

Can anyone say Katee Sackhoff? After a fairly standard Call of Duty shooting-plus-explosions montage, the trailer takes a weird turn. Your hand reaches menacingly toward a female soldier who warns you that you don’t know what you’re doing. Her omen is compelling enough, but her situation is almost as interesting; what is she sitting in? I’d wager a cockpit or control station of some kind, judging by the buttons and displays wrapping around and in front of her.

Well, she tried to warn you. It looks like doing whatever it is the female soldier told you not to do triggers a virtual reality environment modeled after World War II to spring to life, complete with a Tiger II tank busting through a wall. It’s not clear how playable this is, but it does give CoD players a return to that most famous of wars. In a sense, anyway.

The narrating soldier tells us he can feel “it” taking over, and that not even his mind is safe. Previous Call of Duty games have explored what happens when bad guys take over military technology – with soldiers now as much machine as they are human, are they susceptible to the same type of hacking? The weird flashes of WWII coupled with this cautionary information and a scene of someone who appears infected seem to suggest so.

Soldiers begin to distrust one another, particularly one by the name of John. “You don’t understand,” he says. “I’m taking us home.” Ah, the old “you don’t understand” line. Always an indicator that someone is in their right mind and not about to murder everyone. A few people are suggesting this is Law & Order, Oz and True Blood actor, Christopher Meloni.

At the end of the trailer there’s a flurry of weird images. This is the stand out one – a World War 2 soldier flying through the air over a classic French looking town square from old school COD. The buildings seem to be folding up and moving much like Inception suggesting there’s a heavy dose of unreality. VR battle training in classic eras? There’s a chance that the game could run with this and have entire levels set in the past.

One shot shows what looks like those body-filled pods being use in the past. There’s a name on the right, Jay Xiong. Whatever’s happening he’s clearly not enjoying it. Illegal and nefarious military research?

One sequence seems to show the hero falling to the ground, reminiscent of the jump program in the Matrix. Crucially, though, that’s another World War 2-like setting. Look in the bottom left corner – does that look like an old APC to you?

This barely flashes up for more than a couple of frames but seems to link the neural device mentioned at the start to a snowy forest. That snowy forest seems to be a reoccurring motif that dates back to some of the earliest Black Ops 3 teasers. Is it a location inside a virtual world? Or maybe where the experiments took place, and somewhere the victims can only remember in brief flashbacks?

As the French village collapses there’s another burst of imagery, including the neural implant and this tree, along with a crow that appeared in some early Snapchat teasers Treyarch sent out. There’s also a brief glimpse of someone tied to the tree with another watching over them. Are the soldiers trapped in a virtual world fighting to get out?

Let us know your theories by reaching out to us on Twitter, Facebook, and the comments section below!

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