Black Ops 2 modes "cater to different emotional states"

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 contains three different play modes - campaign, multiplayer and zombies - because Treyarch boss Mark Lamia understands not everyone's after the same experience all the time.

"Those all cater to different emotional states. When you're playing the campaign, you're sitting down to have that sort of epic and cinematic experience, right? You want to have that first-person role in that experience," he told Kotaku.

"But multiplayer is all about that competitive and social experience."

"We want to create a campaign. We have a whole team that's focused on creating the campaign. It's what we do. It's what we want to create. We want to create a campaign, multiplayer and zombies," he added.

The studio boss told ArsTechnica that gamers are in for some surprises with Blacks Ops 2.

"To your readers who might say, 'We know what a Call of Duty campaign is like,' I don't think that's what they'll be experiencing with this game," he said.

"I think if you get Black Ops 2, you're going to want to play the campaign, because it's not the same type of campaign. If you haven't played a Call of Duty campaign in a while, I'm looking forward to getting players back in and playing the campaign."

Aslo on Kotaku, Lamia defended Treyarch's choice of controversial military advisor Oliver North, noting that his inclusion in the project has nothing to do with politcal beliefs and everything to do with the fact that North was on the ground during the period of history Black Ops 2's story leans on.

"If you're a character artist, and this person has met with someone you want to portray in your game, a historical figure, you can talk to him. That's if you're a character artist. You can say, ‘how did he look?'" he said.

"And if you're an animator, you can say, ‘how did he act?' And he can tell you. These are things you can't get very well from anywhere [else]. There's no source material I can get that's going to give me that kind of thing.

"And if you're an audio guy, you say, well how did he sound? You might say, ‘well if you don't know how is anybody else going to know?' But that's our form of art and entertainment."

Call of Duty Black Ops 2 is due on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in November.