Black Ops 3 is set decades after the events of Black Ops 2. You won't see returning characters, but you'll see how they impacted the world, which in short has gone to shit. Following Raul Menendez's devastating drone attack on the United States in 2025, nations split into two, opposing world factions, both of which which employ comprehensive air defenses that put a new emphasis on boots-on-the-ground warfare.
I didn't get to see much of the campaign, but there are big changes here as well. The biggest is that the entire story has four-player co-op, with each player bringing their own campaign-specific customizable character into the session. There's progression system that lets you upgrade your cyber-soldier with different abilities, and as each player can change the appearance and gender of their character, they're not named, celebrity-voiced characters as in previous Black Ops.
In the level I saw, the four characters arrived in Ramses station in Cairo, which in the midst of a hellish war, looks like something between between a Warhammer 40,000 planet and 2013's Judge Dredd's rendition of Mega-City One.
There was a lot walk-and-talk exposition, classic, jingoistic Call of Duty monologuing, and then someone shouted "look out!" or something like that and the shooting started.
Ball shaped drones dropped from the sky and exploded into dozens of blades, impaling poor redshirts. A harrier dropped a prefabricated barricade with gates and sniper nests, which blocked of city streets by extending into nearby buildings, smashing cars in the process. Drones buzzed above, peppering the battlefield with bullets and missiles. A swarm of bee-sized nanobots set humanoid robots on fire. It's Call of Duty turned up to 11, but it's where the volume dial has been stuck for years, so it's not that impressive.
With four players running around, you need more room than the narrow corridors Call of Duty is known for, and in the Cairo section I saw, once that instant barricade dropped from the sky, it did create an open space for fighting that looked bigger than usual.
I'm extrapolating here based on one section and Treyarch's promises, but I imagine that rather than an endless on-rails experience, Black Ops 3 will make frequent stops in these arena-like sections, giving you and your friends more freedom to decide how exactly to blow everything up.
Since players are presumably choosing different upgrade paths for their campaign soldiers, they bring different abilities into battle that can work together in interesting ways. A player with a bunch of movement enhancements can act as a great flanker, while another player can stick to the high ground with a sniper, provide cover, and mark targets, which other players will see with their shared 'direct neural interface.' Another player with the ability to remotely hijack drones could initiate Call of Duty's signature, eye-in-the-sky turret sections at any given moment, which is another way to help your friends.
If the campaign includes more of these sections than it does corridors, than I'm genuinely excited. If this is just one out of a handful of sections in the game, I'll be pretty insulted. The corridor of epic set pieces is just not going to cut it anymore.
Treyarch will have a lot more of Black Ops 3 to show before it's released on November 6 this year. More specialists, a social layer to tie multiplayer and campaign, an esports strategy, and the return of Zombies mode, which Treyarch created in the first place.
What I've seen so far is promising, potentially much better than Advanced Warfare. Traversal improvements and Specialists are changing multiplayer for the better, and co-op could finally open up the campaign a little, and at least let you experience it with friends.