You might not be playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 anymore, but plenty of people still are, and they’ve noticed something really weird. Poster art has been subtly changed, and it appears to be linked to a reveal for the next Call of Duty.
We try to avoid falling into the marketing machine at Kotaku, but hey, I’m excited about new and upcoming games, too! And it’s really cool when games find creative ways to make what’s essentially a form of advertising fun, playful, and rewarding for fans.
YouTuber Drift0r, who specializes in Call of Duty, was playing a familiar set of Black Ops 2 maps, and stumbled upon something strange. Here’s his full video, and I’ll break it down after.
Looks like Black Ops 2, right? Except Treyarch appears to have quietly altered the in-game art.
It seems unlikely the next Call of Duty is suddenly will feature ghosts (though I’d be way into that!), but that’s definitely a spooky apparition of some kind. Specifically, it’s a Snapchat icon.
These icons are being found by players in different places throughout Black Ops 2 multiplayer.
If you’ve never used Snapchat, it’s a social network designed to temporarily share photos and videos. When a user shares something, their friends can only watch it once before it disappears. (Snapchat users will know not always true, but that’s the general idea.)
Here’s a closer version of it, courtesy of /r/blackops2/:
If you take a photo of that icon within Snapchat, it’ll suddenly add “callofduty” as a friend. It won’t do anything at first, but /r/blackops2/ readers have started getting various messages:
One image has a tree, another shows a forrest. There’s even a video floating around, too, which features pleasant music and a lone piece of dialogue: “Listen only to the sound of my voice.”
We’re getting closer and closer to E3, and it’s about time for the next Call of Duty game to be revealed. It’s Treyarch’s turn to release a game, and most people think this means Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is imminent. Let us know if you see anything else weird while playing the game!
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.