I just finished Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign, which like many people, I would agree that it was the best the series has had in years. A strange mix of normal gunplay, espionage, an open world and a Control-like horror mission, it did a lot of experimentation that somehow ended up working as a cohesive whole.
But as you reach the end of the campaign and see its conclusion, things get a bit…strange. Granted this always happens to some extent with the more trippy Black Ops campaigns, but I know I had questions, and I went looking for answers. Spoilers follow:
What Happened To Case?
The way your character, Case, is handled in the game is strange. During the horror “Emergence” mission, you seem to learn something about your own history, that you were a human trial for the biological weapon you’re now trying to seize, and you survived with what appears to be minimal side effects.
But this is…not really explored after this. At the very end Harrow tells you that the weapon “made you what you are” but again, what does that mean? How was Case trained after this and how did he get inserted into this team, a team which doesn’t seem to know anything about his history? What exactly did the drug do to him? Yes, he’s a super soldier mowing down hundreds of people in the campaign but this is Call of Duty, we are always that guy. So what’s the point of this being in the story?
The final question is what happens to Case and by proxy, Harrow. The drug seems to make him want to strangle her more than he would otherwise, maybe, but the scene blacks out in the crashed helicopter before we truly see what happens to either of them, implying further damage to the helicopter may have interrupted this. We see no corpses, so we do not know if either Harrow or Case is really dead, and neither question is answered in the cutscene that follows. There is some theorizing that Case could even return as a bio-corrupted villain, or just that he’s dead, as Call of Duty heroes often tend to be by the end of a campaign.
Who Was That Guy At The End?
The final cutscene has the rest of your team getting a blank check to essentially operate however they want with whatever resources they need, but while still trying to ferret out CIA spies. Then, we see a man breaking into Livingston’s computer and…who is he, exactly? Are we supposed to know? No, not really, it turns out.
It is not Alex Mason from past Black Ops games as some have theorized. He does have a confirmed identity, however. He is Jackson Caine, seen in the campaign recording the intial interview. Apparently he also shows up as a guard in the senator mission if you were looking closely. Caine is actually a multiplayer operative for Black Ops 6, implying that this story will continue on in Warzone, because for some reason, Call of Duty likes to continue stories in Warzone, which is not really what you want to see as a campaign player. So, this guy is a secret Pantheon operative but not one that has really any relevance during the story at all.
As you can see, there are not great answers to either question here. I was disappointed that such a great campaign ended so poorly with these weird cliffhangers and a lack of exploration of interesting story points (Case’s whole deal! Come one!). Maybe some will be answered in future content, but that’s unfortunate in its own way.
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