Hidden Teaser Points To 'Black Ops 3' As The Next 'Call Of Duty' Game

Looks like it's that time of the year when Activision mobilises its massive PR and marketing machinery to tease the latest offering in the "Call of Duty" franchise. It's also the time when gamers are expected to be surprised and pumped up at the prospect of following the breadcrumb of teasers in its wake. As usual, these little games lead up to the announcement of yet another addition to a multi-billion dollar FPS series that has been updated with yearly instalments since 2003.

In the hype machine that works with clockwork precision, the only semblance of a surprise lies in discovering which one of the various story arcs that have branched out over the years within the franchise will be used for the upcoming game. Since the "Ghosts" and "Advanced Warfare" story arcs have been featured in the last two years and the "Modern Warfare" arc has already achieved the trilogy status, this leaves only "Black Ops" as the suitable candidate for the next instalment.

Sure enough, this seems to be the case, as clues point to the next "Call of Duty" game being "Black Ops 3," according to a PC Gamer report. Gamers playing the console version of "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" noticed that a small update was rolled out for the PlayStation and Xbox versions of the game on April 6. The update seemed to have no apparent effect on the game. That is, until an eagle-eyed gamer going by the YouTube handle Drift0r discovered that the update had dropped in clues pointing to a marketing campaign for the upcoming game.

The update modified the in-game advertisement mock-up posters with a clue pointing towards what could be the next "Black Ops" game. Some of the posters in the "Plaza" and "Express" maps now include a Snapchat QR code, which allows users to scan the code in order to add friends to their profiles. Doing so, in this case, leads to a cryptic marketing teaser that some gamers speculate alludes to an impending launch of "Call of Duty: Black Ops 3."

Gamespot reports that the teaser features a short video showcasing a human eye being closed symbolically followed by the narrator exhorting the viewer to "listen only to the sound" of his voice. The scene then shifts to blurry video, where the camera pans through the treeline with the sun prominently casting a shadow in the foreground.

Many gamers speculate that the aforementioned shadow bears resemblance to the Roman numeral III. This is being viewed as a hint that the next "Call of Duty" game would be Black Ops 3." It must be noted that unlike the "Modern Warfare" games, the "Black Ops" titles have always been stylised using Roman numerals. So there might be some credence to this theory.

The assumption makes greater case for itself because after the launch of Sledgehammer Games' "Advanced Warfare" this year, it's the turn of the developer Treyarch for rolling out the next game in the franchise. More importantly, it's the same studio behind the "Black Ops" series of games. Conjecture aside, you might want to take a gander at the video embedded below to come up with your own conclusions.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Viral Campaign Inside of Black Ops 2! (credit: Drift0r's YouTube channel)