Black Ops 6’s Campaign Are Missable

Characters have always played a vital role in the Call of Duty franchise. Each Call of Duty campaign has tried its best to form a connection between the player and their NPC teammates. Naturally, that’s much easier to do when the game features a returning cast of characters, which Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 does.

Frank Woods takes the spotlight once again for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6‘s campaign, though due to the character’s in-universe paralysis, he’s more willing to share the spotlight with his teammates, a new gang of former CIA black ops agents who have been forced to turn rogue to save the world. It’s already a tough job trying to introduce a new set of characters and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 makes it even harder for itself by making some of its most important character moments entirely optional.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s Best Character Moments Are Completely Optional

Meeting Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s New Protagonists

The cast is fairly limited at the start of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6‘s campaign. As mentioned up top, Frank Woods has now adopted a mentor role, and his chosen protégé is Troy Marshall, a loyal and capable leader who picks his allies carefully. Woods and Marshall are joined by William “Case” Calderon, an agent with a mysterious past and the game’s primary playable character.

Woods and his small crew soon realize they’ll need more muscle if they’re going to save the world, and they set about recruiting a few more soldiers to the cause. First up is the ex-Guild assassin Sevati “Sev” Dumas, then former Stasi member-turned-hacker Felix Neumann, and finally, Russell Adler, an ex-CIA special operative who’s led countless covert operations during the Vietnam War, Cold War, and any conflict since.

While Woods and Adler have both been in prior Black Ops titles, the rest of the line-up is full of fresh faces. When these characters are first introduced, they’re given quite minimal backstory, often being summarized in just a sentence or two. But there’s a lot more than meets the eye to each of Black Ops 6‘s new characters, players just need to know where to look.

Some Great Character Development Can Be Easily Missed in Black Ops 6

Between missions in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6‘s campaign, players return to the team’s Bulgarian safe house called “The Rook.” At pivotal moments in the campaign, players will be able to eavesdrop on a conversation between two or more NPCs. This conversation usually revolves around the characters dealing with some big revelation or coming to terms with what they’ve just been through together, and each conversation gives a surprising amount of insight into each character’s motivations and relationships.

A great example of this comes right after the ‘High Rollers’ mission, where the whole team has just participated in a major casino heist. Upon returning to the Rook, players will be able to hear Felix Neumann discuss his guilt with Sev, stating that he’s ashamed he resorted to violence during the mission after years of trying to bury his darker self.

This exchange is brief, but it adds a lot of depth to both Neumann and Sev’s characters. And what’s wild is that conversations like this are completely optional. If players want, they can ignore it completely and head straight to the investigation board to start the next mission.