Suit Up! Treyarch Adds Playable Female Characters To Call of Duty: Black Ops III

In a pretty stunning shift, Treyarch, the studio behind the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 revealed that they’ve added playable female characters. This marks the game as the first in franchise history that allows players to select the gender of their character in the single-player campaign.

Historically speaking, the Call of Duty franchise has been… shall we say, pretty stereotypical of the first-person shooter genre. Grizzled, bearded dudes shooting guns and operating in operations structured around a fairly typical action movie storyline. Treyarch aims to flip the script a little bit by creating a gender neutral story. Perhaps more exciting is what–or rather, who–gave them the inspiration.

In a preview for Gamespot, Chris Watters said, “According to Jason Blundell, the campaign director for Black Ops III, they took inspiration from the character of Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series; a strong character can be a strong character without the world around them bending to accommodate their gender.”

Listen, this isn’t going to redeem the past, and that’s probably not what they’re going for. But it is a refreshing change of perspective from a franchise that gave a dog more screentime than a female character. It’s something that’s obviously been on the radar for the series for a while, as Infinity Ward has commented on the addition of playable female characters to multiplayer mode in the past.

It is important to acknowledge that players have been able to select their gender in the multiplayer mode, but the stars of the single player modes have exclusively been men. This addition is a step–a small step–but a step forward nonetheless.

What do you think? Has this piqued your interest enough to check the game out?

(via Gamespot)

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Jessica Lachenal

Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.

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