Summary
The full picture of what kind of experienceCall of Duty: Black Ops 6will be is becoming clearer by the day, with Activision teasing a lot of details in the lead-up to the game’s Direct presentation on June 9. Not only have the past few days revealed the official title of the game, but fans uncovered a full interactive teaser trailer through a hidden website, known as ‘The Truth Lies.’
This website forCall of Duty: Black Ops 6acts as an alternate reality game, or ARG, in which players can uncover more information by scouring through the website for hidden details. While players have only been able to find one teaser trailer through this ARG as things stand, it is more than likely that this will be just the tip of the iceberg as the title gets closer to its release date. TheBlack Opsfranchise has used this kind of advertising method in the past to great success, and these older ARGs suggest that many more details will become available for players to find in the coming weeks.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6: ‘The Truth Lies’ Will Just Be the Beginning
It seemed that fresh details forCall of Duty: Black Ops 6would be few and far between in the wait for its major reveal presentation on June 9, which will take place directly afterthat day’s Xbox Games Showcase. That was, until, players discovered a strange website on May 22, thetruthlies.com, which featured a captivating teaser trailer for the upcoming game.
The ominous website features an interactive 90s-era television, befitting ofBlack Ops 6’s confirmed Gulf War setting, with options to control the TV’s volume, channel, power, and recording, with an option to pause. The teaser trailer for the website plays on the TV by default, showing a group of activists as they engage in a nighttime mission to drape the words “The Truth Lies” over the faces of the presidents depicted on Mount Rushmore.
This seems to confirm early reports thatBlack Ops 6will focus on gritty secret governmental operationsin the backdrop of the Gulf War, with secrecy and altered narratives clearly being at the forefront of the game’s story. As an ARG, the volume, recording, and channel settings of the TV are surely an indication of more hidden details, despite fans currently being unable to glean any more information from the website.
Black Ops 6’s ARG May Emulate Black Ops Cold Wars'
New teaser videos will likely be hidden away within the ARG over the coming weeks, with players having to find the right combinations of things like volume and channel settings to uncover these new details. Treyarch famously used a pre-releaseARG to build the hype around 2020’sCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, with the title having its own ARG website called “Pawn Takes Pawn”.
Over the course of two weeks in August 2020, this ARG forBlack Ops Cold Warreceived nine different updates, each designed to drip-feed fans with more information about the game. This worked to great success to slowly build anticipation aroundCold War, and it already seems that Treyarch is attempting to replicate this with a similar tactic forBlack Ops 6. Real-world marketing is already being tied to the ARG teaser trailer, with fans finding fake newspapers in storesreporting on the Mount Rushmore defacement, so it seems clear that Treyarch is going all-in for ‘The Truth Lies’ campaign. With there still being time beforeBlack Ops 6’s major reveal on June 9, players should expect many more ARG experiences to reveal new information over the coming weeks.
