Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is heading into the future for the first time, and developer Treyarch went through careful consideration of how much sci-fi might be too much. Even with all of the future-tech additions, though, a much larger shift comes to the game's multiplayer comes in the form of Score Streaks, which are replacing Kill Streaks. While experienced CoD players can still enjoy their high kill counts, Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia explained how it makes a more welcoming multiplayer environment.

"One of our goals was we wanted to reward players for playing the game modes," Lamia told Shacknews. That was actually the objective, and the good news is that because of the way we designed it, it doesn't penalize people who traditionally have that system just for kills. It's really just an opportunity to support all gameplay styles. Even if you're not a high [kill-death ratio] guy you have an opportunity to do something very powerful."

And that speaks to the future of Call of Duty games. Even spread among different studios, the series tends to iterate between versions. Though Lamia couldn't say whether future Call of Duty games would utilize the Score Streaks, he did note that his studio learns from its predecessors. "From our perspective, we absolutely look at what came before, not just our own game," he said. "It's an online game that a lot of the players like to play every new game that comes out. And so we look at the things that players like. For Score Streaks, it's a game system that makes sense because of something that we were trying to achieve with this game in terms of making sure that there are many play styles that are accounted for."

If the Score Streaks are embraced by the community, Black Ops 2 could end up defining the future of the series in more ways than one. The game is set to hit tomorrow.