1989 | U.S. Invasion of Panama

Mason and Woods join US Navy Seals in the invasion of Panama, on a mission to capture Manuel Noriega

“Suffer With me” is in my opinion the most impactful and memorable mission in the games narrative arch. Players get to choose whether or not to kill Alex Mason (The main protagonist of Black Ops 1 and 2’s campaign) and Jason Hudson is inevitably killed.

In the mission, Frank Woods and Mason are assigned to capture and escort Manuel Noriega in order to find the stories main antagonist; Raul Menendez. The events surrounding the mission are based on the United States 1989 Invasion of Panama which is remembered in history as “Operation Just Cause”

Black Ops 2 was the first Call of Duty game that I had the chance to professionally work on. I was hired on as a Design Intern after graduating college, and placed on the Single Player team. The majority of the Single Player campaign had already been previs blocked out by designer Brian Douglas. “Suffer With Me” was the mission I worked on the most during my time at Treyarch. The level was split into 3 sections. There was the intro which Mike Madden took care of, the the hospital/end sequence that Ian Bowi owned, and the middle “slums” section was my area. I was super grateful to be given the largest and more experimental section of the mission. The area was much wider than most spaces in Call of Duty, and had multiple paths that players could choose to navigate the space through. Each path provided a slightly different experience..be it combat, a rushing melee enemy, or witnessing a church explode. My job was to take the area to a first playable state before my internship ended. This included the art and gameplay. When I left Treyarch, designer James Cusano oversaw the level until the game shipped. A large portion of the area that I designed was used in the multiplayer map version Slums which was released again in 2018 for Black Ops 4.

Concept Art | Daniel Cheng

• Take Previs Blockout to First Playable state

• Collaborate with Lead Designer Kevin Worrel for gameplay direction

• Collaborate with the Art Director to define the aesthetic and visual themes

For a short time I was assigned to help out on the mission “Cordis Die”. I built out various modern and futuristic buildings around the Convention Center in Downtown LA. This work was not gameplay related, as I was taking the set pieces around the combat to a more detailed state. This level was featured in the games worldwide reveal trailer and E3 2012. Ross Kaylor and Matthew Hutchinson were the Designers of this level.

Concept Art | Kevin Baik

• Detail pass on BSP prefabs surrounding the LA Convention Center

• Collaborate with the other LDs and AD to balance the future VS modern theme