What is 'Call of Duty: Black Ops 2's Strike Force? Treyarch Studio Head Mark Lamia explains

Treyarch Studio Head Mark Lamia tells us about the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 single-player missions, Strike Froce.

You've read our intensive Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 info dump and you want to know even more about the new single-player Strike Force missions. Understandable. They may be the strangest, gutsiest, most innovative addition to single-player Call of Duty since, well, the first Call of Duty.

We spoke with Treyarch Studio Head Mark Lamia about the mode, its origin and the criticism that Call of Duty is a linear FPS.

"You can take over any of your team members and they have different weapons. You can take over any of the tools on the battlefield, so any of the drone technology.

"I think that's the other thing," says Lamia, "when you're talking about adding drones and advanced robotics into the gameplay, what that also means is, if you're a game designer, all kinds of new gameplay to both fight against and -- so there's new A.I. and new strategies to take it out -- but also, in the case of the Strike Force missions, if you want to take over and play, that's entirely new gameplay for you."

Basically, the designers are tasked with creating not just defense, but also offense for each soldier and machine.

"These are great levels," says Lamia, "because you're going to be able to go back and play them, you can play them on different difficulty levels. If you're playing the campaign, and you're moving through, you can go back later to play the other levels to try them out."

It's tempting to hear about Strike Force and assume it's a response to criticism's that the franchise has become too linear. Lamia says, "I think it absolutely answers critics that way," but it "wasn't necessarily the motivation behind it."

Any chance we'll see people go head to head? "You never know where these things go," says Lamia.