It's that time of year again when we get bombarded with military shooters the likes of which we've seen a dozen times before. Some of us love it, some of us hate it and all of us can agree that despite popular opinion the Call Of Duty franchise has been trying hard the last few years, Black Ops 2 and Advanced Warfare were rather good and Black Ops 3 is throwing coop back in the mix, which gives us a bit of a murder-boner. Nothing beats doing it with friends.

Below you'll find the whole Gamescom fact sheet, reformatted to make it a bit more readable and with the chaff snipped out but otherwise intact so blame them for any misspellings. Below that you'll find our screenshot gallery – 5 of them are from the multiplayer, showing off the new maps and specialists. The others are from the singleplayer with filenames that possibly refer to the mission names; In Darkness, Lotus Tower, Provocation, and Through The Lotus Towers.

Stay tuned for more from Gamescom as we get it!

A dark, gritty future where a new breed of Black Ops soldier emerges and the lines between humanity and military technology are blurred. This is the future of combat in Call of Duty®: Black Ops III which will hit shelves worldwide on the real Black Friday – November 6, 2015.

CAMPAIGN

The Black Ops III campaign is designed for four-player online co-op and re-playability on next-gen, with players encountering the epic cinematic moments Call of Duty® is known for in new open-area engagements designed to allow players to approach the game with a different strategy each time they play. Every player is completely customisable: from weapons and loadouts, to abilities and outfits, all with full progression systems and a personalised armoury to show off accomplishments, providing a constantly-evolving campaign experience.

Key Campaign Additions Include:

• Spatial Design and Larger Environments have been created to utilise more powerful hardware, providing players with the ability to “go off the rails” and engage enemies in a manner of their choosing in open-area gameplay. Players will enjoy added re-playability, with no two engagements being the same. With such open areas, the team at Treyarch overhauled its AI and animation systems, supporting more than 20 different emergent AI systems that challenge players in a variety of ways.
• Cyber Cores and Tactical Rigs are cybernetic modifications that allow an added degree of player customisation. Cyber Cores provide a variety of skills from remote hacking and controlling drones, to chain melee strikes. Tactical Rigs are passive upgrades to the soldiers that allow them to use advanced movement and defensive capabilities. All of these options allow teams to construct a variety of differently configured soldiers to tackle engagements in a variety of ways.
• The Safe House is the area players visit between campaign levels to customise their weapons and loadouts, show off their medals and achievements, or access the game’s Wiki to gain further information on the world and backstory.

MULTIPLAYER:

ALL-NEW MOVEMENT SYSTEM: Black Ops III features a new momentum-based, chain-movement system, allowing players to fluidly move through the environment with finesse, using controlled thrust jumps, power slides and fast mantling capabilities in a multitude of combinations. With the ‘guns up’ philosophy, players maintain full control of their weapon at all times and have 360-degrees of motion through all manoeuvres. Maps are designed from the ground-up for the new movement system, giving players a feeling of power over how they use the environment tactically, while at the same time pushing strong head-to-head engagements for classic Black Ops boots-on-the-ground action.

ALL-NEW SPECIALIST SYSTEM: Treyarch is introducing nine elite Specialists to choose from in multiplayer – each with their own look, personality, voice and battle-hardened weapons and abilities. The nine Specialists have their own unlock progression, offering a new way to level up alongside global XP and weapons XP. The Specialists system changes the way players engage in combat at key points throughout a match, as each weapon and ability is designed to make your Specialist a unique force on the field.

The 6 of 9 Specialists that have been revealed to date:

Callsign: Ruin
Real Name: Donnie Walsh
Bio: Raised in a military family in a tough neighbourhood, he is fearless and headstrong, an infantry soldier through and through. He uses his unique abilities to rush into battle and surprise the enemy with sheer force.
Weapon: Gravity Spikes – Creates a devastating area of effect shockwave in the surrounding area.
Ability: Overdrive – Initiates a burst of speed that accelerates all movement for a short period of time.

Callsign: Seraph
Real Name: Zhen Zhen
Bio: Militant enforcer of the 54I crime syndicate’s rule of law. She is known for her focused and unflinching combat discipline, striking fear within the ranks of the cartel.
Weapon: Annihilator – Massive high-caliber revolver that fires devastating rounds with increased bullet penetration.
Ability: Combat Focus – Triggers a bonus multiplier to score earned towards Scorestreaks for a period of time.

Callsign: Outrider
Real Name: Alessandra Castillo
Bio: Developed keen observation skills growing up in the streets of the Favela, traversing the rooftops to watch the action of the city below and this earned her a place in the ranks of the Brazilian Special Forces. She outsmarts enemies by finding them before they have a chance to know what hit them.
Weapon: Sparrow – Compound bow w/explosive bolts and variable range.
Ability: Vision Pulse – Pulses the surrounding area to reveal the location of all enemies within range.

Callsign: Reaper
Real Name: Experimental War Robot (EWR)
Bio: Started as an expensive military R&D project to supplement Special Operations soldiers in the field, the EWR was a cutting-edge prototype combat robot, the most advanced in the world at the time. Budget overruns and embarrassing political incidents left the project all but a resource for scrap metal, except for the one prototype that remained.
Weapon: Scythe – Robotic arm that transforms into a high power Mini-Gun.
Ability: Psychosis – Infiltrate enemy DNI systems to simulate three decoy clones.

Callsign: Prophet
Real Name: David Wilkes
Bio: Wilkes got his first set of cybernetic augmentations while serving in the British Engineering Corps. Five years and many upgrades later, he is the embodiment of the cutting edge of human weaponry on the battlefield, using his superior technology to disrupt opponents’ tactics before moving in for the kill.
Weapon: Tempest – Charge-shot weapon that fires an arc of electricity, shocking targets and chaining to all nearby enemies.
Ability: Glitch – Flash back to a previous position with this system mod that hacks the battlefield simulation grid.

Callsign: Nomad
Real Name: Tavo Rojas
Bio: Last surviving member of an elite Rapid Deployment Force unit specialised in Jungle Warfare, Rojas has gone off-grid using his survivalist training to stay alive. At home in the wild, he uses his skills to turn the environment against his foes.
Weapon: H.I.V.E. – Deploys pod traps which release a deadly swarm of nano drones when triggered.
Ability: Rejack – Recover from near death by injecting a nanoparticle serum into the bloodstream.

ALL-NEW CUSTOMISATION: Treyarch is taking weapon modification to a whole new level. With the new Gunsmith system, any weapon can be tailored to your preference with multiple models for each attachment, distinctive camos and custom emblems. Up to five attachments and an optic can be added to weapons, giving you the opportunity to build out the ultimate weapon for battle. And on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, the new Weapon Paint Shop feature goes beyond the standard emblem editor and lets players create custom graphics that are displayed on the sides of their guns. With three sides to design and up to 64 layers per side, players will be able to create their own signature weapon variants with a practically infinite number of possible combinations.

Maps:

• Combine: Set in the remote Egyptian Sahara, this vertical farming and sustainability research facility plays fast and frenetic with tight interiors, an open middle and a dangerous flank path.
• Hunted: This big game hunting lodge is situated beneath a waterfall in the lush mountains of Ethiopia, where rugged terrain opens up to long sightlines and a stealthy underwater pathway.
• Stronghold: A high-tech Swiss chateau in the frozen, mountainous Alps, Stronghold has an asymmetrical design with a mix of exposed sightlines and tight, close quarters.
• Evac: An abandoned emergency evacuation zone atop an overgrown rooftop in the middle of Singapore’s flooded quarantine zone.

Zombies:

Since the introduction of the original Zombies Easter Egg in Call of Duty®: World at War, Treyarch has been nurturing a global following of pure Zombies fans. Black Ops III answers their call with a signature Zombies offering, Call of Duty: Black Ops III: Zombies - Shadows of Evil, complete with its own distinct storyline and a full XP-based progression system for players that adds depth and re-playability to the engaging gameplay Zombies fans have come to expect. Shadows of Evil delivers an incredibly rich and deep narrative and action-packed co-op survival experience that is signature to Treyarch's strain of Zombies

Shadows of Evil drops players into a recognisable yet terrifyingly unfamiliar world, as they uncover the secrets and challenges laid out for them by a shadowy figure, who offers them a path to redemption. Set in a 1940s film-noir era, Shadows of Evil introduces four unwitting characters - The Magician, The Femme-Fatale, The Cop and The Boxer - into an unravelling experience masterminded by the mysterious Shadow Man. Featuring voices and likenesses, the characters are played by Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, Independence Day), Heather Graham (The Hangover 1-3, Californication), Neil McDonough (Captain America: The First Avenger, Band of Brothers), Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy, Hellboy) and Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate SG-1).

Black Ops III on PC:

Treyarch has a dedicated team that is committed to delivering the best PC experience in the studio’s history. Black Ops 3 will include features and performance optimisations specifically for the PC that help guarantee that players have a great experience on the widest range of PCs. Additionally, the studio has a dedicated security team that is focused on maintaining the most balanced play experience for all PC gamers. Additionally, Treyarch will employ its proprietary anti-cheat technology to work in tandem with Valve’s Ant-Cheat system to help provide increased protection against cheating.
New features coming to the PC with Black Ops III include the following:
100% Dedicated Servers will be available at launch so that every ranked match will be hosted on a dedicated server in a high bandwidth data centre.
2-Player Split-Screen available in all Black Ops III games modes – split top/bottom, left/right, or across 2 monitors – and Seamless Game Controller Support to swap between keyboard & mouse, PS4 controller, Xbox One controller, or Steam controller.
Advanced setting control to support Multi-GPUs and 4K monitors for up to full 4K resolution; an FOV Slider for players to adjust the field of view to their preference; an FPS Cap Slider to remove the framerate limitation in Campaign and Zombies modes and an FPS Counter to view your framerate in screen.

Technology Innovations:

Visual Fidelity: Call Of Duty: Black Ops III is powered by a brand-new rendering engine, using modern deferred lighting and physically based rendering technology to allow players to explore environments of the highest visual quality. New features such as fully lit particle effects, interactive water, dynamically lit fog and order-independent transparency add extra touches of realism to the field of battle.

AI: To fill the battlefield with more variety than ever before, Call of Duty: Black Ops III employs a new archetype-based AI system. Designers can now easily create new AI behaviours, resulting in many compelling types of robot and human combatants for players to fight with and against. New animations have been created to support these behaviours, allowing each AI to adapt to every encounter in thousands of different ways.

Audio: The environmental audio system in Call of Duty: Black Ops III has been completely revamped to give additional depth to the larger and more detailed environments. A completely new reflection and reverberation simulator gives a more cohesive and realistic feel to the soundscape. Using a brand new advanced dynamic beat-matching music system, the game can seamlessly transition between any in-game music depending on gameplay and player actions.