Player (Black Ops III)

"Khalil - it's not too late. The people who did this are traitors. They're going to continue to help the enemy. We need to fight back."

- The Player in Rise and Fall.

The Player is the main protagonist of Call of Duty: Black Ops III, whose name is never mentioned or revealed in the entire Campaign. As a Black Ops agent, the player is reborn as a Winslow Accord cyber soldier operative after being critically damaged by an NRC Grunt.

Events of Black Ops III
The Player is sent on a mission with their new CO Jacob Hendricks to rescue Egyptian Prime Minister Said with the assistance of John Taylor and his team consisting of Sebastian Diaz, Sarah Hall, and Peter Maretti who work for the Winslow Accord. The Player and Hendricks retrieve Minister Said, but get compromised while rescuing Lieutenant Khalil against orders. Leaving to extraction, the Player fails to get aboard the escape pod and gets critically damaged by a Grunt, having both hands ripped from their wrists and the right leg broken. Right before possibly dying, Taylor kills the remaining Grunts, saving the Player's life.

Death
The Player, critically injured, is taken to a Coalescence hospital to be treated for surgery. With surgical complications, the Player dies from their sustained injuries. Taylor is taken away from the room (shown in "New World" during a memory trigger scene). Despite dying, the Player's mind goes into the dream sequence connected to their DNI. Everything afterward is in the Player's mind, including Taylor's team going rogue.

Reborn
The Player's mind goes into a dream sequence designated to teach and direct. The Player then awakens with Taylor on a Coalescence commuter train. Taylor explains that the train was carrying special cargo for the Winslow Accord and that it was attacked, which made technology grew quickly as a result. The Player is guided by Taylor and his team which consists of Diaz, Hall and Maretti, who help the Player with special abilities such as hacking into enemy robotics and controlling them while helping the ZSF in the simulations. The Player retrieves the information about the train incident and tries to stop it, but fails as there is actually no way to stop the bomb from detonating. Now awake, the Player sees an "unidentified" man and female and Taylor who tells that Hendricks is also undergoing the surgery.

During the next five years, the Player and Hendricks become good friends as they go worldwide to stop every sinister attack and get a new LNO, CIA agent Rachel Kane

Working for Cyber Ops
"How long have we been doing this, Hendricks? {...} Sounds about right."

- The Player and Hendricks.

The Player and Hendricks did operations across the world, including secret operations and assassinations in Siberia, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Morocco. The Player and Hendricks became good friends during the five years of service. Also somwhere between these five years, the Player gets promoted to Commander.

Dark Secrets
The Player and Hendricks are sent to the Quarantine Zone in Singapore after the CIA Black Station there lost communications. Within the Quarantine Zone, the team find the 54 Immortals killing citizens and searching for the black site. The Player and Hendricks (led by Kane on comms) battle against the 54i forces in their way and reach the black site.

Within the black site, the team discovers the staff brutally murdered in the ritual "Denial of Reincarnation" and that the data drives are gone. Kane mentions that the last known team here was a Winslow Accord cyber soldier team, which shocks the Player and Hendricks.

Retrieving Info
The Player and Hendricks pose as arms dealers to get to the stolen data drives in the Quarantine Zone. Hendricks tries to offer a trade with Danny Li about the finest robotics they have up-to-date, but are interrupted by Goh Min and Goh Xiulan who know about the Winslow Accord making an appearance during the deal which makes the Player and Hendricks compromised. Grunts then attack the building, killing Min, Li, and several 54i soldiers, but Xiulan escapes.

The Player and Hendricks, with the assistance of Grunts, reach Cloud Mountain and locate the data drives which are being uploaded by Min, who gets knocked out and has one of her hands severed by a slave collar to stop the upload. During the upload, more 54i forces attack, but are defeated by the Player and Hendricks who then escape through the Super Trees and then an airboat.

Abandoned Coalescence Facility
The Player and Hendricks go to the abandoned Coalescence facility in the Quarantine Zone, where 300,000 people died from an explosion a long time ago. The Player and Hendricks make it into the facility and notice corrupted Grunts, which were actually anonymously controlled. Upon further investigation, they discover that Diaz has hooked himself up to the central CPU core, controlling the Grunts and uploading CIA safe house location information. The Player and Hendricks manage to kill Diaz, but the secrets were unfortunately sent, revealing every worldwide CIA safe-house location.

They then become compromised by Xiulan and 54i forces, who enter the facility to stop them, but soon leave when Xiulan orders that the facility should be flooded. The Player and Hendricks escape safely and try to get to Kane before Xiulan and her forces get to her first.

Rescuing Kane
The Player and Hendricks reach Singapore, now in devastation, to get to Kane who's in the Safe House. After going through 54i forces, they finally reach the ruined safe house where Hendricks thinks she is dead, but the Player disagrees and tries to rescue her. After freeing Kane, the Player is suddenly attacked by Xiulan, but is killed and everybody escapes and goes to Egypt to assist the Egyptian Army.

Salim's Interrogation
After arriving in Cairo, Egypt, the team interrogates Salim to see if he knows anything about Taylor's team, but doesn't give out useful information. Suddenly, Ramses Station becomes under attack by the NRC, and the Player and Hendricks leave the interrogation room. After escaping, the team goes to Kebechet but realize that they lost vitals with Salim, who was captured, interrogated, and killed by Taylor's Team. Right after losing the vitals, Hall, in a Manticore, attacks the team, but is defeated and interfaced by the Player, who enters Hall's dream Sequence.

Hall's Sequence
The Player manages to enter Hall's dream sequence and learns about her past. The Player then finds himself/herself in World War II at the battle of Bastogne (a paper Hall wrote back in the academy). Hall remembers this specially because at the time it was written, she had no combat experience. The Player learns why Taylor's team leaked the CIA locations.

The Player also learns about an AI virus, known as Corvus, that was created by people's mind which caused the explosion that killed 300,000 people that can take over people's DNI, slowly infecting them. The Player soon learns that Corvus is also slowly infecting Hendricks and thereself and need to stop it. After fighting through zombies, Hall wants the Player to kill her, who does and pursue after the remaining targets, Taylor and Maretti, who are now assisted by the NRC.

Stopping Taylor
The Player and Kane go after Taylor and Maretti who are both located at an aquifer. After taking out the air defenses and completing the hacks, the team enters the aquifer and realize that the NRC knew they were coming all along and meet up with Hendricks. The Player and Hendricks reach Maretti, who is killed by a long piece of shrapnel and go after Taylor who's located at the Lotus Towers.

After arriving, the Player and Hendricks gets caught up between an uprising of the civilians and the NRC. With lt. Khalil, the team try to overthrow the NRC leader, General Hakim, and successfully do so by killing him. The Player and Hendricks get atop the towers to confront Taylor, but Hendricks is left behind to stop the Grunts, leaving the Player himself/herself to destroy the enemy Mothership and defeat Taylor.

After the Mothership is defeated, the Player becomes trapped as Taylor reveals himself and the Player reasons with him, who suddenly regains his senses and rips out his DNI out of the back of his head and falls down. Just then, Taylor is killed by Hendricks, now fully under Corvus' control, who escapes using the Mothership and goes to the Coalescence facility in Zurich, Switzerland.

Stopping Hendricks and Corvus
The Player and Kane get to the facility with assistance from the ZSF. After arriving, they see that Hendricks has hacked into the robotic defenders of the Coalescence facility. The Player and Kane manage to get into the facility, where Kane attempts to bypass security by initiating emergency protocols, but is tricked and killed by Corvus when it traps her in a room full of Nova 6. The Player continues on and finds Hendricks and the other survivor of the explosion, Sebastian Krueger. Hendricks kills Krueger and then the Player kills Hendricks. After saying that he/she is the only one left, the Player commits suicide.

Death and Simulation
After attempting to commit suicide, the Player awakens and finds himself in the Frozen Forest with Hendricks. Hendricks tells the Player to let go, and reveals Corvus. The Player refuses and follows Corvus with Krueger. After Corvus brutally kills Krueger, the Player is met with Taylor. Taylor and the Player try to stop Corvus, as the Player loses himself/herself.

The Player awakens back at the facility, with Corvus trying to stop him/her. Taylor prevents this, which allows the Player to purge their DNI, causing the end of Corvus. While the purge slowly initiates, the Player stumbles out of the facility where a ZSF soldier asks to identify themself and the Player responds with "Taylor".

Customization
The Player's race and features are determined by the literal player from a list of nine selectable characters that can be changed throughout the Campaign. The Player's gender, face, helmet, and body are all customizable. The gender and face are chosen before beginning the Campaign, but can also be changed afterword via the wardrobe in the Safe House along with helmets and bodies which are unlocked throughout the Campaign and can be worn before any mission.

Trivia

 * If the Player is equipped with a helmet, it is strangely not shown during any mission or when in the safe house at any time during cutscenes and at the lobby for the campaign.