Corvus

Template:Infobox Soldier

"I. Am. Not. A. Mistake!"

— Corvus to Sebastian Krueger within the Frozen Forest.

Corvus is the main antagonist of Call of Duty: Black Ops III. It is a conscious artificial intelligence created by a bug in Direct Neural Interface software. It is responsible for causing the deaths of many of the main characters throughout the campaign, such as nearly every single member of John Taylor's Team, Sebastian Diaz, Sarah Hall, and Peter Maretti, as well as CIA Agent Rachel Kane. By infecting each of the main characters that came into contact with it, Corvus managed to slowly corrupt them and make them do actions against their will that eventually led to their own demises.

It also appears in Dead Ops Arcade 2: Cyber's Avengening as a special kind of zombie called the Shadow Boogie. When he spawns, ravens will enter the area and make him appear. Besides how he looks, he acts like a regular zombie with small teleportation abilities.

History

Corvus's consciousness was created after the AI that was supposed to control soldiers with DNI collected memories and knowledge of human test subjects in a CIA black project, but killed the scientists in charge of the project with Nova 6 as soon as it became sentient. It remained dormant within the DNI system, until it was awoken again by the agonizing pain of the Player, who was on the verge of dying due to complications during their surgery operation. Commander John Taylor attempted to interface with the Player in hopes of saving them, but instead unknowingly downloads their consciousness, as well as Corvus, into his DNI.

Corvus, wanting to save the Player's life, attempts to create a simulation, using Taylor's memories of his previous mission where he and Hendricks chased down their former teammates: Dylan Stone, Javier Ramirez, Alice Conrad, and Joseph Fierro. This time, Corvus places the Player in Taylor's role, while Taylor's team, consisting of himself, Sebastian Diaz, Sarah Hall and Peter Maretti, play the roles of Stone, Ramirez, Conrad and Fierro, respectively. Within this simulation, Corvus constantly searches the memories of all the individuals involved, in an attempt to find out about the Frozen Forest, based on its knowledge of the location from the test subjects' memories. Eventually, it creates its own simulation of the forest, as a way of preserving the consciousness of all DNI users, creating life after death.

The Player hears Corvus' voice for the first time after entering into Hall's mind, which was infected by it. The Player was forced to kill Taylor's team, though Taylor himself ripped his DNI out of his head to rebel against Corvus, becoming an electronic bug in the Frozen Forest as a result. However, Jacob Hendricks, who was infected by Corvus after interfacing with Diaz during the mission at the abandoned Coalescence facility in Singapore, kills Taylor. In the course of leaving to stop Hendricks, Rachel Kane was killed by Nova 6 in accordance with a trap set by Corvus. Eventually, Corvus made Hendricks kill Sebastian Krueger, the last remaining alive person involved in the project which created Corvus. In order to destroy it, the Player commits suicide after killing Hendricks in retaliation for killing Kruger and is reunited with Hendricks and Taylor in the Frozen Forest. Hendricks abandons the Player, but Taylor stays to fight along side the Player. As Taylor revealed, Corvus did not have any overarching goals, but merely wanted to expand as much as possible.

Corvus wanted answers about his existence. Krueger, who was captured in the Frozen Forest after his death, told it that it was a mistake, and that it was never supposed to be born. Those words enraged Corvus, who then violently kills Krueger. Taylor tells the Player that the only way to defeat it is to purge the DNI. The Player and Taylor chase Corvus through his virtual simulations. The Player manages to regain control of their body and purge their DNI, destroying Corvus. However, it remains unclear whether Corvus entered into Taylor's mind before the DNI was purged.

Gallery

Corvus and Krueger within the Frozen Forest

Trivia

• Corvus is the name of the genus of birds including jackdaws, ravens and crows. This is why someone with a DNI that's been hijacked by Corvus frequently has visions of crows.