Treyarch Says They’re Not Playing It Safe with Black Ops 4 Zombies
Without a doubt Treyarch has made a name for themselves with their Zombies modes over the years in the Call of Duty franchise. In fact, it’s often seen as one of the biggest attractions of any COD title developed by Treyarch and it seems this year won’t be any different. Recently, Treyarch has revealed a bunch of information about their Zombies mode, including two brand new trailers detailing their storyline and maps. Now, in a recent interview, they’ve opened up about their vision for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
In a new interview with Variety, Treyarch’s executive producer Jason Blundell and lead writer Craig Houston talked about their latest Zombies installment in great detail, stating they don’t want to repeat anything they’ve already done in the past. “We’ve never played it safe when we start out making another one of these,” says Jason Blundell “It’s all about the risk, we never want a map that’s universally loved. We think the passion that our fans have for zombies is rooted in how different each experience can be.”
And different it will be, as both Blundell and Houston mentioned that all three new maps, Voyage of Despair on the Titanic, IX set in an ancient Roman coliseum, and Blood of the Dead prison, will tell an entirely new story. Because of this, Treyarch has been able to ‘reset the rules’ of both the gameplay and the narrative. Blundell talked about these maps saying, “Each time we start designing one of these maps we treat it like we’re doing it for the first time. We don’t want anything to be generalized across modes. The design layout of each map is incredibly different, the Titanic has all sorts of chokepoint hallways while the Coliseum in IX is far more than a typical arena, we’ve shown that in trailers.” Houston adds, “We’ve never tried to do the same thing twice. We’re able to tell a story without the baggage of the previous games, we’re not continuing with what happened after Aether.”
As we’ve seen in the new trailers, the new storyline seems to take a time travel approach to it, which, according to Treyarch, this has allowed them to reinvent a bunch of systems in their Zombies mode. Houston stated, “We wanted to go back to the core of zombie gameplay, which is play it until you die basically. We’re also poking into mythology which opens up all kinds of opportunities for new systems.” In fact, Blundell explained that they’ve created entirely new gameplay systems that will better work with Black Ops 4. Two of these will include custom mutations, allowing players to adjust a bunch of things like zombie difficulty and speed, which will allow players to have very different experiences each time they play. In addition to this, there will also be factions that players can join in order to earn rewards.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will launch on October 12th for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. So, what do you think about all of this Black Ops 4 Zombies information? Are you even more excited to get your hands on the latest installment? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and don’t forget to keep it locked for updates!