Yet again, Treyarch is being forced to make a zombies mode for other COD developers

Source: CharlieIntel

A shot in the dark

The problems all started in 2019 with the release of Black Ops Cold War (BOCW). Originally that game was suppose to be under the development of Sledgehammer Games. Alas, a year before release, Activision pushed Treyarch into development and eventually took over the whole title. The outcome speaks for itself. While, the game is still highly regarded as an all-around great game, you can still see cracks in the games design under the development pressure.

Specifically, the zombies mode for BOCW was the most drastic change we've ever seen to the traditional Treyarch formula. Now, this actually didn't stop the mode from remaining popular as zombies was pulling in new players more than we've ever seen.

Rather, it's this sudden boost in popularity from taking creative risks that would be the catalyst for Treyarch to pick up the slack for all COD developers (In the zombies mode).

Consequences

Call Of Duty Vanguard has released the worst zombies mode in any COD to date. Yet again, Treyarch was forced to put together a skeleton-crew for this new games zombies mode. In this frantic scramble to put something together in under a years time, they decided to pull from the most controversial changes that were made to the traditional zombies formula from BOCW. That being, Outbreak. It was basically an "open-world" zombies mode where you completed objectives and teleported to a cycle of a few multiplayer maps.

However, Treyarch failed to even capture the original vision of Outbreak from BOCW and delivered one of the worst iterations of an iteration ever. In Vanguard zombies, the main hub area was a tiny 2v2 sized multiplayer map. There were different portals that "teleported" you to different sectioned off areas of that same hub map. You would fight in this sectioned off area for a couple of minutes and were eventually teleported back to the hub. Now rinse and repeat until you either died or exfiltrated.

On top of all of that, the game failed to feature any easter eggs and even WONDER WEAPONS on launch. By the end of it's life cycle, they eventually released a "remaster" of a map from World At War but it was too little too late as the player base had already moved on.

The cycle continues

With the back-to-back releases of Modern Warfare 2 and 3, it's no surprise that Treyarch is being pulled onto a "new" zombies mode. This time around it's more controversial than ever as the "zombies" mode will be more different from traditional zombies than ever before. It is essentially a hybrid between Outbreak from BOCW and DMZ.

Here is a quick breakdown of the known gameplay loop:

• DMZ style zombies map

• 24 players in a single zombies match

• Up to 6 players per "squad"

• PVE exclusive (squads work together to kill zombies/complete objectives)

• "Extraction based gameplay loop" (presumably inspired by the DMZ mode)

While, it has also been confirmed that the story and "zombies features" are returning (Pack-A-Punch, perks, AATs, power ups). The story will also be told cinematically like Cold War. However, unlike previous cinematic stories told in traditional zombies modes, I suspect a huge chunk of the story is told through intel and radios. It won't include dialogue heavy story moments like in Black Ops 3 because, operators are returning.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

At the end of the day, it's clear that zombies is just not what it use to be and that's okay. It's all a matter of perspective, if you love the direction they went with BOCW than you should be excited for this release. However, if you dislike such changes (especially after COD Vanguard), we should just accept that this iteration will not be to your standards and wait until Treyarch's next main title.