Call of Duty: World War II drops on November 3rd, promising not only a return to form for the beloved shooter, but a host of features that pushes forward the most popular gaming genre on the planet. With details around Headquarters Mode and War Mode exciting fans with long overdue innovations, gamers have been wondering about what changes are coming to one of the most popular modes in the series — Nazi Zombies. The answer: Plenty. But the game will be frighteningly familiar.
After months of silence around the wave-based slaughter of undead (beyond cryptic clues to its settings and certain producers saying it’s the scariest version ever), PlayStation Blog spoke to CoD: WWII’s Zombies lead Jon Horsley, a senior director at Sledgehammer Games. He revealed a few things of interest, notably the location, which will be a big part of the story. Previously, maps were simply passive areas that fed into cliché zombie locales, but in WWII, an entire story has been built and Zombies is now its own little mini-campaign.
Zombies will take place in a quiet Bavarian village in Germany in the later years of WWII. Players will be transported to a horrifying corner of the town, where bloody sewers, evil laboratories, and ancient tombs will reveal their dark secrets. It’s an immersive thrill ride, and developing the canvas and the environment the player is immersed in was a fun challenge for our team.
The location itself, while exciting, isn’t truly an innovation. Sledgehammer isn’t straying too far from what works. But it is the current year, and the mode itself can’t survive on a narrative and what we were playing a decade ago. Now, environments are far more interactive:
There are a variety of structures built by the enemy to subdue and constrain the undead. A resourceful player can turn the tables and use their engines of death against them. And saw blades are just the beginning; there are numerous ways to trap and kill your enemies. The environment can be a great ally if you know how to leverage it…
With hype exponentially increasing with each beta and info dump, it seems like CoD WWII is truly going all-out to make an impact in a market filled with heavy-hitters. Battlefield 1 is still going strong, and games like PUBG and Overwatch are dominating Twitch streams.
Still, (and you can call me a cynical gamer), this Zombies mode looks good enough to be its own stand-alone DLC. Consider me hyped.
(Via PlayStation Blog)