Outbreak Origins: Developer insights on Black Ops Cold War Zombies's newest mode
As the saying goes, there's no rest for the wicked - let's take a look at how Zombies' most ambitious mode came to be.
Image: Treyarch
"To quell a zombie outbreak, you're going to have to take down its source.".
First of all, there's no need to ask Google who made that statement, because he's not some heroic zombie-slayer or a champion of undead-killing justice. His occupation is a much simpler one, and it mostly involves him typing away on his keyboard in the dead of night.
Putting the jokes and awkwardly lame statements aside, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Zombies' newest and arguably most ambitious addition - Outbreak Mode was finally added to the game a couple of days ago, and I'm having a real ball with it. However, it's also worth asking how this new "breed" of Zombies came about, and we recently sat down with Treyarch to do just that.
Scoping out the Dark Aether
Image: Treyarch
Answering our humble petitions from the Dark Aether that is Treyarch's development office were Lead Writer Craig Houston, Expert Game Designer Kevin Drew, and Studio Creative Director Corky Lehmkuhi. Needless to say, all three of them have loads of experience working on the Zombies franchise, with Craig and Corky having stuck around since World at War! For reference, that came out in 2008, so let's face it, we're all old.
Anyway, we opened up asking about the origins of Outbreak. You'd think such an expansive and advanced co-op mode would only have been talked about in recent instalments, right? Well, yes and no.
According to Corky, the concept of the Outbreak mode has been around as early as the first Black Ops title, when the team was working on how to further develop the scale of the experience. However, conceptualising a game mode is a wholly different ball game from actually creating it, and he notes that the "technology hasn't been there" up until this point, which explains why it only appeared recently.
Image: Treyarch
We then quizzed them on their personal ideas for future Zombies map locations. One of the franchise's greatest appeals, for me at least is how it takes players all over the world to various landmarks and historical periods. From navigating the halls of Alcatraz in Mob of the Dead, to surviving the sinking Titanic in Voyage of Despair, there's been no shortage of variety with regard to environments, and the team recognises this as one of their main motivations as well.
Of course, while they can't share what ideas they're discussing for future maps, they do have differing answers on what locations they enjoyed working on most so far. Craig notes that he personally loved developing Alcatraz, while Corky said he couldn't pick between the WW1-inspired Origins and Shadows of Evil, the latter of which takes its flavour from the French film The City of Lost Children.
Gun + Car = Fun
Zooming in on the Outbreak Mode announcement trailer (check it out above!), there's a scene where a character plants a block of C4 on a vehicle, which they then send hurtling towards a mini-boss Zombie. Going along that train of thought, we asked if the team were planning to allow players to equip weapons on the vehicles like they do in the 2008 film Death Race, which starred Jason Statham in the leading role.
Unfortunately, the short answer here was no, or at least, not at launch. Kevin took the helm for the trio here, remarking that although players wouldn't be able to equip external weapons on vehicles, the team was considering bringing in some of the weaponised vehicles from Fireteam in the future. However, their main focus right now is ensuring everything is balanced for PvE, which is normal considering Outbreak is still very much in its infancy.
That said, we will still be able to "import" our skins and customisation options onto the vehicles that we ride in - the decor and colour-coding will change to match your respective character's outfits the moment you climb on board.
Why science and not magic?
Image: Treyarch
Last but not least, we asked about the core foundations of the revamped Zombies mode, which seemingly ended after the curtains fell on the original Zombies cast in Black Ops 4. Specifically, we asked why the team decided to go with stuff that looked more alien, rather than having the undead revive due to dark magic and curses like they did in Voyage of Despair.
To that end, Corky says that "alien" was never really the idea, though he does understand why players might interpret it as such. Rather, it was more of "sci-fi horror" - think games like Dead Space and Doom Eternal. According to him, the team never really felt that magic was the common denominator for how the narrative turned out - it was always about science gone wrong, as evidenced by Dr. Maxis and Richtofen's experiments at Der Riese, among numerous other instances.
Plus, the team also felt that it was the only possible way to gel the current Dark Aether storyline to the original Zombies narrative, where particle accelerator experiments during WW2 led to "unpredictable outcomes". In this case, it tore holes in the fabric between dimensions, allowing the zombies to enter our reality through that breach.
Well, when you look at it that way, it's definitely much more plausible than having them spawn out of someone's failed magic trick. Regardless, it was a fantastic and informative session, and we'd like to thank Treyarch for the opportunity to pick the minds pulling the Dark Aether's strings. With all these new tidbits in mind, it's time to head back to the field - those zombies aren't going to shoot themselves, you know.
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