Call of Duty Zombies has had plenty of highs and lows in recent years. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 launched with a ton of content, with four full maps being playable on day one. Unfortunately, a terribly unpolished launch killed the hype for its DLC season, which also seemed to fall victim to a lack of time and resources. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War featured some great, if overly easy, core gameplay, and its free-to-play map drops were well received. It did suffer from a lack of personality, though, something that Vanguard Zombies had despite lacking everything else fans enjoyed. In Call of Duty 2024, Treyarch will hopefully be able to get things back on track, delivering something like Black Ops Cold War but with a lot more charm.
While Call of Duty 2023 has been rumored to have some Zombies content, those leaks and reports have suggested it will follow the Outbreak formula from Black Ops Cold War, which makes sense. Not only can assets be reused for Outbreak maps, but this way, there will be no need to force Treyarch to develop another game’s Zombies mode or risk non-Treyarch round-based maps. Call of Duty 2024, then, is the best chance to bring Zombies back to the top, and to do that, an exclusive cast with unique dialogue is a must. Fortunately, there are ways to provide this without ruining Call of Duty’s new monetization model.
A Voice Cast Can Fix Call of Duty Zombies’ Personality Problem
While there was a lot to love about Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, there is no denying that it lost a bit of the charm seen in classic Zombies modes like Black Ops 3. The maps lacked the uniqueness of locations like Der Eisendrache, and the existence of health bars and item drops took a lot of getting used to. However, what truly hurt this iteration was the use of Operators, as it removed the mode’s all-important dialogue from Zombies’ winning formula.
Whether it was Ultimis Dempsey breaking the fourth wall in Shangri-La, or Primis Richtofen and Takeo having a heart-to-heart conversation, in-game dialogue has always been integral to making Call of Duty Zombies special. It is the reason fans fell in love with the original cast, as they could always count on them to make them laugh or cry with whatever they said when fighting the undead. This feature needs to come back, as the alternatives have not worked at all. Black Ops Cold War’s use of Requiem or Omega to guide players through maps quickly got repetitive, and given Vanguard Zombies’ failure, it is unlikely that the talkative demons will return.
Obviously, the reason that the mostly silent Operators are used for the newer Call of Duty Zombies modes is monetization. If Zombies players can use a special Operator skin within their Zombies matches, they may be more inclined to spend money on cosmetics, something they would likely not do if there is a Zombies-exclusive cast in place with no purchasable outfits. If Operators cannot be used in Zombies, those who only enjoy Treyarch’s survival mode will have no reason to engage with the in-game store, as the bundles would only be usable in multiplayer or the all-important Call of Duty: Warzone.
However, there are two perfectly viable solutions to this problem. The first, and simplest, is to make Operators from multiplayer and Warzone an option. Something similar was done with The Tortured Path in Sledgehammer's Call of Duty: WW2 Zombies, as players were able to unlock bonus characters that they could use in addition to the main celebrity cast. If this concept returned, Call of Duty 2024 Zombies can have four main characters that talk to each other constantly, but if players wanted to use someone else that they have a skin for, they could swap out a Zombies character for their Operator of choice.
The other option is to have a separate store for Call of Duty 2024 Zombies. Not only would this shop have blueprints themed entirely around classic Wonder Weapons, perks, and items, but it could offer skins for the four main Zombies characters only. This way, Activision could still make money off of the Zombies community without hurting the quality of the Dark Aether storyline by requiring the use of Operators. With some careful planning, Call of Duty Zombies can revive fully voiced playable characters without removing the cosmetic features of modern modes.