There have been a lot of good maps in zombies history, and it looks like Black Ops 7 is going to make an attempt to join the pantheon. For all the problems that plagued the previous iteration, the maps were generally pretty good. A few of them would easily rank among the best maps ever made, and so the next iteration will try again to continue some of the success. It seems, based on the latest info dump, that they’re attempting to do so by paying homage to a great classic map from Black Ops II.
TranZit Might be Back in Black Ops 7
It’s been a long time since Black Ops II was relevant, though it has, for my money, the absolute best zombies in any Call of Duty game. The maps are borderline unmatched, but only one got the remaster treatment in Zombies Chronicles, Origins, and the rest have been forgotten to the annals of history. Until now, potentially.
According to the official Treyarch X account, the first Black Ops 7 map is going to be called Ashes of the Damned. The desciption reads, “Welcome to an otherworldly Bermuda Triangle, packed with mysterious locations ripped out of time and space, connected by even deadlier nightmares looming in the fog…” Doesn’t that sound awfully familiar? TranZit was a whole lot like that as well. It connected areas of different other maps, including Nacht der Untoten and a few that became solo maps in Black Ops II as well.
Similarly, it looks like Ashes of the Damned is going to feature a few locations from different pieces of zombies lore as well, including Janus Towers Plaza, Vandorn Farm (another farm being included in this sort of map seems like yet another homage to TranZit), Blackwater Lake, Ashwood, Exit 115, and Zarya Cosmodrome.
Just like the Black Ops II map, this one seems poised to have several different stopping points. There are also photos of a vehicle that you can drive around from point to point (like the bus) through the fog (a key element of the old map) and which is also where Pack-A-Punch happens. All in all, this sounds a lot like a TranZit-style map, which is fantastic news.
More Details
This is just one map, albeit one that seems to carry a really promising story and a great setting, of many that are surely planned. We don’t know much about anything else, and we won’t until Call of Duty is nearly ready to put out new maps after launch. But we do know plenty about the mode as a whole, and it certainly seems like Treyarch is cooking with gas right now.
The leaked Cursed game mode is official, and it’ll bring back plenty of classic mechanics and aspects to kind of merge the current gameplay with the old style that players have longed for. Directed Mode will remain, though. All told, there will be five total modes: Directed, Cursed, Standard, Survival, and Dead Ops Arcade 4. Survival and Dead Ops Arcade haven’t been relevant for a long time.
The original crew is back alongside some of the new faces, and everyone, save for Takeo, is going to be voiced by their original actors. There’s also a new bear zombie miniboss coming in the first map, which has been described as the biggest, boldest map yet but simultaneously only step one of Black Ops 7‘s journey. It’s a great time to be a zombies fan.
Final Round
For all the faults that Call of Duty has, and there are many, they have routinely done well with zombies. They had some major missteps, but Black Ops 6 was a step in the right direction. Black Ops 7, albeit very soon, is proving to be another, and it’s proving that Treyarch have listened to fans and implemented things that the community want in this game mode, which could go a long way for the series.
