The Downfall of Storytelling in Call of Duty Zombies



Modern Warfare 3 Zombies is already dangerously close to breaking a tradition held for 10+ years of past Zombies maps.
Let’s talk about how the Zombies story started, and the knife-edge it finds itself on today.

Please leave a like if you enjoyed the video and want more Call of Duty Zombies video essay style thinkpieces from me in future! Maybe even suggest a topic in the comments 👀

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43 thoughts on “The Downfall of Storytelling in Call of Duty Zombies”

  1. I was 12 when I first played COD Zombies (Five in BO1). I am 24 now, with a degree, a masters, a job, a whole different life. Zombies simply could not keep up with my life, it became outdated.

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  2. Do they not understand that uncertainty, mysterious storytelling, unknown characters and creatures, all attract AND KEEP the player base!?!?

    Think of pop culture/fiction like Star Wars. Imagine if Gorge Lucus revealed EVERYTHING about the prequels in A New Hope, image if he revealed all of that in a sentence before the film came out. I know this is a ‘strange’ example BUT ITS THE SAME THING.

    Zombies only stayed popular because of the story, because the story was mysterious, it was mysterious so we wanted to find our own answers, and we satisfied our urge for finding those answer by playing the damn map we were so intrigued with.

    The best maps were the maps where we had no idea what the fuck was going on.

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  3. I stopped playing after Cold War. I have lost all interest, and I started playing with WaW many moons ago. Zombies has lost it's charm, it's sparkle, it's air of mystery and has become 'just another CoD installment'. Nothing from the franchise excites me anymore.

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  4. Zombies Storytelling has definitely been suffering ever since Bo3 started spoon-feeding almost every story detail to the player. Then Bo4 not only does the same but also just serves a really shit story all together. Then Cold War onwards gives the absolute most amount of lore and intel combined with the most uninteresting and uninspired narrative ever.

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  5. Completely unrelated to the video topic, but 11:14, the reload animations. Dempsey holding one shell in when he reloads after shooting one shot isnt something seen anymore. Games used to be an art form, not a business…

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  6. Fantastic video milo. Absolutely nailed it ❤ zombies is a very simple formula to me, "You don't know what you don't know" works so well and it feels since Jason's departure treyarch just don't understand anymore. They're so out of touch

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  7. I feel like they're trying to cycle out the old players like how League Sort of did;

    At some point; catering to old fans gets expensive and instead aiming for new players while slowly taking away the stuff old ones liked is the best way to tell them "We don't can't support you guys anymore."

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  8. I feel like they're trying to cycle out the old players like how League Sort of did;

    At some point; catering to old fans gets expensive and instead aiming for new players while slowly taking away the stuff old ones liked is the best way to tell them "We don't can't support you guys anymore."

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  9. Milo, you may not be stupid but I don’t think you realize just how dumb the average cod player is. They need shit spelled out for them and everything handed to them or they will not understand it.

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  10. You can solve all of the easter eggs, get all the high rounds in other games, but get downed repeatedly by or before round 5. I miss zombies being fun AND a challenge.

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  11. i remember when ascension came out looking at the forms (i think it was like game faq or something) while currently everyone was trying to figure out what to do for the easter egg, and everyone was stuck on the part with the gersh device – that was top tier zombies

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  12. I miss when the trailer spoke for itself. I miss when we would get a badass trailer and there would be a element of mystery with no explanation like you said.

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  13. You kinda skipped from WAW/BO1 campaign, straight to BO3, and I feel that really cuts out some of the BIGGEST story moments for zombies.

    -The Kino intro
    -The ascension easter egg (the og of all easter eggs)
    -COTD and Shangri-la's easter eggs (which establish the helpful voice behind the door trope)

    -The mother of all easter eggs "Richtofen's grand scheme" making most of what was completed earlier truely worth every bit of attention given to it.

    -The tranzit…. shift….
    -The gap in which we got no answers as to what happened to the OG crew on moon as BO2 progressed forward through buried with Victis (or as they were known at the time the "tranzit crew")
    -Richtofen/Maxis grande easter egg.
    -Suddenly Origins

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  14. Jesus…. I already knew MW3 zombies was going to be trash because they announced it so late and it clearly is an afterthought that isnt going to see the love, time and attention a proper game needs and will likely end up a rehash of outbreak or god forbid vanguard. But I had no idea this was their idea of a story and marketing that story.

    Theyre talking to the fanbase that researched crazy nazi conspiracy stuff off nothing more than a note made on a chalkboard and as if theyre getting a recap of the walking dead.

    I bet 30$ these clowns dont know who peter mcclain was….

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  15. No one gives a shit about theorising in a Call of Duty game. You want to theorise about something, go to Lost. Also, saltiness around keeping it mysterious is no way in hell the right way to go about it. Jesus 😂

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