The new Call of Duty: Vanguard offers a big zombie mode again for friends of co-op slaughter and has now explained the story behind the putrid adventure in more detail – saving Europe from an army of the dead.
What is the zombie mode of Call of Duty? CoD has long thought beyond the campaign and multiplayer mode early in its almost 20-year history. In 2008, a crazy co-op mode was introduced – CoD: World at War had the first zombie mode.
In this co-op adventure, it was about surviving hordes of zombies that exerted more pressure on you with each completed round. Zombie kills brought you cash, with which you could buy better weapons to further decimate the unfriendly sloths.
Initially, it was only about survival, but now the mode is much more. On the zombie mode maps, you will find countless hidden secrets, many crazy gameplay upgrades, and a twisted story around nasty rotting Nazi zombies who hate democracy and life.
With Call of Duty: Vanguard, the story of the zombies goes back to the beginning – in the truest sense. The first zombie adventure of the latest CoD installment is called “The Beginning” and tells the story of the motivated Nazi officer Wolfram von List, who enters into a demonic pact to overrun Europe with thousands of zombies. We embed the trailer for the zombie mode of Vanguard here:
Demons, Zombies, Stalingrad – And you are in the middle
What is the story of “The Beginning” about? A few Nazi officials, who may have been a bit too confident, started the “Project Dead End” in a bunker on Polish territory. In the bunker, crazy experiments around particle acceleration were taking place, but the scientists encountered a kind of hell dimension – the “Dark Aether”.
Of course, there was a catastrophic incident that bridged a gap between this dimension full of demons and our world. You can experience the story behind Project Dead End in the first zombie mission of Black Ops Cold War – here you can find a guide to getting started on the map “The Machine”.
The incident connected the Dark Aether with our world, but the demons from this dark dimension have no power in our world. They need a tool, a person, who will cause chaos in the name of the demons and spread the Dark Aether in the world.
This sounds like the perfect task for an ambitious Nazi, and Wolfram von List has practically volunteered. As the leader of the SS battalion “Truth,” von List searches for supernatural phenomena and objects in the territories conquered by the Nazis and finds a mysterious artifact.
Von List then formed an alliance with a troublesome demon – Kortifex the Immortal. This gave von List the power to resurrect the dead and he chose one of the largest war cemeteries of World War II for his grand zombie offensive: Stalingrad.
In 1944 – a year after the Nazi attack on Stalingrad – von List finds enough material here for his great zombie offensive and uses his power to create an army of the dead with which he wants to instill fear in Europe.
What do the demons have to do with it? You are to contain this threat as a Vanguard team and, if possible, eliminate it. Von List is not the only one receiving help from demons from another dimension. Your characters can also defend themselves against the cruel zombies with the help of supernatural upgrades.
For Kortifex also has enemies who do not take kindly to his greed for more in our world:
- Saraxis the Shadow
- Norticus the Conqueror
- Inviktor the Destroyer
- Bellekar the Warlock
Through your own demon alliance, you will also gain supernatural skills in the fight against a dreadful zombie army that aims to move east with armored MG zombies. You are the last shield in the living Europe’s battle against the dead dimension of the Dark Aether.
If you want to know more about the story details and mechanics, check out the English video from the developers Treyarch about the zombie mode in Vanguard:
The round system might be outdated
How do the matches play out? So far, it can’t be said for sure. But perhaps the well-known round-based system is outdated. There is more talk of an expandable command center in Stalingrad, as well as battles in different battlefields of the war – similar to the Outbreak mode of Cold War.
The command center, however, is not safe – there are still plenty of zombies here that want to take you down. If you reach certain goals, you can further expand the command center and unknown areas in Stalingrad will also open up with new exploration opportunities and upgrades for your equipment.
“Get in with your friends, enter a portal, and reach a goal” – say the developers in the video about the zombie mode in Vanguard. This does not necessarily mean that the round-based system will disappear, but at first glance, it does seem different from the classic zombie maps.
In addition, randomness plays a bigger role in your bonus setup during matches. There is the “Altar of Alliances,” where you can select passive bonuses that change from match to match. Your held weapon and your allied demon also play a role in this. This should lead to countless combinations of possible builds, and each round could play out a little differently.
How all of this will play out in detail remains to be seen. But Vanguard seems to be doing some things differently with the zombie experience “The Beginning”.
Complete integration into the CoD ecosystem
How is the zombie mode connected to the rest of the CoD universe? To put it simply: Completely.
This starts with the progression system. When you play the zombie mode, you can level everything you can level in multiplayer: weapons, operators, your account, and the battle pass. Overall, you can then even level your account and the battle pass in 4 CoDs: Vanguard, Warzone, Cold War, and CoD MW – all remain part of the progression system.
The story is also now fully integrated. Through Warzone, whose story at release was closely tied to Modern Warfare from 2019, CoD MW and Black Ops found a common storyline. Part of this story are also zombies, which were the reason the modern Verdansk had to be destroyed. Since then, the battle royale is played in Verdansk ’84 – a version of the city in the 80s.
As part of the official story, CoD MW from 2019, Cold War from 2020, Black Ops 1 from 2010, Black Ops 2 from 2012, and CoD: World at War from 2008 are currently considered. A connection with the “Black Ops” titles that are set in the future and the respective zombie modes in the mentioned games, which are considered part of the story, is still not quite certain.
Vanguard will also then be part of this CoD story and make its own contribution to the universe of the shooter series. A truly fearsome contribution that promises a lot of fun.
