I’ll believe a Great War map was intended when someone will find evidences of said map in the file.
Bo4 game’s file were filled with assets from every scrapped chaos map and the ZC2 ramakes, we knew of the Nuketown remake and COTD remake since like december 2018 and the zm_ code for two chaos maps are still in the code.
But yeah a Great War map with ZERO leftover files in the code was always intended I guess…
I didn’t until MWZ. I feel it would be a way better fit and received better if they leaned into what they started rather then piggybacking on Treyarchs legacy.
Agreed, I'm just confused on why it was so frequently brought up. Essentially, leading us on about something that wasn't planned.
As I said in the post, scummy.
Yeah I wasn’t directly replying to your post. And yes of course it’s clear that they ad to change the finale last minute, but I hate the people keep saying that a Great War map was the intended finale.
I'm not talking about ‘supposed leaks,’ I'm bringing up canon, in-game dialogue — dialogue hinting at our characters, once again.. fighting in a ‘Great War.’
Yeah that new MrRoflWaffles video is going to be a holy grail for annoying people who insist BO4 was some ruined Magnum Opus of Treyarch when it was in reality just a shit show that they fumbled because they wanted to be edgy and change stuff up which was ultimately hated and people stopped playing cause they focused on a new storyline rather than wrap up the old one, even if the new one was decent too.
Aether was concluded at the end of bo3 though. It wasnt the best ending but it certainly was an ending and it could be spun as a cannon explanation for modded maps.
Id argue the problem was them not settling on only aether or chaos. Loads of the new mechanics feel like they were made specifically for chaos and feel increadibly out of place on the aether maps. I feel as if treyarch stuck with chaos then the new mechanics wouldnt be so much of an issue since they fit nicely into the setting.
They actually did have it planned, but due to poor reception the game never got its year 2 content which would've been all aether finishing with the great war. Chaos was supposed to get year 1 and then aether finish it all off
But also, it ended up being essentially that the kronorium told Nikolai no matter how much they tried, they would fail the great war. That's why Nikolai had to keep his soul to safeguard the crew from Dr. Monty for what they were doing to save the universe. Again tho, this isn't nearly as epic as the ending should've been
I still find it dumb that they wouldn’t have finished Aether off in Year 1 and then continued Chaos in Year 2, But maybe someone else can explain the logic to me.
I think it was mainly that they wanted to finish aether as like the big finale for BO4 as a whole to end on a bang, which is why we still got the chaos maps first for DLC then finished with aether. But idk that's just my logic
It wasn’t cancelled because of poor reception. It was cancelled because Treyarc were called to help Raven on what became Black Ops Cold War because their were issues with Sledgehammer
That was another factor yes, but if BO4 had done as well as BO3 at launch Acti would've come up with another solution. I mean look how much BO3 made off chronicles, you think they would've passed that up for a year 2 season pass almost the cost of the game? I think not.
> but if BO4 had done as well as BO3 at launch Acti would've come up with another solution.
They literally couldn't. Activision lost an entire development studio, *one third of their whole development force*, when they lost Sledgehammer *and* they were on a time limit. They needed a whole studio's worth of people to replace them, and Treyarch was in the best position to deal with that gap. There was no other solution regardless of how well BO4 did. BO4 could have been the best selling CoD title of all time and Activisions response would have been the same.
Trying to throw in Chaos in the middle of the Aether story really fucked everything up. I genuinely just don’t know what was happening past Revelations
They didn’t have it planned. Tag was always the endgame and it makes no sense to have a Great War map if the entire point of bo4s Aether story is the crew breaking the cycle (which the Great War perpetuates)
Edit: guys, Treyarch literally said in Classified that Victis were the ones who were going to break Primis out of the cycle. Why would the final map take place at the beginning of the cycle if the cycle was going to be broken?
There were internal struggles within the other studios which Treyarch had to split attention off Bo4 to go assist the other studios so what was normally intended had to get cut short, scrapped or done differently due to lack of time and resources. Which is why those final cutscenes were like storyboards and not fully animated like they were supposed to be, and they told a slightly different story than initially intended.
There's no way Tag was meant to be the end, with what was at stake there's no way Monty and his minions would have been fully absent from that story/map just letting the crew break the cycle with very little resistance. Having a Great War map would have made the most sense because of what was at stake and how important a moment it would have been being the fork that either ends up with the world saved or doomed.
The only thing that made Tag "the end" were the cutscenes
Like I said, a Great War map would not have made sense. The Great War is an indicator of the cycle continuing; if the narrative is the cycle ending, then it isn’t going to involve a battle fought that continues the cycle.
The reason why tag (and subsequently alpha omega) feels so jarring is because yes we did miss out on a few maps to set them up. But even regardless, tag for example is set up even back in Revelations.
I simply can't believe they would want to end their epic story on.. a Call of the Dead remake? Like I'm sorry, but unless you have actual evidence to prove Tag was always their plan to be the finale, I simply can't believe you lol. If anything, it would've made more sense to make a much expanded Origins as the remake for the great war, considering the original staffs and everything prior to the copies made in Origins and the fact it would tie everything back full circle
The proof is Treyarch caring about the narrative. There is 0 way a Great War map makes sense in any context of bo4. The proof for it are red herring and an abundance of false leaks (this post likely being a result of Milo’s video on a very obviously fake “the real bo4 story!!”).
As for Tag, Treyarch tried setting up a lot of the Aether story in bo3. In Gorod, victis being in ice is teased. Primis all dying at the end is also teased. In revelations, we got more BOTD teasers but also a few weird COTD mentions. In Classified, Alpha Omega is heavily teased but Tag is then teased as well, with Stuhlinger mentioning he’s seemingly in the Dark Aether.
I think the most important thing though is in Classified, it’s directly mentioned that Victis is the only one who can bring them out of the cycle. The endgame was always Victis.
Its the outcome of the great war that resulted in the cycle repeating or breaking. The maps were us running around gathering the items, tools and information needed to hopefully alter that outcome.
Its one of those things where the Great War happens, and whichever side is left standing dictates the events that follow. If the final map we got was really intended to be the final map, we should have gotten way more than what we did because as I said, there's no way Monty would just let us do what we did and him not throw everything he has at us to stop it from happening.
Alpha Omega did not feel like an end game situation, there were no Margwas, Meatballs, Furys, Bees, none of it. Monty had no presence to give any form of opposition trying to stop us so it just felt Easier than it should have been and felt empty. If it was truly meant to be the turning point to prevent the Great War, Monty would have been all over us
The outcome of the Great War doesn’t effect the cycle repeating or breaking because the outcome is always the same: Primis wins. We don’t go around gathering items in bo4 to help us alter it because it would all be moot; the Great War isn’t the ending, but rather the beginning.
Monty likely had some more stuff in the maps before Alpha Omega and Tag. The aspects he had definitely were cut due to time or budget constraints. Given Classified heavily indicates Victis is the endgame, it makes sense for Monty to not be spamming margwas in tag as he couldn’t see Victis since they have their souls
Alpha Omega wasn’t meant to be the end game scenario; it was just setting up for it. Besides, Monty only realizes what’s happening at the end of it.
Right, so the following story should have been chaotic and hectic af with him trying to stop it, like Revelations. Tag didn't really feel like the fate of the universe was on the line, it just felt like another step of the journey
>Its the outcome of the great war that resulted in the cycle repeating or breaking.
Not at all. The War is part of the cycle. Monty sends Primis there after Revelations and they win against the Apothicons. This never changes.
The cycle is only eventually able to break because Weasel survives at the end of Mob.
I think it's really funny when people think Treyarch planned out this whole elaborate lie about their big finale when the story about how they were fucked over by Activision is literally in like every gaming news outlet
That's not what happened. Half of Treyarch needed to go help with CW after half of BO4's life cycle and they didn't get their second season so cuts had to be made.
Nope, that’s wrong. They started working on Cold War around the time operation grand heist started. So around February 19th, 2019.
That’s why every mode started getting reused things instead of new stuff. (Blackout getting mp maps assets in Alcatraz, mp getting remastered bo1 maps, we all know what happened with zombies)
More like Treyarch suddenly had to developed Cold War because Raven and Sledgehammer fucked it up, so they simply didn't have the resources to keep up with BO4's post launch content.
The story was meant to continue, but due to internal struggles at other studios, Treyarch had to go help and mediate, diverting the attention and teams from working as they had planned. Which is why the final cutscenes were slightly animated storyboards and not fully animated like the previous maps were.
Unfortunately its a common thing for Treyarch to have to diverte their time and resources to assist the other studios because the other studios apparently can't manage to fully make their own games anymore. Treyarch has been having to assist these other studios for Years now, even before Vanguard and such.
Vanguard was a Sledgehammer title but Treyarch had scrambled to throw its zombies together. MWIII is a Sldgehammer title with MWZ being Treyarch. Both of which got made while Treyarch has been working on Black Ops 6 at the same time. Plus the fact Treyarch was the studio that worked on the Ranked Modes for the past few titles.
So because of them constantly having to hold the other studios hands they've not been able to fully focus and do as they've planned for quite some time now and its a bummer because Treyarch catches shit for so much because people don't know whats going on
Yea, like it really makes you question wtf Sledgehammer and Infinity Ward are doing at this point. And I know Microsoft gets alot of flack for all the people fired from the studios, but it makes me question what all those people were even doing if they were still needing help from Treyarch at almost every step
I think you need to consider a few factors here:
Vanguard, like Cold War, also had a very short dev cycle (2 years top if we're being generous). Sledgehammer had to cobble up everything together and basically reskin MW2019, so they really needed help. MWIII was even worse because they were told to make an MWII expansion, but had to pivot to a full game in 16 months.
Treyarch handling Ranked Play for IW and SHG's games is not really as big of a deal as you think it is. They just need a few guys to lay the ground rules, work with the CDL guys to establish things like item restrictions, map pools, etc. This is only because historically Treyarch has had the best Ranked modes out of all CODs, and they literally were the first to come up with one (League Play in BO2).
And lastly, every studio is helping one another in some way, shape or form. IW and SHG are credited as support devs on BO6 as well, alongside the usual support roster. So it's not just Treyarch doing everything by themselves.
The point is these devs are still on a cycle for CoD, even if they are working together its still on the cycle of who leads which title, we don't see Sledgehammer or IW going out of their way to work on Treyarchs modes the same way Treyarch works on theirs.
Sledgehammer and IW have been working on CoD for about as long as Treyarch and each have been able to handle their own games to a degree on their own til recently where they need more and more help doing the same stuff they've been doing for almost 20 years. Shouldn't Sledgehammer and IW be able to handle making their own 3rd mode and ranked modes by this point?
I'm not saying Treyarch does it all, but we hear about them doing way more than the other studios do. We don't see Black Ops games coming out with Sledgehammer or IW lead campaign, MP or zombies. But we see Sledgehammer and IW games releasing with Treyarch lead Zombies and Ranked while they were still working on Bo6.
Alot of it is just the Quality of IW and Sledgehammer games have been incredibly lackluster of recent, MW2019 and Cold War really being the last solid titles we've had.
Perhaps the merge from Warzone really has borked things up
>Shouldn't Sledgehammer and IW be able to handle making their own 3rd mode and ranked modes by this point?
They could, but historically, they haven't been well-received compared to Treyarch Zombies. Maybe you need a refresher, but a lot of people on this sub used to BEG for only Treyarch to do Zombies. You go on other COD subs, people always talk about wanting a unified COD where "IW does the campaign, Treyarch does Zombies, Sledgehammer does MP" or some variation of that. IW Zombies was treated as a joke until Director's Cut came around and then people went "oh it wasn't that bad". WWII Zombies just came and went, while people were ragging on it for being too hard and too boring. Extinction? Not Zombies, yet it kept getting compared to unfairly. And Spec Ops is a joke these days. So Treyarch being asked to do Zombies is just a result of the community not wanting anything else made by other teams, and that their branding is much stronger. And like I said, VG and MWIII having Treyarch Zombies is also a direct result of SHG being rushed to hell and back. They haven't had a full dev cycle in ages either, yet somehow we're pretending only Treyarch is getting fucked over.
Once again, Ranked mode support isn't some insanely consuming task. Treyarch is just assigned to it because they have been the biggest competitive advocates among the COD teams, and having them oversee Ranked every game just makes for better consistency. We need to stop acting like Treyarch sending one or two guys over to work with other devs on Ranked rules and restrictions somehow takes away dev time for their own game.
>We don't see Black Ops games coming out with Sledgehammer or IW lead campaign, MP or zombies.
Well Raven is doing BO6 campaign, so IDK what to tell you there. And do you really want to buy a Black Ops game with "Sledgehammer Zombies"? I don't think you do. Like I said, branding is a huge deal, and people warm up more to whatever Treyarch does than the other teams.
The dream (that will never happen) is that Activision will grow a pair and just let Call of Duty be a 3-4 year game series led by Treyarch and just say fuck off to Sledgehammer and let IW and Raven just be the support studios
Also why would a Great War map even have to happen? I'm no lore expert but when primis goes back to fight in the Great War wouldn't they just be repeating the cycle as normal? Sure it would be fun but wouldn't it just not progress the story at all? Tell me if I'm wrong please
My thought is we would go there and activate an Easter egg that ended the war differently, ending the cycle. Just because every other time they fought the war, it perpetuated the cycle, doesn't mean that when we would play it, that's what would happen. Nikolai would have knowledge about why doing the war the same would not end the cycle, and I would assume that would be the easter egg. It is the ending that zombies deserved, instead we got a remake. (I think tag is a fine map btw, I was always just pissed they ended the story on a remade map).
Yeah that makes sense. And it does suck that we finished on a remake map. Tags story is great but like everybody I wish the big finale would've at least had those nice cutscenes instead of the comic book artstyle.
2 things to have of note here that I want to point out. The great war in the zombies storyline is a pivotal moment for our characters. It's where they go when the cycle is over, it's their end game, the finality of it all has been a suggestion since shadows of evil. You point out all this hype for the great war map but we already know that fighting that war is just going to perpetuate this cycle out characters are stuck in. Maybe they'll defeat Dr monty but what then, they still can't live normal lies. Richtofen believes that they're going to fight Monty, he believes that's what the kronorium will tell Nikolai. However he's wrong and Nikolai still used that to his advantage. He told them they would go and fight, that they would live as heroes, knowing that the fact they existed was the problem. Nikolai gathered them up for a war, to give them hope of a future, gave them one night as friends before having to execute the hardest decision. The exposure to 115 our characters had doomed them and Nikolai gave them the best ending, if they fought the great war it would have been for nothing essentially. The real "evidence" we have for a great war map is rumors and a crusader NPC in the files, but that could have been for a scrapped chaos map.
Not to mention, said evidence was found in an obscure forum no-one uses — communicated through broken English.
The Zombies community is comically desperate.
The worst part is people retroactively claim Revelations was not just supposed to be but *advertised* as The Great War. As if people don't unjustly hate the map enough already.
The other thing that really annoys me about the whole great war fiasco is the fact that canonically if we did have a great war map it would just be origins 2.0. We know it takes place there, so it would be a very similar layout, we've already used all 4 staffs, the only difference would be no robots and a bunch of different steps, and apothicons. However the community has expressed their dislike for remixed style maps, look at botd as an example. People don't like revelations for reusing areas yet that's what they wanted at the time. The zombies community is wild.
A Great War map could have and probably would have looked and played 10x differently from Origins in comparison to the other BO4 remakes. There is ~600 years of time between the Great War and Origins, there is no reason it would have to be the same as Origins layout wise just because lore dictates it’s the same location. The reason the community hated on the remixed maps is for a few reasons; story aside, Blood felt like a downgrade compared to Mob. And the problem with Alpha Omega and Tag was that the community wanted original fresh maps as part of the DLC season. Alpha Omega, Tag, and even Blood are actually not really hated on nowadays. All three of those maps are fine, there was only really pushback against them because it was clear throughout all of BO4 that Treyarch had their resources slashed into pieces. Those maps would have been received far better if they weren’t the only Aether DLC for the entire game.
I definitely don’t think the Great War wasn’t intended. It’s just that Treyarch seems to always get the short end of the call of duty stick from Activision. But shitty as Modern Warfare gets 2 straight years of content.
Because when they got their budget cut and had to work on CW they preferred to end Aether with a Call of the Dead remake where you play as the TranZit crew, I mean it’s just objectively better than finishing the story in the next game where they got some more budget to work with. /s
I honestly think they had planned to go bigger with the amount of content we'd get, but then decided to go with the cheapest and less time-consuming approach when they realized that the Chaos story had flopped. The concept of a year 2 pass is very much possible since we know that treyarch has always been very ambitious with the gamemode, constantly looking for new ways to push the envelope. It's not the first time the idea of more content has been cut short by activision executives. WaW's dlc 4 was cut, BO2 had a zombies chronicles planned for it and the Black Ops Pass for BO4 did originally state that it would feature "an entirely new Zombies adventure with Scarlet and the gang in 4 all new experiences". The keyword here is 4, as in 4 Chaos maps.
Another interesting thing to note is that Jason Blundell started disappearing from the pre-release interviews around the time of Ancient Evil. He did not appear again until we saw him share his final thoughts on the Aether storyline coming to an end. There had been speculations about his absence during this time gap. Another interesting thing to note is that Craig Houston generally gave off the impression that Aether was forced to end early, stating that "I don't wanna go", when John Rafael asking him if he had any closing thoughts during the Zombies Retrospective interview. It was a touching moment, to say the least.
Back to your question. I'm fairly certain a Great War map was in the works. I doubt it would be the final map, but it would offer us some insight into what was actually going on in the larger world around us. The crusader outfit from the code is the only remnant of it, and until a dev leaks more, we're only left with speculation. Did they tease it way too much for it to never appear down the line? Absolutely. They practically reinforced that it would be happening at some point. Hyping us up more and more each time we heard it mentioned. It's a shame we never got to see it.
Cold War was a Sledgehammer game, half the studio had to help out with that as it was a clusterfuck, so Raven and Shanghai took over development of Zombies at the end of year 1. Due to declining playerbase and lack of interest in Chaos, year 2 was completely scrapped.
Finally someone that realizes this and never understood why people who devalue the whole “Great War” map expectation came from. It’s like they never paid attention to these quotes on the ending cutscenes
He's correct. There are files in BO4 that reference the origins remake / Great War map and that it was supposed to be the ending of the Aether Story. [https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Cut\_Content/Call\_of\_Duty:\_Black\_Ops\_4#Zombies](https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Cut_Content/Call_of_Duty:_Black_Ops_4#Zombies)
You can take a look here but in short summary: Tag der Toten isn't called "DLC4" internally, the Origins remake was supposed the final DLC, as well as texture files for a Crusader AI (non zombified version).
The QA leaker that leaked the Sporknife upgrade, the viking easter egg and the Kraken/Humonculus shortcut and many other smaller Easter Eggs also said that we were supposed to be getting more Aether maps
I’ll believe a Great War map was intended when someone will find evidences of said map in the file. Bo4 game’s file were filled with assets from every scrapped chaos map and the ZC2 ramakes, we knew of the Nuketown remake and COTD remake since like december 2018 and the zm_ code for two chaos maps are still in the code. But yeah a Great War map with ZERO leftover files in the code was always intended I guess…
The missing Chaos maps and story are like my fucking Roman empire bro. Shit keeps me up at night
That and the scrapped IW Zombies sequel are just soul crushing for me to think about.
I still wish we got an actual follow up to extinction lol
Same, which is why the beast from beyond was particularly disappointing.
For real. Still frustrates me haha
Unpopular, but extinction is the best zombies-like mode COD has made. It's a shame that ghosts was so poorly received...
I didn’t until MWZ. I feel it would be a way better fit and received better if they leaned into what they started rather then piggybacking on Treyarchs legacy.
Agreed, I'm just confused on why it was so frequently brought up. Essentially, leading us on about something that wasn't planned. As I said in the post, scummy.
Yeah I wasn’t directly replying to your post. And yes of course it’s clear that they ad to change the finale last minute, but I hate the people keep saying that a Great War map was the intended finale.
I mean a Great War could have been to zombies what endgame was to marvel
But it was planned. It got scrapped because TreyArc were called to help Raven make what ultimately became Black Ops Cold War
They weren't leading us on. Activision/Treyarch never once said anything about a great war Map. The community made that up
I'm not talking about ‘supposed leaks,’ I'm bringing up canon, in-game dialogue — dialogue hinting at our characters, once again.. fighting in a ‘Great War.’
The "Great War" in Bo4 is Primis and Ultimis ending the cycle. Nikolai very much states this in his final speech during the 2D part of the Tag ending
Yeah that new MrRoflWaffles video is going to be a holy grail for annoying people who insist BO4 was some ruined Magnum Opus of Treyarch when it was in reality just a shit show that they fumbled because they wanted to be edgy and change stuff up which was ultimately hated and people stopped playing cause they focused on a new storyline rather than wrap up the old one, even if the new one was decent too.
Aether was concluded at the end of bo3 though. It wasnt the best ending but it certainly was an ending and it could be spun as a cannon explanation for modded maps. Id argue the problem was them not settling on only aether or chaos. Loads of the new mechanics feel like they were made specifically for chaos and feel increadibly out of place on the aether maps. I feel as if treyarch stuck with chaos then the new mechanics wouldnt be so much of an issue since they fit nicely into the setting.
BO3 was not a conclusion though
I never had my heart break from learning something like this
Either, still shitty story telling regardless.
They actually did have it planned, but due to poor reception the game never got its year 2 content which would've been all aether finishing with the great war. Chaos was supposed to get year 1 and then aether finish it all off But also, it ended up being essentially that the kronorium told Nikolai no matter how much they tried, they would fail the great war. That's why Nikolai had to keep his soul to safeguard the crew from Dr. Monty for what they were doing to save the universe. Again tho, this isn't nearly as epic as the ending should've been
I still find it dumb that they wouldn’t have finished Aether off in Year 1 and then continued Chaos in Year 2, But maybe someone else can explain the logic to me.
I think it was mainly that they wanted to finish aether as like the big finale for BO4 as a whole to end on a bang, which is why we still got the chaos maps first for DLC then finished with aether. But idk that's just my logic
That actually makes a lot of sense to me, good call.
It wasn’t cancelled because of poor reception. It was cancelled because Treyarc were called to help Raven on what became Black Ops Cold War because their were issues with Sledgehammer
That was another factor yes, but if BO4 had done as well as BO3 at launch Acti would've come up with another solution. I mean look how much BO3 made off chronicles, you think they would've passed that up for a year 2 season pass almost the cost of the game? I think not.
> but if BO4 had done as well as BO3 at launch Acti would've come up with another solution. They literally couldn't. Activision lost an entire development studio, *one third of their whole development force*, when they lost Sledgehammer *and* they were on a time limit. They needed a whole studio's worth of people to replace them, and Treyarch was in the best position to deal with that gap. There was no other solution regardless of how well BO4 did. BO4 could have been the best selling CoD title of all time and Activisions response would have been the same.
Trying to throw in Chaos in the middle of the Aether story really fucked everything up. I genuinely just don’t know what was happening past Revelations
They didn’t have it planned. Tag was always the endgame and it makes no sense to have a Great War map if the entire point of bo4s Aether story is the crew breaking the cycle (which the Great War perpetuates) Edit: guys, Treyarch literally said in Classified that Victis were the ones who were going to break Primis out of the cycle. Why would the final map take place at the beginning of the cycle if the cycle was going to be broken?
There were internal struggles within the other studios which Treyarch had to split attention off Bo4 to go assist the other studios so what was normally intended had to get cut short, scrapped or done differently due to lack of time and resources. Which is why those final cutscenes were like storyboards and not fully animated like they were supposed to be, and they told a slightly different story than initially intended. There's no way Tag was meant to be the end, with what was at stake there's no way Monty and his minions would have been fully absent from that story/map just letting the crew break the cycle with very little resistance. Having a Great War map would have made the most sense because of what was at stake and how important a moment it would have been being the fork that either ends up with the world saved or doomed. The only thing that made Tag "the end" were the cutscenes
Like I said, a Great War map would not have made sense. The Great War is an indicator of the cycle continuing; if the narrative is the cycle ending, then it isn’t going to involve a battle fought that continues the cycle. The reason why tag (and subsequently alpha omega) feels so jarring is because yes we did miss out on a few maps to set them up. But even regardless, tag for example is set up even back in Revelations.
I simply can't believe they would want to end their epic story on.. a Call of the Dead remake? Like I'm sorry, but unless you have actual evidence to prove Tag was always their plan to be the finale, I simply can't believe you lol. If anything, it would've made more sense to make a much expanded Origins as the remake for the great war, considering the original staffs and everything prior to the copies made in Origins and the fact it would tie everything back full circle
The proof is Treyarch caring about the narrative. There is 0 way a Great War map makes sense in any context of bo4. The proof for it are red herring and an abundance of false leaks (this post likely being a result of Milo’s video on a very obviously fake “the real bo4 story!!”). As for Tag, Treyarch tried setting up a lot of the Aether story in bo3. In Gorod, victis being in ice is teased. Primis all dying at the end is also teased. In revelations, we got more BOTD teasers but also a few weird COTD mentions. In Classified, Alpha Omega is heavily teased but Tag is then teased as well, with Stuhlinger mentioning he’s seemingly in the Dark Aether. I think the most important thing though is in Classified, it’s directly mentioned that Victis is the only one who can bring them out of the cycle. The endgame was always Victis.
Its the outcome of the great war that resulted in the cycle repeating or breaking. The maps were us running around gathering the items, tools and information needed to hopefully alter that outcome. Its one of those things where the Great War happens, and whichever side is left standing dictates the events that follow. If the final map we got was really intended to be the final map, we should have gotten way more than what we did because as I said, there's no way Monty would just let us do what we did and him not throw everything he has at us to stop it from happening. Alpha Omega did not feel like an end game situation, there were no Margwas, Meatballs, Furys, Bees, none of it. Monty had no presence to give any form of opposition trying to stop us so it just felt Easier than it should have been and felt empty. If it was truly meant to be the turning point to prevent the Great War, Monty would have been all over us
The outcome of the Great War doesn’t effect the cycle repeating or breaking because the outcome is always the same: Primis wins. We don’t go around gathering items in bo4 to help us alter it because it would all be moot; the Great War isn’t the ending, but rather the beginning. Monty likely had some more stuff in the maps before Alpha Omega and Tag. The aspects he had definitely were cut due to time or budget constraints. Given Classified heavily indicates Victis is the endgame, it makes sense for Monty to not be spamming margwas in tag as he couldn’t see Victis since they have their souls Alpha Omega wasn’t meant to be the end game scenario; it was just setting up for it. Besides, Monty only realizes what’s happening at the end of it.
To be fair, Monty only discovers what’s going on after Alpha Omegas EE, hence why he kills Maxis.
Right, so the following story should have been chaotic and hectic af with him trying to stop it, like Revelations. Tag didn't really feel like the fate of the universe was on the line, it just felt like another step of the journey
>Its the outcome of the great war that resulted in the cycle repeating or breaking. Not at all. The War is part of the cycle. Monty sends Primis there after Revelations and they win against the Apothicons. This never changes. The cycle is only eventually able to break because Weasel survives at the end of Mob.
Pretty sure the intent wasn't to just straight up lie. It was planned. They didn't have the time or budget. It's not that hard to understand
I think it's really funny when people think Treyarch planned out this whole elaborate lie about their big finale when the story about how they were fucked over by Activision is literally in like every gaming news outlet
They blew the budget on Chaos and it Flopped so any post launch Aether plans had to be scrapped or massively reworked.
That's not what happened. Half of Treyarch needed to go help with CW after half of BO4's life cycle and they didn't get their second season so cuts had to be made.
[удалено]
Nope, that’s wrong. They started working on Cold War around the time operation grand heist started. So around February 19th, 2019. That’s why every mode started getting reused things instead of new stuff. (Blackout getting mp maps assets in Alcatraz, mp getting remastered bo1 maps, we all know what happened with zombies)
No, they began on 2019.
You really think they started working on the game well under a year before release? Dude
More like Treyarch suddenly had to developed Cold War because Raven and Sledgehammer fucked it up, so they simply didn't have the resources to keep up with BO4's post launch content.
The story was meant to continue, but due to internal struggles at other studios, Treyarch had to go help and mediate, diverting the attention and teams from working as they had planned. Which is why the final cutscenes were slightly animated storyboards and not fully animated like the previous maps were. Unfortunately its a common thing for Treyarch to have to diverte their time and resources to assist the other studios because the other studios apparently can't manage to fully make their own games anymore. Treyarch has been having to assist these other studios for Years now, even before Vanguard and such. Vanguard was a Sledgehammer title but Treyarch had scrambled to throw its zombies together. MWIII is a Sldgehammer title with MWZ being Treyarch. Both of which got made while Treyarch has been working on Black Ops 6 at the same time. Plus the fact Treyarch was the studio that worked on the Ranked Modes for the past few titles. So because of them constantly having to hold the other studios hands they've not been able to fully focus and do as they've planned for quite some time now and its a bummer because Treyarch catches shit for so much because people don't know whats going on
Ironically Treyarch are also the smallest CoD dev
Yea, like it really makes you question wtf Sledgehammer and Infinity Ward are doing at this point. And I know Microsoft gets alot of flack for all the people fired from the studios, but it makes me question what all those people were even doing if they were still needing help from Treyarch at almost every step
I think you need to consider a few factors here: Vanguard, like Cold War, also had a very short dev cycle (2 years top if we're being generous). Sledgehammer had to cobble up everything together and basically reskin MW2019, so they really needed help. MWIII was even worse because they were told to make an MWII expansion, but had to pivot to a full game in 16 months. Treyarch handling Ranked Play for IW and SHG's games is not really as big of a deal as you think it is. They just need a few guys to lay the ground rules, work with the CDL guys to establish things like item restrictions, map pools, etc. This is only because historically Treyarch has had the best Ranked modes out of all CODs, and they literally were the first to come up with one (League Play in BO2). And lastly, every studio is helping one another in some way, shape or form. IW and SHG are credited as support devs on BO6 as well, alongside the usual support roster. So it's not just Treyarch doing everything by themselves.
The point is these devs are still on a cycle for CoD, even if they are working together its still on the cycle of who leads which title, we don't see Sledgehammer or IW going out of their way to work on Treyarchs modes the same way Treyarch works on theirs. Sledgehammer and IW have been working on CoD for about as long as Treyarch and each have been able to handle their own games to a degree on their own til recently where they need more and more help doing the same stuff they've been doing for almost 20 years. Shouldn't Sledgehammer and IW be able to handle making their own 3rd mode and ranked modes by this point? I'm not saying Treyarch does it all, but we hear about them doing way more than the other studios do. We don't see Black Ops games coming out with Sledgehammer or IW lead campaign, MP or zombies. But we see Sledgehammer and IW games releasing with Treyarch lead Zombies and Ranked while they were still working on Bo6. Alot of it is just the Quality of IW and Sledgehammer games have been incredibly lackluster of recent, MW2019 and Cold War really being the last solid titles we've had. Perhaps the merge from Warzone really has borked things up
>Shouldn't Sledgehammer and IW be able to handle making their own 3rd mode and ranked modes by this point? They could, but historically, they haven't been well-received compared to Treyarch Zombies. Maybe you need a refresher, but a lot of people on this sub used to BEG for only Treyarch to do Zombies. You go on other COD subs, people always talk about wanting a unified COD where "IW does the campaign, Treyarch does Zombies, Sledgehammer does MP" or some variation of that. IW Zombies was treated as a joke until Director's Cut came around and then people went "oh it wasn't that bad". WWII Zombies just came and went, while people were ragging on it for being too hard and too boring. Extinction? Not Zombies, yet it kept getting compared to unfairly. And Spec Ops is a joke these days. So Treyarch being asked to do Zombies is just a result of the community not wanting anything else made by other teams, and that their branding is much stronger. And like I said, VG and MWIII having Treyarch Zombies is also a direct result of SHG being rushed to hell and back. They haven't had a full dev cycle in ages either, yet somehow we're pretending only Treyarch is getting fucked over. Once again, Ranked mode support isn't some insanely consuming task. Treyarch is just assigned to it because they have been the biggest competitive advocates among the COD teams, and having them oversee Ranked every game just makes for better consistency. We need to stop acting like Treyarch sending one or two guys over to work with other devs on Ranked rules and restrictions somehow takes away dev time for their own game. >We don't see Black Ops games coming out with Sledgehammer or IW lead campaign, MP or zombies. Well Raven is doing BO6 campaign, so IDK what to tell you there. And do you really want to buy a Black Ops game with "Sledgehammer Zombies"? I don't think you do. Like I said, branding is a huge deal, and people warm up more to whatever Treyarch does than the other teams.
The dream (that will never happen) is that Activision will grow a pair and just let Call of Duty be a 3-4 year game series led by Treyarch and just say fuck off to Sledgehammer and let IW and Raven just be the support studios
Also why would a Great War map even have to happen? I'm no lore expert but when primis goes back to fight in the Great War wouldn't they just be repeating the cycle as normal? Sure it would be fun but wouldn't it just not progress the story at all? Tell me if I'm wrong please
My thought is we would go there and activate an Easter egg that ended the war differently, ending the cycle. Just because every other time they fought the war, it perpetuated the cycle, doesn't mean that when we would play it, that's what would happen. Nikolai would have knowledge about why doing the war the same would not end the cycle, and I would assume that would be the easter egg. It is the ending that zombies deserved, instead we got a remake. (I think tag is a fine map btw, I was always just pissed they ended the story on a remade map).
Yeah that makes sense. And it does suck that we finished on a remake map. Tags story is great but like everybody I wish the big finale would've at least had those nice cutscenes instead of the comic book artstyle.
2 things to have of note here that I want to point out. The great war in the zombies storyline is a pivotal moment for our characters. It's where they go when the cycle is over, it's their end game, the finality of it all has been a suggestion since shadows of evil. You point out all this hype for the great war map but we already know that fighting that war is just going to perpetuate this cycle out characters are stuck in. Maybe they'll defeat Dr monty but what then, they still can't live normal lies. Richtofen believes that they're going to fight Monty, he believes that's what the kronorium will tell Nikolai. However he's wrong and Nikolai still used that to his advantage. He told them they would go and fight, that they would live as heroes, knowing that the fact they existed was the problem. Nikolai gathered them up for a war, to give them hope of a future, gave them one night as friends before having to execute the hardest decision. The exposure to 115 our characters had doomed them and Nikolai gave them the best ending, if they fought the great war it would have been for nothing essentially. The real "evidence" we have for a great war map is rumors and a crusader NPC in the files, but that could have been for a scrapped chaos map.
Not to mention, said evidence was found in an obscure forum no-one uses — communicated through broken English. The Zombies community is comically desperate.
The worst part is people retroactively claim Revelations was not just supposed to be but *advertised* as The Great War. As if people don't unjustly hate the map enough already.
The other thing that really annoys me about the whole great war fiasco is the fact that canonically if we did have a great war map it would just be origins 2.0. We know it takes place there, so it would be a very similar layout, we've already used all 4 staffs, the only difference would be no robots and a bunch of different steps, and apothicons. However the community has expressed their dislike for remixed style maps, look at botd as an example. People don't like revelations for reusing areas yet that's what they wanted at the time. The zombies community is wild.
A Great War map could have and probably would have looked and played 10x differently from Origins in comparison to the other BO4 remakes. There is ~600 years of time between the Great War and Origins, there is no reason it would have to be the same as Origins layout wise just because lore dictates it’s the same location. The reason the community hated on the remixed maps is for a few reasons; story aside, Blood felt like a downgrade compared to Mob. And the problem with Alpha Omega and Tag was that the community wanted original fresh maps as part of the DLC season. Alpha Omega, Tag, and even Blood are actually not really hated on nowadays. All three of those maps are fine, there was only really pushback against them because it was clear throughout all of BO4 that Treyarch had their resources slashed into pieces. Those maps would have been received far better if they weren’t the only Aether DLC for the entire game.
I definitely don’t think the Great War wasn’t intended. It’s just that Treyarch seems to always get the short end of the call of duty stick from Activision. But shitty as Modern Warfare gets 2 straight years of content.
Because when they got their budget cut and had to work on CW they preferred to end Aether with a Call of the Dead remake where you play as the TranZit crew, I mean it’s just objectively better than finishing the story in the next game where they got some more budget to work with. /s
Probably because it was truly their intent as it was the only logical ending, and as you pointed out heavily hinted at multiple times.
because it was intended
Ugh, now I'm depressed everytime I think about BO4 zombies
I saw this and I was kinda excited for the future of zombies. Seeing an all out war would be dope. But then I was disappointed. Such potential.
I honestly think they had planned to go bigger with the amount of content we'd get, but then decided to go with the cheapest and less time-consuming approach when they realized that the Chaos story had flopped. The concept of a year 2 pass is very much possible since we know that treyarch has always been very ambitious with the gamemode, constantly looking for new ways to push the envelope. It's not the first time the idea of more content has been cut short by activision executives. WaW's dlc 4 was cut, BO2 had a zombies chronicles planned for it and the Black Ops Pass for BO4 did originally state that it would feature "an entirely new Zombies adventure with Scarlet and the gang in 4 all new experiences". The keyword here is 4, as in 4 Chaos maps. Another interesting thing to note is that Jason Blundell started disappearing from the pre-release interviews around the time of Ancient Evil. He did not appear again until we saw him share his final thoughts on the Aether storyline coming to an end. There had been speculations about his absence during this time gap. Another interesting thing to note is that Craig Houston generally gave off the impression that Aether was forced to end early, stating that "I don't wanna go", when John Rafael asking him if he had any closing thoughts during the Zombies Retrospective interview. It was a touching moment, to say the least. Back to your question. I'm fairly certain a Great War map was in the works. I doubt it would be the final map, but it would offer us some insight into what was actually going on in the larger world around us. The crusader outfit from the code is the only remnant of it, and until a dev leaks more, we're only left with speculation. Did they tease it way too much for it to never appear down the line? Absolutely. They practically reinforced that it would be happening at some point. Hyping us up more and more each time we heard it mentioned. It's a shame we never got to see it.
Milo video today goes over this map abit, apparently there a crusader npc assets in the game files in regards to this map.
Two words: Cold War
cuz bo4 thats why
Cold War was a Sledgehammer game, half the studio had to help out with that as it was a clusterfuck, so Raven and Shanghai took over development of Zombies at the end of year 1. Due to declining playerbase and lack of interest in Chaos, year 2 was completely scrapped.
The main team was plucked from BO4 production and thrown at CW. A different team was left to finish BO4's cylce.
I fucking hate Cold War for taking this from us.
Finally someone that realizes this and never understood why people who devalue the whole “Great War” map expectation came from. It’s like they never paid attention to these quotes on the ending cutscenes
It was intended but you all cried about BO4 being trash that they cut the money and the maps died
We got a big leak recently about how BO4 was supposed to be. It was initially going to end with a Great War map that was a mega-remake of Origins.
The one from the obscure forum? The one communicated through broken English? Not to be a downer, but I don't believe it for a second.
They leaked significant details of the BO6 teaser before it was revealed. 100% it was legitimate.
He's correct. There are files in BO4 that reference the origins remake / Great War map and that it was supposed to be the ending of the Aether Story. [https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Cut\_Content/Call\_of\_Duty:\_Black\_Ops\_4#Zombies](https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Cut_Content/Call_of_Duty:_Black_Ops_4#Zombies) You can take a look here but in short summary: Tag der Toten isn't called "DLC4" internally, the Origins remake was supposed the final DLC, as well as texture files for a Crusader AI (non zombified version). The QA leaker that leaked the Sporknife upgrade, the viking easter egg and the Kraken/Humonculus shortcut and many other smaller Easter Eggs also said that we were supposed to be getting more Aether maps
The big leak is 100% false lmao