It feels like only yesterday I was sitting down to write about the Terminus cinematic, yet here we are. The name of Black Ops 7 Zombies’ Tranzit-inspired launch map is Ashes of the Damned, and I have a lot of thoughts.
Right out of the gate, I’m relieved the name has nothing to do with Tranzit. That would have been a bit too on the nose, and although people look back at the map fondly, it’s still one of the worst Call of Duty Zombies experiences. A spiritual successor, rather than a direct sequel, is the correct decision. Besides, we already know the best part of Tranzit is involved.
Every Zombies cinematic trailer is a blessing, and Ashes of the Damned’s is no exception. It’s slick, full of action, and instantly sets the tone for Black Ops 7 Zombies. It also happens to be gorgeous. The reason everyone clamours for map intros is simple: they are consistently high quality. It also helps that seeing Takeo slice up the undead will never get old. Never.
The combat has to be seen to be believed. There are only so many ways to slay a zombie, but Treyarch hasn’t run out yet. Highlights include Maya and Takeo passing a katana back and forth while chopping up the horde, and Nikolai and Weaver side-stepping each other to get their shots in. Instant chemistry.
It was fairly light on story, especially considering how Black Ops 6 played out. I wasn’t expecting a Kronorium’s worth of information, but I had hoped for a smidgen more than we got. Then again, with eight crew members, there’ll be plenty of dialogue to comb through once we get our hands on the game.
Treyarch backed itself into a corner with the Black Ops 6 finale. Ending Reckoning with a tease for the intro of Black Ops 7 meant we didn’t get the exposition needed to satisfyingly conclude what started on Terminus. We were then left with two bombshell questions: Why did the Sentinel Artefact send the crew into the Dark Aether, and why are Richtofen, Nikolai, Takeo, and Dempsey there? Treyarch’s intention was likely to leave everyone on a cliffhanger, but for most, it ended in confusion and disappointment.
At the same time, you don’t want the first cinematic of Black Ops 7 to be a five-minute cutscene of characters yapping, though many diehard Zombies fans would be all for it! (myself included). These cinematics are ultimately promotional materials, and they need to walk a fine line between storytelling and marketing. In that respect, I think Ashes of the Damned’s intro did a solid job of establishing Black Ops 7 Zombies’ central conflict while making it digestible for the casual audience.
Double the Crew, Double the Fun
Everybody is clear now, yes? It’s not Primis. It’s… well, we don’t have a name yet. I like “Grimis” ironically, but if we could establish an official name sooner rather than later, that’d be great. There are only so many ways I can say “Richtofen and the gang”.
After Black Ops 7’s antagonist welcomes the Terminus crew—and Richtofen and the lads—to his party, he wastes no time inhaling their essence. Everyone ends up looking like revenants straight out of Mortal Kombat, which is rad, but hopefully they can regain said essence by the end of the season. That cannot be healthy.
Each member of the original crew has been pulled from a different universe. Richtofen comes from a reality where the Nazis won the war. Nikolai is a struggling soldier in the Soviet-Afghan conflict. Takeo arrives from 1590s Feudal Japan, and Dempsey is a Vietnam veteran.
This has eased the minor concerns I had about the characters returning. Much like when Primis appeared, this crew has very different histories from their previous incarnations. They’ll no doubt share some common traits, but each character feels novel on paper.
I’m most looking forward to ancient Takeo coping with being thrust into the Dark Aether, where he’ll wield futuristic weaponry and ride in a 4×4 Wonder Vehicle. It’ll be quite the culture shock for him. Richtofen being a full-blown Nazi is also a bold move, and I hope Treyarch follow through with it. I cannot wait to see what Maya has to say about him.
Nikolai is “haunted both by betrayal and his own decisions”. The poor guy can’t catch a break, no matter the dimension. Maybe this time he’ll be a clean-living soldier, rather than an alcoholic. Introducing Dempsey as the wild card of the group is a promising twist on his counterparts. Usually, the unpredictability is reserved for Richtofen. I’m anticipating he’ll fall somewhere between the wisecracking Ultimis Dempsey and the calm, collected Primis Dempsey.
The elephant in the room is how Treyarch will approach Takeo’s voice actor. Tom Kane is Takeo, and I’d love it if he could return, but his health is more important. He’s already given us a decade’s worth of memories as the Japanese swordsman. I’m sure he has no issues passing the role on to someone new, and I trust Treyarch has found a worthy successor.
It’s comforting to know the Terminus crew are still key players in the story and have developed from our time with them in Black Ops 6 into Black Ops 7. I do have concerns about continuity, though, considering Ashes of the Damned takes place right after Reckoning.
A clever play on the crew’s stereotypes is that the roles are reversed: the Terminus crew are now the veteran Zombie slayers, while Richtofen and co. are venturing into the unknown as greenhorns. It’s an interesting concept, and one that should prevent Terminus from being lost in the shuffle. Their experience will also contrast nicely with the OG crew, which should help them stand apart from Primis and Ultimis.
As you may have guessed, Black Ops 6’s finale seems to have reopened the multiverse. While that’s a discussion for another day, I’m pretty much fine with it. It was nice having a grounded, linear universe in Cold War and (most of) Black Ops 6, but part of the reason so many players were invested in Aether was the spaghetti timeline. Granted, it got a bit out of hand towards the end, but with Black Ops 7 taking place in the Dark Aether, I don’t envision the crew hopping from dimensional fracture to dimensional fracture à la Primis in Black Ops 3.
Howdy Partner
As I touched on earlier, it’s not just the crew in the cinematic. We finally get our first glimpse of a living(?) breathing(?) Shadowsmith. He makes quite the first impression with his southern drawl and clacking boots.
The biggest mystery of the cinematic is what he gains from leeching the essence from the crew. I’m hesitant to say “soul” despite the blog doing so, because it doesn’t make sense that Richtofen, Dempsey, Nikolai and Takeo have souls. I know the narrative is under fire at the moment, but an oversight that large would be too catastrophic to comprehend. There’s more going on than meets the eye, I reckon.
Despite being a credible threat, the Shadowsmith has a peculiar charm to him. A charismatic evil bastard is the perfect antidote to Black Ops 6’s dispute between S.A.M. and Eddie’s shades of grey. I’m all for multi-layered characters, but sometimes you just need an objectively bad character doing objectively terrible things.
I must admit, I was slightly disappointed that after his grand entrance, he ended up looking like a regular, ugly guy. I was hoping for something a bit more…aetheric. Maybe that’s harsh of me. It wouldn’t be the first time in Zombies where a character starts off normal before becoming startlingly different over time. The white eyes hidden behind his sunglasses are quite the spectacle. We’ve had all sorts of eye colours in Zombies over the years, but they’ve never looked quite like that.
We still know next to nothing about our cowboy, other than he’s a Shadowsmith. That raises questions in itself, because at this point, the Shadowsmiths are a mystery too. Is he their leader or the henchman of an even greater voice? Could it be that the Shadowsmiths are all on the same level of hierarchy, or are they hired guns bounty-hunting across the Dark Aether?
Naturally, theories surrounding the villain and the Shadowsmiths are gaining momentum. I’m keeping my feet on the ground, but the possibilities are exciting. The prime candidate is the Shadowman, given that he’s part of the faction’s name. He’s no stranger to the Dark Aether, so it’s not a stretch to imagine he found a way to survive banishment once again.
Nor can we ever rule out the elusive Doctor Monty, who was confirmed to have ended up in the Dark Aether after Samantha Maxis scavenged his scarf (though we already knew this from the Tag Der Toten ending, which remains canon). As long as the Dark Aether exists, these two characters will linger. I think Black Ops 3 and 4 only scratched the surface of their potential, so I’d be thrilled to see them return in a new form (unless Malcolm McDowell is skint and fancies another visit to the booth).
There’s also Jebediah Brown, the man responsible for creating the Pack-a-Punch machine (with a bit of help from his “angels”, of course). He fits the bill as a southerner with ties to the Aether timeline, but it seems that he met a grisly end at the hands of Zombies. Maybe Jeb’s work on the Agarthan Device presented him with an unexpected boon.
We’ve encountered multiple Dark Aether denizens that can transform, so the Shadowsmith’s appearance could very well be smoke and mirrors. He says himself that he’s going to have fun playing with the crew. Sicko.
As much as it would delight me, I’m not assuming Monty, the Shadowman or even Jeb will show up. However, I do think any of these theories coming true would give the story some much-needed weight. If Treyarch is bringing back the multiverse, the antagonist needs to have a connection to the old timeline. Otherwise, what’s the point?
A more realistic scenario is one I’ve had since Modern Warfare Zombies: The Shadowsmiths formed after learning about the Shadowman, and their goal is to restore the multiverse to resurrect him. A Dark Aether death cult obsessed with the past could be a great way to introduce new characters while still drawing inspiration from the past. Everyone, say the line…
I’ve previously mentioned the quote from The Pact in Cold War—“Our ways are of the old world. We will not be forgotten”—and I’m hopeful it’ll come into play eventually. Sadly, there are no guarantees, because it’s difficult to tell which bits of lore still matter (something we really need Black Ops 7 to address).
Regardless of who the Shadowsmith truly is, I’m glad we’re starting off with an antagonist who will be active throughout Ashes of the Damned and beyond. He may even replace The Forsaken (or S.A.M.) as the announcer! Yee-haw.
“Y’all are Confused”
After the high of the cinematic, we were brought crashing back down to earth with the announcement that the Zombies gameplay reveal would take place the following week. Black Ops 7’s marketing has been unusually stop-start, sputtering like the Tranzit bus (put nostalgia aside—that’s no good thing!).
I’ve had my suspicions for a while, but it’s becoming clearer that Black Ops 7 is coming in hot. As impressive as the game looks in terms of Day One content, I’m preparing myself for chaos and bugs (hopefully not vermin) at launch.
The only other possibility is that Treyarch has been working around the clock to implement changes based on early playtest feedback and wasn’t quite ready to show the mode off in time. Whatever the case, it’s not as if the reveal has been sitting unlisted on YouTube for weeks, waiting to go live.
It’s also not as simple as “Black Ops 7 is the real game that Treyarch has been working on all this time”. While Treyarch no doubt learned crucial lessons from Black Ops 6 and held a few things back for Black Ops 7, the studio is still delivering two Call of Duty games back-to-back.
Developing a modern Call of Duty game is a behemoth task, and everything is subject to change. When you see things like Carry Forward shifting on a near-weekly basis, it’s clear that a lot of moving parts aren’t quite hammered down yet. I think that’s why communication is so poor at the moment. The confusion created by a sentence or two during the live episode of the COD Pod is the perfect example of why we seldom hear anything Call of Duty-related outside official channels.
I understand it, even if I don’t particularly like it. When information is at a premium, people hang on every word, so mistakes are amplified. Having a genuine, transparent connection with your community makes any change of plans easier to swallow, while also reducing pressure on the communications team.
We’re a long way away from the candour of the Black Ops 3 and 4 era. If I’m honest, I’m not sure we’ll ever see that level of clarity again. The industry is in a different place, as is the way Call of Duty approaches its community. We can dream, but that’s about it.
Ashes of the Damned’s cinematic trailer has ramped up anticipation for Black Ops 7’s Tranzit-like map, but it’s only half the story. The gameplay reveal will be the real litmus test—determining whether we’re in for Black Ops 6 Year Two, or if Black Ops 7 will meaningfully push the mode forward.
I’m okay with the former, given the circumstances, but not everyone shares that outlook. Parts of the Zombies community are critical of the current state of the mode (much of it justified; some of it nonsense), and I’m curious to see where everyone lands as we learn more about Black Ops 7 Zombies.
For now, we’ll just have to wait. That’s something Zombies fans are used to. The period between rounds has always been a bit of a lull, after all.
