Black Ops 7 is looking to offer players a range of choice when it launches next month, with numerous revamped modes on offer, alongside a brand-new campaign. Zombies Mode has been overhauled, following player feedback, to include several new elements, as players will battle through the Dark Aether trying to escape from its undead inhabitants and reclaim the characters’ souls.
Game Rant sat down with design director Kevin Drew and lead game designer Steve Bianchi to talk about Black Ops 7’s Zombies Mode in more detail. They spoke about the inclusion of the new Wonder vehicle Ol’ Tessie, as well as how progression works in this instalment. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
How Black Ops 7's Zombies Mode Freshens Things Up
Game Rant: Black Ops 7 Zombies will feature a vehicle, ‘Ol’ Tessie’. Can you talk about the flow of moving through locations using the vehicle, and how the maps are laid out with locations which have dangerous zones in between them?
Drew: Sure. At the start, you’re in Janus Towers, that’s where you find Tessie. You really need to get that vehicle running to even just escape there, to smash through. We want you to have that to go through those connecting roads. So it’s intense. The rounds don’t behave the same way as before. The rules are different. The zombies are continually spawning, fog zombies that dissipate. So if you run into there, they chase you out. They dissipate back. So they don’t follow the regular round rules. They’re very intense. You see a lot of Ravagers there, and they basically keep you on your toes while you’re in that space. There’s the path we want you to get the vehicle to drive to. Usually to the next point of interest. The whole map is really yours to explore and continue along each of the quests.
Bianchi: I think we just wanted to make sure that felt like you’d continue to need Tessie. And so it’s going to be integral to the quest as well. Part of that experience is there’s jump pads across the way aswell, so you don’t always have to use the vehicle, you have to earn your right basically. You don’t always need to depend on it so much. But if you want to actually progress and solve the actual quest you’re gonna need Tessie.
Game Rant: In terms of the experience with the vehicle, how do you balance Black Ops 7‘s Zombies gameplay to counteract players potentially getting left behind, or players getting separated from it, etc.?
Drew: We have the garage in Ashwood. That’s the central point, it adds a lot of extra mechanisms. Other than upgrading the vehicle, you could actually warp to the vehicle. It’s the same price as a jump pad. You could just go wherever Tessie is at, it’ll literally put you inside of it. Even for Pack a Punch, you can upgrade your gun in the back of the truck while it’s moving, so that’s really cool. We try to make as little friction as possible. If the vehicle also breaks down, it can repair itself. Ted’s in there. He can fix it after some time. But you can also repair it with salvage. You can even go back to the garage and call the vehicle in, summon it there, and it will repair faster. If you just run out of there, take a jump pad, or you just don’t want to go back for it, you can just warp it there. We really wanted to make it easy. It’s also very easy to take a jump pad and get to where you need to go.
Bianchi: The team spent a lot of time, over the last year, just focusing on those problems, so there’s a lot of finesse there. For example, you can’t call the vehicle back if someone’s already in it, so they’re not getting disrupted.
How Progression Works in Black Ops 7
Game Rant: Let’s talk about the game’s connected progression. How important was it for Zombies not to exist separately from the campaign and multiplayer now, in terms of how progression works across the different modes?
Drew: I’m actually proud of that, because that was my initiative. It just felt so separate having two different progression systems. Even in past titles like Black Ops 4, people were like, we want Zombies on Battle Pass. But I thought, what would you even earn that could be used in that mode? So we had to kind of rethink all of that. And I think in the modern state of gaming, people just really value their time and want everything they do to feel like they’re not wasting time. And so that was just kind of the catalyst for Zombies. I saw a sentiment in Black Op 6 where people were like, well, I can’t play the campaign anymore. It’s a waste of my time. We put so much energy into these campaigns, they are awesome. What if all it takes is for you to just rank up a couple times and level up some guns, and more people would play them? We can figure that out!
Game Rant: Can you talk a little about the design philosophy that has continued throughout Call of Duty‘s various iterations of Zombies? For example, every new entry has this idea of keeping things fresh, but also not alienating the most loyal fans. How do you balance that with still trying to get the Zombies players excited for something new?
Drew: That’s the challenge, right? We take it on every year. I think our approach right now is really just kind of creating these buckets and saying, like, this is the bucket for you, if you’re the longtime player. This bucket is for you if you’re a newer player. Some older players really want some of those older, more difficult, more complex systems. So now we kind of have the three tracks where it’s like, players can have the experience they want, depending on their familiarity with the series. Some players, historically, have found it tough to get into Zombies, because it’s a pretty high barrier of entry. In the modern age of gaming, people don’t necessarily have patience for such things. We at Treyarch look to try and do new things. And so we have to strike a careful balance of making sure it’s not too out of left field. And I think this is a good example of that, we looked at Transit, we liked a lot of the ideas from Transit, but we thought we could do a better version. 10 years later, how would we do it now? And that’s what led to having a driving wheel vehicle. We make sure it’s core to the experience, but at the end of the day, you can still just play. It’s still Zombies, it’s still perks, it’s all the different systems that you’re used to.
Bianchi: We also have survival maps. We wanted to have that classic Zombies experience where you just jump in there with your friends. Where there’s no long quests and things you have to unlock etc. Looking at the success of Liberty Falls from Black Ops 6, people really like that map. It’s very easy to get into and play. So we wanted to offer more of that kind of content for people as well. I’d also say the save system we introduced in Black Ops 6 is huge for people. That’s a massive win. I have a six month old at home. I want to play for a little bit, but I can’t play for like, two hours or whatever time it takes me. I can play piece by piece and come back. Essentially, I can unpause it and continue where I left off. So that’s been awesome, I think, for fans.
Game Rant: With the beta incorporating some elements of Zombies, what are you hoping to gain from that experience? What are you looking for from players, in terms of feedback and information?
Drew: I think right off the top it’s kind of some of the same things as multiplayer, weapon balance, for example. It’s a lot harder at launch to go out the gate with something, that if it’s too powerful, it’s really hard to pull that back. But with the beta, we can be like, whoops, this shotgun is ridiculous, and we can actually re-tune that. That’s the whole point of the Beta. So I think weapon balance is definitely one thing. I think high rounds is another thing we’d be very interested in. We got a lot of feedback last year about high rounds having too many special enemy types and that we made the zombies very fast. This game, we’re trying a different approach for high rounds, where it actually is more about skillfully navigating around the zombies. They’re not as fast, as they do more damage. So this is our first trial for that, to see how people like that. We’re definitely still gonna have specials in there, but at a less frequent pace. So we want to see that feedback as well.
Bianchi: Also, the emphasis on new AI. We’re trying to look at the tuning power band, in terms of exactly how powerful you are versus the AI. Making sure that feels really good. So there’s been a lot of adjustments to that.
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