A blog post on Call of Duty’s official site lays out everything that’s expected to come to the game next week, and it highlights a surprising amount of Zombies content. Most crucially, it confirms that the forthcoming map will take place in the Egyptian Desert, something which was hinted at in the lore included in the previous map and suggested in a Call of Duty: Vanguard leak from late January. From the screenshots shown in the post, it looks as if this new hub area may be based on Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Desert Siege multiplayer map, though, if that’s the case, it has been heavily modified to fit the mode’s horror approach.
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The mysterious Dark Aether and its various powerful beings have been central to the Zombies narrative for some time, and the post also introduces two new Dark Aether entities known as Vercanna the Last and Zaballa the Deceiver. Vercanna is an ally who will reintroduce the healing aura ability seen in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, while Zaballa will fight on the side of the villainous Kortifex, While her abilities aren’t made completely clear, she bears a resemblance to Saraxis, one of the five entities introduced alongside the original Der Anfang map.
Unlike previous Call of Duty Zombies experiences, Call of Duty: Vanguard nixed the round-based survival aspect of the mode in favor of a series of objectives that increase in difficulty each round. Community reaction to this change was initially very negative—so negative that some fans pushed for Treyarch to return to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War instead—though Treyarch has seemingly committed to it, as Terra Maledicta will follow the same structure. The blog post does make mention of a new objective that will see players work to destroy totems that have the power to spawn Zombies, and this will be the fifth total objective in the rotation.
The upcoming update will also introduce wonder weapons to Call of Duty: Vanguard Zombies for the first time, something which fans were sorely missing when the game initially debuted. The classic Ray Gun—which has appeared in every Call of Duty Zombies mode since its first outing in 2008’s Call of Duty: World at War—will join the all-new Decimator Shield in the mystery box. The shield is implied to be a sentient Dark Aether entity of its own sort, and it calls to mind the famous Dragon Shield from Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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