Today we look at the maps in Black Ops Zombies that reused maps from other parts of the game. Previous part: • Reused Maps in World a... Twitter: / thegodzilla150
I think “Call of the Dead” was partly based on the Campaign mission “Project Nova”. In the final part of the mission Reznov and the red army enter an abandon ship frozen in place containing nova gas. Looks very similar to that ship on COTD.
The reason Area 51 is the only reused portion of Moon is because it was the last portion added to the map. We know this because originally Moon was a Paris-themed map, however during its development it was changed to a moon-themed map, and at the last minute they changed the PaP area from some black void area (thx Blundell for that info) to Area 51.
Although it is true that Moon was originally Paris themed as confirmed by the games own internal tags which list the level as ".paris" or the fact that a photo of zombies in Paris can be seen in Der Riese on WAW, we can confirm that the Moon was still going to play a role since you can see the lights of the space station on the moon in Der Riese. Most likely the Moon was going to have less importance being half in Paris and half on the space station but the former ended up gaining so much prominence that the Paris elements were cut completely and an Area 51 setting was hastily put together just to explain how people ended up on the Moon.
@@genericwhitekidthesecond4330 I actually heard they cut out Paris because MW3 was coming out and already had a mission there where a terrorist attack occurs.
I kinda wish you mentioned the fact that the moon excavator comes from the campaign mission “Vorkuta” There’s probably other props and miscellaneous things that get merged together, which comes naturally from the great collaboration that are the cod games. But this one just so happens to be my favorite.
I think hanger 18 was proof that at times the logic was reversed, and multiplayer maps were designed with the zombies maps in mind. There are areas of the map "discovery" that resemble Call of the dead, even featuring the "zombie caution" signs seen in der rise. Every zombies map in Black ops had a counterpart previously shown in multiplayer.
Ascension and Luanch are actually taken from the campaign mission Excutive order hanger 18 and luanch area in moon are maybe from Mission WMD were you fly SR71 black bird
no they are not, the layout of Ascension and Launch is absolutely nothing like the layout of Executive Order. the only thing the maps have in common is that they have a rocket.
Technically, Kino der Toten is a reused asset map as well, though it uses the last mission from World at War (as you mentioned, it is a world at war map). Keep up the good work man, love having some good zombies content by some passionate creators again!
I think this is a popular misconception due to how similar the map is to downfall and how the map had that general all around WaW feel to it even in BO1, I don't believe any actual assets were directly taken from WaW
@@DB-bq6zc I was thinking maybe an Area 51 type thing that Moon had except with the Pentagon. On the Campaign mission, you walk throughout the outside area, which is the only reason I had this idea. Imagine fighting off hordes in an Area 51-horde type area outside of the Pentagon before using one of the teleporters in Five to transport yourself into the Pentagon in the starting room.
That’s the genius of black ops 1 and 2. Re-using maps as both zombies and multiplayer maps. It not only makes it easier on the developers, but it makes us feel like we know a bit more about the “lore of the map” having played the campaign which is something that goes way underrated imo
I’ve always thought there was a sort of charm about it. Being able to see the thought process behind some of these maps is a good reminder that they’re made by real people
This is a really solid video! The cuts from campaign to zombies were seamless, and your information was on point. One thing you could've used was noclip to view areas of levels you can't normally access (Especially if they are accessible in other modes)
@@theGODZILLA150 Hey if you plan on making more of these videos, Plutonium BO1 and BO2 are free to download and you can noclip and turn off fog and stuff.
@@theGODZILLA150 if you'd like i could get tou some footage on pc if you're interested in remaking the video, i noticed you missed some details about ascension and skipped over some possible reused things about call of the dead.
It’s nice to see that the devs’ clever reusing of assets in old school zombies is finally getting the recognition it deserves, cuz that’s basically what they had to do, given that the zombies mode was still a more underground thing in the days of WAW/BO1, and as such didn’t have quite as big of a budget to make the kind of lavish, completely original maps we got starting in BO2, when zombies really started to take off. EDIT: I've since learned from the commenters here that not every new map post BO1 is entirely original, since Cold War's zombies has tons of reused assets for its maps, like Firebase Z and Forsaken borrowing assets from campaign missions, just to name some examples, so that was poor phrasing on my part, my bad. I really should have read over my OP more carefully, cuz this is something I should have known when I was writing this, but I still stand by what I said, because before zombies really took off, this kind of thing was really done more out of necessity due to the niche nature of zombies back in WAW & early BO1, when Activision still wasn't fully convinced about the viability of zombies.
@@declangaming24 I know that, but that still constitutes as reused assets in my book. If you're taking an existing asset and modifying it to fit with something else entirely, that counts as a reused asset. It's all about how well those modified assets are implemented.
Hot as fuck take: Activision knows full well that Zombies has more staying power than Multiplayer, and has a longer-lasting "Compulsion Loop" (as they call it) and Bo3 100% showed that people were willing to pay MTX for the mode too. They just actively go out of their way to Girlboss/Fail Upward at managing the mapping teams nowadays. FIVE and Classified are an amazing case study in "Fucked Prioritys" Ok make the whole map harder on new systems by round 15. By having Novas spawn *Everywhere* and not just whenever the player makes a choice to visit the labs. "Ok but won't that make the Pentagon Theif look even worse by comparison?" "Who?" We *Gotta* make sure we tie the map back in to the rest of the story... put the Cutscene behind an 8 hour shift.
If I remember correctly, and this maybe wrong, I think Kino Der Toten was a reused map from the campaign level Downfall from World At War. Since Kino was originally supposed to be in World At War, and the zombies maps were reused from campaign and multiplayer existing maps.
Nah you’re right. it’s one of the pictures on that pin board from der reise that showed possible future maps. There was others too. A photo of call of the dead in a prototype state, along with the cut Paris map. Really wished we got that instead of moon lol. Probably could’ve kept a more grounded zombies experience.
It's crazy how back in the day it was actually difficult to even notice a lot of zombies maps were reused from other modes. Lately it's much easier to tell when maps are reused and it seems to point to development constraints like crunch and whatnot and it makes the maps so much less interesting. Especially in something like cold war where I don't think theres a single wholly original map aside from die maschine and that still has some nacht of course. I suppose I just miss the days where each map felt truly new and had it's own identity, now they are relatively interchangeable minus a few key differences and whichever you play for a casual experience is just whatever layout you prefer.
when I was a kid, I notice from the get go those were reused assets and maps from multiplayer or campaing, actually that was my favorite thing about zombies because it made me think it was happening in the same universe or story but way after what happen in either multi or campaing; the sad part was knowing that it is not the same as before as now we have original maps (except cold war) from the very beginning or at least I couldn´t find some alikes from campaing or multiplayer in BO2 and so on. That´s why I love those games more than BO2 because it made me think they all were a part of a whole main story but then they put things that where very strange with apothicons and what not, but idk, I thought it was kinda obvious to see they were doing a "here´s the zombies version" of whatever you like to think
It was harder to tell back then because there was clear effort put in to differentiate the source material from what would become the map. Take, for example, Ascension; it's built from the bones of both the campaign mission "Executive Order" and the multiplayer map "Launch" but, as shown in the video, really only has the main chokepoint and a couple other key areas whereas most of the topography is almost wholly novel - to further cement this, you have the addition of the lunar landers (which I, in retrospect, believe was a means of Treyarch experimenting with fast-travel mechanics that would be further tested in BO1's DLC season) to really sell the fact that it's a "new" map. Then, as you mentioned, you have Cold War: the best example for this is Mauer Der Toten which, like Ascension, was built from a campaign mission and later multiplayer map respectively; the only difference being is that the map borrows too much from these assets to the point where it's, like you said, interchangeable. Aside from Klaus, the Nightclub easter egg and the hell-train in the subway, there's almost nothing to truly differentiate Mauer from its source material. While I enjoy both games respectively and don't necessarily think that maps made from existing maps/assets is a bad thing, I believe above all what must be considered when designing the map is that you a) differentiate it enough from its source material and b) focus on giving the map its own identity with unique mechanics/features you seldom find elsewhere (in Ascension's case, it'd be the landers whereas an AI companion in Zombies has been done before.)
@@officialmrfifty yeah, some subtly is a must and not only that but make at least not that obvious the fact that you were reusing pretty much all things from previous things such as campaign or multiplayer, the subway isn't that original either, it was a multiplayer map for cold war, don't recall if it was before or after but still a multiplayer map to which makes the map a lot less unique. I guess it all boils down to the feeling of genuinely effort from the devs to actually call the map "good" or a quality map, mauer is the perfect example of how even if the map isn't (almost entirely) unique or new, it still was and is the best map from cold war, we can all agree that no one and I mean NO ONE want the replicated experience of vanguard or even BO4 as the last Black ops left us with this bad taste of purely remake or reimagined of maps to which cold war maps where perceived as that but still even then they at least put some effort, you could say COVID was an issue but again, doing at least something to make a little difference wouldn't have hurt anyone. Completely agree on there
The community just got more perceptive to it. I noticed it instantly with Nacht, and Der Riese (didn't play Verruckt or Shi No Numa at the time). Also noticed Kino was the same as the final mission from the campaign (at least the grand theater area). The community just got more perceptive to it, because besides Forsaken, the other 3 maps are completely different from their campaign counterparts. The only thing that's reused on Die Maschine is Nacht Der Untoten, and it's been heavily modified to include a roof and more to the second floor. Firebase Z, it's the spawn room. And it's only the outside structure of the spawn room that's the same. I was replaying the campaign recently, and noticed that besides the layout of the main room with PAP and the indoor stair, every other room is unique from the campaign. And the Firebase Z portion of the map isn't from the campaign. Sure, the mountain is, and it's old location was Firebase Ripcord. But when you're in the bird looking down at it, you'll notice the terrain is the only thing that's the same. And Mauer Der Toten, the outside is the only thing that's the same, and even then it's heavily modified. We've only got to explore the top of the Korbor rooftop building, the bar, and a top down view of Berlin in the campaign. Everything else is new to the map, and even already existing places were heavily modified, like the streets and bar.
I swear in BO2, on the campaign mission Celerium, they reused a bunch of the Shangri-la temple walls for one part And then in the Summit remake in the same game based off the mission
Making Cod zombies content great again! I knew some of these things but missed some, so thank you for providing details into what was used in MP maps for zombies. I'm glad I found this channel through recommendations.
It also just makes sense to have hangar 18 as the moon map beginning considering there is a conspiracy theory about a place hangar 18 in real life that stored alien ships and stuff like that. Hangar 18 by megadeth is a pretty good song that talks about some of those.
small fact: the excavators that you can see around the map are ripped from the escape Vorkuta mission. You can see them clearly in the background when you're on top of the tower destroying other guard towers with the fireball catapult thing.
Bo1 has always been my favorite game and I’ve played the campaign so many times, but for some reason I do not remember the pentagon mission other than meeting JFK and walking through it with McNamara
Skipped school today unintentionally and this came up, feels like I’m back in middle school again when I would miss school to play the new zombie maps n what not. Miss those days
I've always found it weird that the best designed maps in zombies were based off of pre existing multiplayer/campaign maps and that the best multiplayer maps were based off of campaign maps dating all the way from cod4 through to bo2
These are good examples of asset reuse, you grab stuff you've already made, change it up and add new cool stuff, done in a way that you wouldn't notice unless you really tried to discover it.
Because we didn't have any objective timeline or summary of events given by Treyarch, I always just assumed that the campaign maps were somehow connected to the zombies lore or that they were the same map only affected later by the events that occur in the zombies narrative.
Huge nostalgia, ngl i didn’t even realise that rebirth was five’s underground labs despite playing cod bo campaign mp and zombies religiously in high school… i kinda wish you could turn on noclip to show other areas (esp five, since you then move out of the scripted body for a full free movement) but i read that it’s recorded on console so that’s not possible Still loved this video and the previous one, please keep up with these nostalgic cod content that people may have missed as a teen
@Aidan Ward even then, how many people do you know actually sit down and play the campaigns of ANY cod? Even the historic ones, even the weird ones, how many people do you know that actually play them?
@Aidan Ward BO4 didn't even have one funny enough- Cold War (which shocked me even more when I found out it was a 20 years later story), was fairly similar to BO1's story- I never tried MW:2019 yet, and I didn't bother downloading the Vanguard campaign-
The lighting in five and in most bo1 is beautiful but in more modern cod titles it just looks real this just shows that soul and commitment has just died in modern cod
I wonder if the "Moon" map stayed as their original Paris idea they would've reused more assets from multiplayer or as another comment suggested made a multiplayer map out of the zombies map.
Im pretty sure some of the architecture from Kino was originally reused from the final level of World At War, especially since the level was going to be in a fourth WAW DLC. Could you look into this and see if you can spot the massive differences, or alternatively the similarities that survived?
Wow, it’s exciting to see a comment from one of my favorite channels. Thanks for watching. But yeah, a lot of people have been saying that. I didn’t believe it at first, but I’m not so sure now. I guess I’ll have to make a follow up video
The way they reused stuff back then was perfect but now when they reused stuff nothing really change and i kinda wish they went back to the old ways because it felt way more creative when they reused a old map but make it look very different that it feels brand new
I wish that they added a last DLC with you playing as campaign characters fighting zombies in the last places you were in during the events of the campaign
Ascension/Launch’s Rocket ship + Launch site were also in the mission were you save weaver from Kreptchenko and have to destroy the rocket after it launches with a Valkryie launcher
if i remember correctly according to the game's files five's behind the scenes story was that it was originally going to be a multiplayer map based on the pentagon level in singleplayer. my guess for the change is that a purely indoor map would make a good chunk of the killstreaks useless or broken but the map was mostly finished.
The Ascension Zombie Map, I never realized it was the based on the multiplayer map and the campaign mission to stop the rocket until now. Although, I have played Black Ops for 12 years.
Mean while the Ascension zombie map was based on the multiplayer map Launch, while the multiplayer map was also based on the campaign mission called Executive Order where you had to destroy the Russian/Soviet rocket.
Great content, man! Im so glad that i came across your channel. I personally stopped playing after bo4 flopped so ive been catching up with cw and vanguard through your videos
I’m pretty sure there was a campaign mission that had parts of ascension I can’t remember the name of the mission but it’s the one where weaver loses his eye
I wish Launch was actually a Zombies map. It’s so interesting to think about. I’ve seen the similarites between it and Ascension for years. Turning multiplayer maps into zombies maps had so much potential. I don’t really know how they could work in the zombies storyline though.
A lot of these make sense though just because they take place in the same location. Like Hangar 18 and Moon's No Man's Land take place in Area 51. Five and USDD both take place in the Pentagon.
Still curious if Hangar 18 was purely meant to be a nod to the actual facility or if it was a Megadeth reference since that’s about anyone knows about it anymore lmao.
The Megadeth song was a reference to the real Hangar 18 in the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Conspiracy theories claim the Roswell ship is stored there.
Love this video, it's about one of the really trivial things that has always intrigued me for some reason lol. Also I always thought that launch and by extension ascension were based off of the campaign level executive order, is that not the case?
amazing, and now it's otherwise. on BO3 there's literally a zombie map that looks like Der Eisendrache in MP and on BO4 there's Alcatraz from Mob of the dead