Kill_All_Monkeys

Honestly I'm just glad that the O4 is back, though I wouldn't be opposed to Treyarch throwing in a few more jokes for them as their Origins versions were pretty serious the whole time. I've said before that I would totally love to see a Paris map and I still stand by that, and it's certainly quite possible that's when we'll see the NO4 again after The Giant, assuming there is a different crew we follow through most of BO3.

To be hones I never thought of Buried as being that important because of Origins, which really kind of made all the N4 maps pointless in my mind story wise. They really only matter in the sense of the hints they provide regarding the time loop, and maybe for the purpose of showing how the world went to hell after Moon and why it must be changed.

I can totally buy Origins being the beginning of the loop, it would make sense as it's where everything really starts. I just totally forgot about that quote from Maxis and was simply wanting some more concrete proof to prove the existence of the loop in Origins. I understand what you're trying to say, well to a degree anyway because you know, time travel. Mainly it's the part about the N4 that's kind of confusing.

The Mexican is more or less in Schrodinger's Cat status, we don't really know what his status is. My best guess is that we'll never actually see him short of maybe a brief glimpse in any kind of flashback to the O3 being experimented on. Beyond that, I'm predicting that should we continue to play as the O4 post The Giant, then it will be with their Origins versions as they seem to be on a mission. That's my 2 cents on that anyway.

@Nightmare Voyager Hmm, I think I'm missing something here. What's the connecting tissue to Origins tying it to the time loop? And are the N4 just in a separate time loop?

I don't think that's the Butterfly effect, that kind of doesn't really take time travel into account. I believe it would be better to describe it as the bleeding effect. Think of the Assassins Creed games early on, the goal was for Desmond to go into the memories of his ancestors and experience everything as they experienced it themselves and in doing so he would be able to gain the same abilities as the master assassins. Now with zombies, we see this come into play with Weasel quite a bit. This is not necessarily him being able to predict or influence the future, it's just the memories of the previous time loops leaving an imprint on the most recently created time loop. The idea is that this has happened many, many times. Perhaps even countless amount of times. And there's always small amount of variations in each new one, and sometimes big changes as well. This how the characters can fail so many times but eventually succeed in the various EE's we've done throughout the maps. Eventually the memories of how to successfully do everything build up and they complete the task at hand. This I can liken to the film Edge Of Tomorrow, within which Tom Cruise's character kept reliving the same exact day over and over again with his memory completely unaffected by the time reset, despite it being caused by his death, trying the stop the alien being controlling the time reset. Now in regards to the bigger picture here, I would like to propose the idea that the time loop begins somewhere around the time of the end of the Der Riese radios. I believe this to be so because of Maxis and Samantha's choice to send the Origin crew to the point in time where Rictofen traps and teleports Samantha and Maxis. Maybe it's the exact point in which Sam enters the MPD, as it would be the first time (in relative modern history) that a human has entered the MPD, which seems like a pretty good ripple in time to reset back to. I also believe that for the N4, Rictofen succeeds in influencing the N4 first, and once they get to the end at Buried and see all the dead bodies so many times, this could've subconsciously convinced them to side with Maxis at Tranzit instead of Rictofen, giving way to the jump back to Origins. Phew, this is some complicated stuff.

That is a very conservative opinion, and I actually have a lot of respect for it. I will argue the contrary, however, so bear with me. I agree that the Aethereal controller does not "control" time, per se, but has moments where he can manipulate it to a certain extent, depending on the power he has (end of Buried) and only to a point in time where the people he is manipulating, as well as himself, exist. If, however, they were not in a position of control at that time, they would be forced back to where they were at that time, and therefore, out of the MPD. Richtofen takes the N4 back to the time of their initial arrival at Die Rise. This requires little energy, as it was likely no more than an hours' length in time. He was, however, in the MPD at both the time of their death at Die Rise and the time of their arrival at Die Rise, and therefore, taking them back to a position an hour earlier did not jeopardize his power by forcing him out. Maxis resets time to 1918 after Buried (all polarization devices channel the power he needs), erasing anyone not born at the time, but returning everyone who WAS born at that time (himself and the O4) to their position, but not without butterfly effect. The N4 do not survive, as they were not originally alive in 1918. Samantha, however, does, despite the fact that she was not born until the early to mid 30s', because she is on a different space-time continuum. This action, however, forces Maxis out of his position of power in the MPD, as it returns him to where he was in 1918, but since Samantha is his fail safe of knowledge, he can rely on her to remember the things he would have forgotten in the transition. The MPD is now prepared for re-occupation. Black Ops 3, The Giant: let the conflict begin again. Nope. Die Rise shows the loop ending and then beginning again but specifically skipping out the rest of the story to get to Die Rise. Hence them remembering it. Thats the time loop. Nobody resets it, we don't know which ending if any is canon, Buried amy not even be the end of that loop, aether is barely anything to time they don't have that cotnrol otherwise we wouldn't barely have a story every controller would have messed that up. As far as I know the Aether is timeless actually, same with Agartha. So Richtofen could still be in control by Origins and Sam should still be in his body as a result but she isn't so something happened for everyone to return to their rightful place, the time loop isn't an exact reset it still carries over the memories and the feelings of the last loop vaguely hence the Origins group trusting each other and a load of other stuff I don't really need to go into. The MPD has nothing to do with time travel, it has to do with controlling zombies. Time travel and more specifically the loop is bigger than puny humans fighting to become "god". One thing I can think of that supports this is how in MotD Weasel has the one line about hearing Nikolai's name over and over.

People who are that desperate have had a long time to save up for consoles. I know people who have barely gotten enough money but just recently managed it. Yeah I had a couple friends just recently buy a PS4 mainly for this game. I know they're expensive but if you really wanted one it's been a fairly long time to save up.

It sucks for the people who haven't been able to afford a new console yet but I'll take it as a sign that BO3 is truly beginning to push past all the previous cods. This is exactly what it needs if they don't want to be releasing what people describe as the same game every year. Multiplayer is undergoing some much needed upgrades and zombies looks to be bigger than ever. The PS4 and Xbone will be 2 years old in just over a month, shortly after when BO3 releases. It's about time games start surpassing the limit of last gen.

Any Black Ops game, any platform, any map. It just now occured to me that after we initially release the LFG with all BO titles, we could add custom maps as well Even custom zombies? Be still my beating heart!

It certainly seems like the design of the Shadow Man was definitely influenced by The Shadow, that much is for certain. I guess I will have to listen to find out more, it's just that old timey radio broadcasts like that have always kind of annoyed me for some reason. I never really liked the over-exaggeration of everything and, well so much more. That's why I looked more into his comics than radio broadcasts before.

Would this LFG be only for BO3 by the way? It's not all that important but it would probably be beneficial to some people for this to work for the previous Black Ops games as well.

Read the video description too, I am gonna judge it when I listen to it tomorrow though. I've heard and read some Shadow already, I don't know a whole lot about his history in the comics and such, which if there was any connection it would more than likely lie in the comics instead of the radio broadcasts, but I still don't see much connection beyond the name and silhouette.

I would like to clarify that I'm American as well, I just think that a British character would be really cool and funny, as well as fit in with the WW2 theme of the O4, especially considering they now need a 4th member.

I'm not entirely sure how much of a connection there is between The Shadow and the Shadow Man, other than in name and seemingly appearance. The Shadow is most notable for actually inspiring Batman more so than anything else, and is generally considered as the first of the anti-heroes. I already had previous knowledge of The Shadow but never thought it too relevant. I could be wrong once the map comes out or we get more information, but still.

Nope they wanted the other 3 open. They are there future versions still so they want them to have a good future, except Richtofen but because of time travel younger Richtofen could go have a normal life and raise a family if he wanted and it wouldn't really matter because they are going to fix time anyways so paradoxes are nothing to him. Oh and ayyy mexican better be in it. Is it too late to retcon a British guy as to being one of the subjects? Because I really want there to be a playable British character in zombies. Something of note however is that I'm not actually sure if it was ever stated as to there only being 4 test subjects total or at any given time. What if there are more than the O3 and possibly the Mexican? Maybe it was stated somewhere though and I'm just forgetting about it at this time.

What a fascinating read, it seems like there truly is a connection between Nero and Harry Blackstone. Once again loving the comic book influence on Treyarch's part in zombies, too. Though I do find it funny to see The Shadow yet again as pretty much having some sort of influence over just about everything nowadays.

I definitely will support Multidimensional until Treyarch outright says otherwise. I would also prefer it to stay that way because time travel in a complex story like zombies is far easier to grasp when there's only one universe involved. Also the Multiverse kind of makes a lot of actions and events feel pointless and really is a bit of a cop-out. It just makes the story more interesting having it all take place within the same universe.

I would like to see this be the final step in the EE, maybe one that ends the game like in MotD and Origins and unlocks some bonus cutscene (O4 and NO4 kicking ass together? ). But it seems clear to me that Rictofen no longer has the intention to repeat history and would likely have other motives for coming back to Der Riese. It is where this whole mess kind of kicked off so I'm sure there's plenty of material to work with there to come up with an EE more complex than the Flytrap one. I do predict however that this will be the final game-ending step as they are probably aware of the fact that it's how the O4 escaped and will likely have to do the same to escape the zombie horde.

I like the idea of the teddy bear since it's been there practically since the very beginning. An interesting idea for sure that I never even considered before. I always took the bear as a sign of Samantha, very interesting indeed.

Thanks for confirming this, Nightmare. Well, there we have it. Oddly coincidental, however. @Kill_All_Monkeys IT WOULD APPEAR THAT HOLLYWOOD HAS DECEIVED US! Dammit Hollywood, not again.

Well if they really will pull a 12 Monkeys on us, we'll find out in The Giant. One way or another, they are going to change something or nothing at all. I'm sorry, 12 monkeys? What XD There is a movie called 12 Monkeys starring Bruce Willis where he travels back in time to try and change the future but the twist at the end (which they did in a fantastic way) was that no matter what you did, there is no way to change time and everything has already happened or will happen. So no alternate timelines or anything, just a single linear path.

Beyond that, there is a very strong emphasis on time travel. This can allow for splintering of timelines but alternate dimension wise I don't really believe so beyond the Aether, Agartha, and Earth. I'm hoping so but who knows. Still hanging on hope that there is no time splintering going on. Like I said, I'd like for a 12 Monkeys take to the story where everything will make sense as already happening and nothing can change. Would be nice if they somehow explain this Origins Richtofen killing the other Richtofen and show that its what had happened all along. Like Origins Richtofen is really Sam who kills Richtofen in the cutscene, then maybe goes back further in time to grow up and take his place. This could explain how Shino might be happening before Der Riese since the Origins Richtofen could be there releasing the old crew. Then they arrive at Der Riese just seconds after the Giant map takes place. Would be an interesting spin to have WaW and BO Richtofen really been Sam all along, which could explain his feminine and weird personality. Maybe not that since there are so many plot holes if that turned out to be the case, but if Treyarch could spin something like that to explain it all, I'd be happy. Something that keeps everything relevant and maybe throws some surprises in the mix. Well if they really will pull a 12 Monkeys on us, we'll find out in The Giant. One way or another, they are going to change something or nothing at all.

Well in the case of the N4, Rictofen/Maxis was actually trying to get them to accomplish something for him, so it stands to reason that he would break the loop after they completed the task at hand, and they move on to the next map. As for when we were following the O4, Rictofen probably had knowledge of how to break the cycle after coming in contact with the MPD. I believe there was such a strong emphasis on the loop in MotD because they had just introduced the idea of the loop in Die Rise and were further illustrating it here. It is further showcased in Buried with all the dead bodies of the N4.

I understand how time loops fit into the story, but what we have been shown is that the loops have been limited to the individual maps as a whole. As showcased in Die Rise, they die and are revive right back at Die Rise, not at Tranzit like the loop would suggest being the beginning of BO2. That's what confuses me.