What are everyone's thoughts on how the story is presented?

[AetherialVoices]

The way that the Call of Duty Zombies storyline is presented has changed drastically over the years, particularly when Blundell became the lead.

 

For those who may not have been around, here's a quick recap.

 

Originally, and I'm talking way back right now, there really wasn't a story. We pulled theories out of the shadows and cryptic wall writings of Nacht der Untoten and Verruckt. We came up with this theoretical character named "Sam" because of one of the sounds the zombies make.

 

Then with Shi no Numa and Der Riese, we started getting an official story. We had the character bios, radios, notes, ciphers/codes, and quotes that didn't really tell us much. These rather gave us a nudge to make our own theories. This method, with the addition of Easter Eggs, remained largely the same until Black Ops II.

 

In the "TranZit Trilogy", as I like to call it, we started to get story told to us directly. This happened through the voices of Dr Maxis and Richtofen insisting on the completion of the Easter Eggs in their favor. There really wasn't all to much solid evidence for much background in these days. Much was left unexplained, such as Broken Arrow, "He has abandoned us", Stulinger's book, and what became of the Flesh.

 

In the Blundell-era of Zombies, we got a very direct form of storytelling. There were fully animated cutscenes, ridiculous amounts of ciphers and radios, and many story related quotes. The biggest downside to this approach is that because we are given story directly, many don't notice the nudges and cryptic hints that are still there. They didn't take away the methods of storytelling that they had in the past, they merely added to them.

 

So, I would like to know what everyone's thoughts are on how the story is presented.

[AetherialVoices]

Here's my opinion:

 

I think it's great the way Blundell is doing it, but people need to keep looking into things the way they did back in the days of Zielinski. We are missing a lot of things because we don't think to look as deep as we did back then.

[MysteryMachineX]

I would not call ciphers a direct form of storytelling. Especially when they contain some of the most topsy turvy information. The cutscenes are nice, but they're islands of oases in the middle of a desert. And all you have to get from one to the next are what we've always had, supplemented by these difficult ciphers. There are some ciphers we haven't cracked. And some we never will. Missing pages to a story that will never be told.

 

So yeah, my favorite is Shi No Numa to Moon. The story managed to be simple and complex at the same time. The side missions were annoying but manageable.

 

I just felt that as the story became bigger and bigger, it would be given more and more fulfillment. That maybe it would get a campaign of its own. That maybe it'd be its own game. That it'd be recognized for what it was. And not optimized for efficient partial resell value under the current formula. People liked figuring out the story. That doesn't mean you should make it harder and harder to figure out. Because then people just give up. You should expand and flesh out the story, weaving an elegant yet complicated thread that still poses questions for the fans to answer. In short, having a good mystery in a story does NOT equate to leaving huge holes in the story. I thought Zombies was going to get past that, but no, it never will.

[anonymous]

The way the story went in BO3 is needed to have much explaination. How could someone ever theorize the Apothicans, Keepers and all the mythical, fantasy stuff. Back in the days of BO1, things were theorized with real life stuff: Unit 731's secret Division 9, the Nazi project of Die Glocke, the mythos of Agartha and Vrill Ya and Tunguska's mysterious meteorite impact. You can say it is because of the theorists of BO1, who thought of all the mythical things, we now are in this fantasy story, and because of that the story is harder to theorize.

[Doppelgänger]

I hate it. What's the point of even having the game anymore? Why not just give us a rendered movie of the story. That's essentially what we're getting at the moment. 

I miss Jimmy's form of storytelling. Minor details that, when pieced together and fleshed out, create a compelling story that can evolve as peoples ideas and views on the subject shift. 

The story is presented badly. Like a movie, which makes the entire thing seem like a boring sci-fi. Whereas in the past (not counting Black Ops 2. I'm still trying to convince myself it didn't exist) we were given hints that brought the community together to solve them. Has anyone else noticed a drastic change in the rate of theories thag come out?

So no. I do not like the story's presentation. I hate the science fiction elements. I may very well just go back to the historical fiction that World at War and Black Ops was shrouded in and stay there until we see the cutscene that will finally end this boring story.