MP Map Expedition

[RadZakpak]

We often take for granted the work that goes into making Multiplayer maps. While we scour the fine details of every nook and cranny of a Zombies map, Multiplayer maps are often overlooked because their primary mode of play is fast-paced, and the maps are designed not to take your attention away or to tell a story, but to serve as a backdrop for interesting gameplay. However, the act of searching Multiplayer maps across a variety of games shows that they receive just as much love and care as any other kind of map. I decided to go on an expedition across a few maps in BO4, taking screenshots and recording clips, and now I want to share some findings today. Most of them do not have broad story implications to Zombies, the Campaign, or even Multiplayer, but I just find them interesting. I hope to return to this thread with more explored maps in the future.

 

Today I'm sharing some interesting findings from Der Schatten, Havana, and WMD.

 

Der Schatten

Der Schatten, or 'The Shadow', is described as a village sitting in the shadow of Der Eisendrache, which is now a battleground between good and evil. On the surface, there are certainly things of note regarding Zombies: The Castle itself, the fallen Robot, and the presence of zombies in the village's shops. There are some other interesting things I'd like to share about the map that you may or may not know about.

 

For one thing, there is a room with a radio and a variety of German propaganda posters, and through the radio we can hear a man barking orders in German, named Captain Schulz. His orders are found here: 

 

The description of the above video contains translations, and it seems Schulz is calling for reinforcements after some attack on Patrol Station 9. It is not clear if he is directly talking about Zombies, or some living attack force. But that is contained in the room is quite interesting.

 

There are computers with the following logo:

 

That is clearly a reflected Broken Arrow logo. On the walls, along with distinctly German posters, are posters taken directly from Camp Edward: 

Now, this is obviously a case of re-used assets by a team that does not directly work on the Zombies team. But when looking at cases like this, I think we need to look at it from two different angles: 1. The Developer's point of view and 2. From within the context of the map. Regardless of outside intent, it is now a piece of the art, and it is the viewer's interpretation that matters now. If this map is truly meant to be an extension of Der Eisendrache within the Aether storyline, perhaps this relates to SOPHIA's comments on Broken Arrow in Gorod Krovi?

 

In town there is a statue of Dempsey, the same one present inside the the castle, and on the pedestal these words appear: 

"The great destroyer of Maggot-sacks. When great evil strikes mankind, he returns to crush the bad guys." - Nice.

 

In the windows of some shops are some rather docile zombies banging on the glass. There are some civilians, and some soldiers. What's interesting though, are their eyes:

Some possess orange eyes and others have red. This is another development-centric compromise most-likely, but what can be made of it?

 

Something I found interesting is that the interior of the train station plays a very familiar, though distorted tune:

https://gameclipscontent-d2001.xboxlive.com/xuid-2533274874404829-private/bf0209a9-f1bc-4522-b980-120efa7b69d8.MP4?sv=2015-12-11&sr=b&si=DefaultAccess&sig=TLiync9C%2Bb%2BmkQhU53qnXDBYYJtLy1ILp2vvV8V2NVk%3D&__gda__=1591120265_a4668059a7fd857d0b74d470b609e504

That's the tune of We Wish You A Merry Christmas. I suppose that resolves around when the map takes place, if the snow didn't tell you.

 

Additionally, outside the map, one can hear wolves howling:

https://gameclipscontent-d3001.xboxlive.com/xuid-2533274874404829-private/c9509d76-0821-444f-b4fd-4510ab0bb1dd.MP4?sv=2015-12-11&sr=b&si=DefaultAccess&sig=NNwbI4dK602zqigEj13%2FeBqC4S4sByggThuPvR6a5n0%3D&__gda__=1591120265_442bab4c8dd75016fd56150bde220d24

 

Wolves are not native to Austria, which leads me to believe these are the Ethereal forms of the Wolf King's wolves howling into the night. Very spooky.

 

Now that I've reeled you in with some Zombies connections, how about some Cold War intrigue?

 

Havana

Havana is a remake of the original from Black Ops, and I must say it is a gorgeous recreation with a lot of new assets.

 

One of the coolest things about this map is how it begins. An American plane flies overhead, not dropping bombs, but Anti-Communist leaflets:

 

Outside the map, one hears ambulance and police sirens from inside the city. There is no life on this street, with only the fluttering of thousands of leaflets flying in the wind being heard.

 

If you've heard anything about the new Havana, you've likely heard about the theater, which seems to be playing Zombies-related films:

Are the Aether and Chaos stories a film series within this universe? Or is there something more going on?

 

The theater even has special Perk-a-Colas on the menu:

 

While zooming in on various things to find only placeholder or meaningless text, I did come across this one which fascinates me:

Now, the text is borderline unreadable, but that bottom line is 100% a URL. A texture artist's job when it comes to small assets with text is usually to just fill up text with nonsense if it is not meant to be examined closely, which is probably what was done here. However, most of the time that is done with generic lorem ipsum latin text, yet the artist decided to put a URL here? His/her own website? A joke site? A fake site? Though the answer is certainly meaningless, there is a natural curiosity in me that just wants to know!

 

There are a few ambient objects on the map that will periodically make noises, such as a ticking clock, a phone ringing, and water dripping in a sink. But as I was looking over poster, I heard a Spanish voice say something from a nearby TV. This Spanish voice speaks on multiple TVs on the map, saying a few phrases, and I'm so curious what they mean. Here's an example of one:

https://gameclipscontent-d3025.xboxlive.com/xuid-2533274874404829-private/d1bc9ef4-e0fe-466a-b9e5-5df20415c204.MP4?sv=2015-12-11&sr=b&si=DefaultAccess&sig=SUwm%2Bv3o9l8UcNv6XLjplrqdmKwDnDUSfFzM2GgmoDs%3D&__gda__=1591121593_dead7d6b054bf9fe80d39feb6835b344

 

If anyone can understand Spanish, I'd love to find the meaning of some of the broadcasts.

 

Now, onto our final map of the day:

 

WMD

WMD is also a remake from Black Ops, and it is a Nova 6 Rocket launch site disguised as a vodka factory. You'll notice many unique Nova 6 canisters scattered around the map, some hidden inside shipping crates: 

 

Inside one building, you'll be able to see that there is a whole underground operation, with various rooms and some sort of metal sound. There's a desk with a radio, maybe a numbers station?

 

Additionally you'll find a laboratory with safety precautions and chemical structures written in chalk, where it appears the Soviets are trying to improve upon Nova 6: 

 

The most intriguing location in WMD, however, is what appears to be the building where the Nova 6 rockets are being planned for launch. There is a cornucopia of Russian writing on papers, blueprints, sticky notes, and chalkboards around the building, and unfortunately I can read none of it. There is even a map with various world locations marked which definitely has some malicious prupose:

 

If anyone is able to read the writing, I'd love to know what some of it means, if anything.

 

I look forward to the next expedition. Perhaps more secrets can be found, and if not, I can at least appreciate the work put forth by the map artists of Treyarch.

[anonymous]

Its interesting to see how much ties MP has with Zombies. I think this already started at WaW, without a direct connection with zombies but connected with the campaign and thus with zombies. The same is the case with the Black Ops series, as many original maps can be either connected with the Campaign or have some zombie references in it (excluding the 'fun-looking' DLC maps). @KronoriumExcerptB already learned me in this post that there can be even independant stories within maps, like in this case the villa in the BO4 map Hacienda being part of the same maffia club as the BO2 map Hijacked, including some references to a 'man with an eyepatch' (Menendez).

 

At the Der Schatten radio, there is also said the following: "Captain Schulz to all units, gather at patrol station 9." "You will defend the start facillity of the V2-Rocket at all costs. End."

I think the start facility of the V2 Rocket might be the station from where the gondola goes to Hohenwerfen Castle, as I think that's what they mean with the V2 rocket facility. Since the giant robot is already there, I think this is either during or post-DE. Have the first zombies from the castle arrived in the village? That Dempsey statue could be explained due to the honouring of Primis in the Medieval Era. That Broken Arrow thing is really weird, and yeah who knows this has ties with the Gorod Krovi chatter of Sophia. Now there is a possibility that this Der Schatten takes place at DE, in the Agonia/Gorod Krovi fracture. If this wouldn't be true, this would mean Maxis, or some G935 members had contact with Broken Arrow. Those different coloured eyes make me think about this map possibly not being canon, though I wouldn't know why the developers would want to do that.

 

The original Havana is among my favourite maps, and I really gotta play this remake once. That propaganda plane is a neat add, thank you developers for taking the efford of adding this, reminds me a bit of the movie Dunkirk. Those words above that URL code look like a name and adress to me. Do you think there is a way to make it more clear?

 

 

As for the Russian translation, here's what I could make of it. At the table on the left of the map one can read 'orbit crew', like the rockets contain humans (or monkeys? Do we call them crew too?) Moving on to the map, the circle around West-US can be translated to '(unknown) Houston', which I think refers to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, NASA's center for manned space activities in Houston. Moving down, the circle in the South Pacific doesn't translate to anything either, just lke the first word before Houston. Similar to this word, it has three letters so could it be some kind of abbreviation?  Therefore, I will only translate all real translatable words. The circle at East-US can be translated to 'Cape Canaveral', another NASA facility and major launch site. The one in Russia can be translated to 'Moscow', and the name in Kazakhstan can be translated to 'Cosmodrome', which is interesting because if it would be Baikonur, I think it would be translated to Baikonur. So is this our secret Cosmodrome built by the Ascension Group? Kinda reminds me how Soviets named so-called Closed Cities by codes of numbers and letters, rather than having actual names (Naukograds, technipoles, cities focussed on technological research and yes, cosmodromes). The Ascension Cosmodrome could still be within Baikonur territory but at a certain, more restrictive part.

 

That scheme translates to 'bunker personnel response in case of emergency'. The route & scheme seen underneath provides an emergency plan eventually ending with 'countdown to self destruction'. Nothing too special.

 

That purple letter can be translated to "keep in mind, the informer is fired". Informer can also be translated to something like snitch, like a spy or double agent. Were there spies in GK? Concerning that picture with the chemical structure formulas, they look very particular. First of all, they look very different than the formulas of Tabun and Sarin we see on the Kino note, and secondly if you look closely you can distinguish a DNA strand behind the formula. Whatever this chemical compound is, it seems like it can attach to the DNA (and cause mutations?).

 

I think with this thread you've showed there are plenty of small neat easter eggs in MP. I'm eager to find more!

[RichKiller]

My problem with looking into zombies content in MP is that you can't really tell how much the zombies team is involved in that and how much of it is even relevant to the story.
 

16 hours ago, RadZakpak said:

 

 

If you've heard anything about the new Havana, you've likely heard about the theater, which seems to be playing Zombies-related films:

Are the Aether and Chaos stories a film series within this universe? Or is there something more going on?

I think it's safe to say zombies is not a movie and it's just a nod towards zombies.