As Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 readies for the release of Season 2 on 28th January, developer Treyarch has shared initial details of Zombies mode’s next map, The Tomb – which plunges players deep beneath the earth, down into ancient catacombs.
“As the rumours have it,” Treyarch explains in a post on the Call of Duty website, “a British archeologist by the name of Sir Archibald Fotherington-Smythe conducted an excavation at the site back in 1908 with grand expectations. Although no one can say for sure what became of him, a handful of photographs from his doomed expedition have recently surfaced…”
Picking up after the events at Citadelle des Morts – Zombies mode’s third Black Ops 6 map, introduced during Season 1 – The Tomb sees Weaver, Grey, Carver, and Maya following Gabriel Krafft’s final words to a nearby excavation site as they continue their search for the Sentinel Artifact. From there, the only way is down – deep into long-undisturbed catacombs built on an ancient burial ground, and perhaps even deeper still.
Treyarch says The Tomb has been designed to offer a similar experience to Zombies mode’s Liberty Falls map, featuring tighter play spaces with a focus on replayability. It’s also promising “plenty” of Easter Eggs, and a reimagined Wonder Weapon inspired by the series’ past. More specific gameplay details will be shared closer to The Tomb’s release – but in the meantime, the studio has revealed a number of other additions coming to Zombies mode in Season 2.
These include a much-requested co-op pause feature which, as its name suggests, enables a party leader to pause the game during play, provided all participants are in the same party. That’s on top of loadout recovery for players who rejoin a session after being kicked while AFK, plus a range of Challenge Tracker and Near Completion improvements, and the ability to set up separate HUD presets for Zombies and multiplayer modes.
According to Treyarch, Black Ops 6 players have now amassed 480m hours in Zombies mode since its launch last October, with Directed Mode – introduced a month later – having helped raise the average Main Quest completion rate from 3.38 percent to 8.23 percent. “This still means over 90 percent of people who’ve played Zombies haven’t completed a Main Quest yet, so our mission continues,” it notes, “but we’re proud of these initial results, and excited to welcome so many new players into the fold with this new feature. Onward and upward!”