Zombies is returning in Call of Duty: Vanguard!

Though it may not have been an obvious match originally, Call of Duty and zombies now go together like chocolate and peanut butter — albeit with a lot more blood and brains involved. The mode is an established fan favorite, and anticipation for the upcoming Vanguard’s Zombies segment reached fever pitch this month thanks to an exciting release trailer.

Now that more details have been brought to light, it’s the perfect time to dive into all the gory goodness and examine what’s got us most excited to play some co-op Zombies this holiday season.

Zombies will arrive at launch with Vanguard - which is the 5th November 2021.#

More content will follow throughout the year.

To be clear, we mean its first chronological chapter. The developers are promising that CoD: Vanguard Zombies will explain more about the origin of the zombie problem, and what they’ve described so far sounds great. Vanguard will explore “Der Anfang,” or “The Beginning”, with Oberfuhrer Wolfram von List opening up a portal he shouldn’t have — as Nazi scientists are wont to do — in an effort to command an army of the dead.

The problem is that there’s a being named Kortifex the Deathless which has designs on doing more of the commanding itself. Will we get to fight against Kortifex alongside other CoD players? We’ll have to wait and see, but signs point to yes. Apparently, we’ll also have some unexpected help.

Guns are great for mowing down garden-variety zombies, but fighting Kortifex and a legion of resurrected Nazis probably calls for more. Vanguard Zombies appears to be giving players exactly that in the form of wild new weapons like magic swords.

But that’s not all. The game’s official blog explains that Kortifex has enemies even among its own kind, with Saraxis the Shadow, Norticus the Conqueror, Inviktor the Destroyer, and Bellekar the Warlock all openly standing against it. The blog goes on to tease that these entities “all can give you special new powers,” which sounds like exactly the type of thing needed to combat this powerful new threat.

Vanguard’s development team seems to have replayability covered thanks to a new feature called the Altar of Covenants. Every time you return from an objective, you’ll be able to sacrifice an item called the Sacrificial Heart to the Altar in exchange for a randomized upgrade. The blog post says we can expect things like auto-reloading non-equipped weapons, turning enemies into allies, and automatically being able to hold down choke points or objectives.

There’s sure to be much more to this system as well, making the claim that it will help “create unique gameplay builds never before experienced in Zombies” extremely plausible. That’s the kind of ingenuity that could lead to a mode that never feels stale, which is something pretty much all gamers crave.

Want to fight in the swamps of Shi No Numa again? You’ll definitely have that wish fulfilled. Old maps will be returning to join brand new ones in Vanguard Zombies. Stalingrad sounds like an important locale as well, and when all of these far-flung maps can be accessed via magic portal, it’s not that far-fetched to see them in one game after all.

Could other previous maps make their way back into Zombies for this latest outing? You certainly can’t rule it out.

It’s a sad but true fact that people who want a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X are still having trouble finding them in stock, while others simply aren’t ready to upgrade yet. Happily, Vanguard is making the question of which console you’re playing on irrelevant with cross-platform, cross-generation support for Zombies.

This is possibly the best news of all, as you can round up a few friends to face the undead without worrying about matching up systems exactly. It’s just another reason to think that CoD: Vanguard Zombies will be the most expansive and accessible Zombies mode to date, and that means November 5 can’t get here fast enough.