Following Treyarch’s recent multiplayer reveal, we now know that Black Ops Cold War’s multiplayer will return players to Angola, an interesting location from another entry in the series.
Angola features the map Satellite in the new game, but we know it for another reason and that's down to Zombies lore.
In the third Black Ops 2 Zombies DLC, Angola was the site for the map 'Buried' and there's no doubt going to be some interesting Easter Eggs as a result of this.
We've already seen rumours about a return for Alcatraz and Tranzit, so why not add one more into the mix?
Angola, ‘Buried,’ and the Rift
The Zombies map “Buried,” from Black Ops II, also took players to Angola.
The game’s campaign begins with the Angolan Civil War of the 1980s. But in Zombies, it’s given a fantastical context as the site of the “the Rift,” a hole tunneling deep into the Earth, causing “temporal displacement.”
“It is a large opening in the ground, presumably caused by the missiles fired from the Moon previously,” the Call of Duty wiki explains.
“It is possible the Rift goes straight into the center of the Earth, and that the "portal" at the bottom is actually Earth’s core.”
Down below the map’s surface, what’s buried turns out to be a nineteenth-century town from another time, another world.
And there are lots of zombies, naturally.
Black Ops Cold War’s ‘Satellite’ Map
In Black Ops Cold War, players will revisit Angola in the new multiplayer map “Satellite.”
“Deep in the deserts of Angola, Central Africa, a top-secret, American-made reconnaissance satellite known as the KH-9 has been grounded, potentially by Perseus,” a recent Xbox Wire post explains.
“Hired DGI forces are searching for the sensitive intel it holds, while NATO’s MI6 Squadron have been dispatched to secure the site and eliminate DGI stragglers.”
While this new entry’s being marketed as grounded in real-world 1980s history, the Black Ops series has a tendency to get delightfully weird with its worldbuilding.
Maybe we shouldn’t hold our breath for an explicit return to the Rift, per se, but there’s a good chance we might see some Easter eggs and so forth hearkening back to Black Ops II’s campaign and the “Buried” Zombies map.
“These five maps are meticulously designed and based on authentic, real-world sources, as Treyarch’s visual research department visited real-life locations, photo-scanning thousands of physical objects, terrains, environments, and materials,” Activision writes.
“All those assets aided developer designers and artists to deliver an immersive virtual world that’s rich in ambience, further pushing the visual fidelity of environments through photometric lighting, and the game engine’s ‘contour terrain system.’”
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War launches on November 13.