Treyarch has revealed that the next DLC pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops III will conclude the long ongoing story of the franchise’s Zombies mode.
Jason Blundell, senior executive producer at Treyarch, spoke with GameSpot about concluding the storyline that began with 2008’s Call of Duty: World at War. The next DLC pack will be the game’s fourth and last expansion and is expected to release before the end of this year.
In addition to ending the story, Blundell reveals that the next episode will tie up loose ends, including cliffhangers originating from Black Ops II.
“At the end of Black Ops II, I think I enraged the community some when I put in this video that showed Samantha in a house with a boy called Edward,” Blundell said. “They were playing with zombie toys. Then an alarm goes off and you hear Max’s voice calling them down to the basement. The characters say, ‘I wish our heroes in our stories were real.’ Then we dropped to black. That was the end of Black Ops II. People lost their s***.”
He continued: “I’ve still technically to this day not answered that question of what that was and why that was there. That will be answered by the end of DLC 4. I believe that the ending of DLC 4 will spark emotion in the players, which is my goal. It’s not out of the desire for trolling, as people say. No, what I want to do is have you have complex and differing thoughts on what you’ve experienced and what your view is. I hope that’s what we generate when we come to the end of DLC 4.”
For those wondering how the team manages to keep the secrets of Zombies hidden, Blundell provides insight on the story development process.
“It’s a very tight group,” he said. “Essentially I’ll have my gameplay director in the room, I have my lead writer, and it’s me. That’s it. We have a level of paranoia which is probably unhealthy actually. There’s just so limited information that we share, either out on the floor or through Activision. We keep it quite tight-lipped.”
The next installment in the franchise, Infinite Warfare, is set to release this November.