This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign
Call of Duty companies have dabbled in the horror genre once or twice, but it often focuses on depicting the horrors of war. Past entries like Call of Duty: WW2 have not shied away from showing the brutality and futility of war, and every game in the series has its share of harrowing moments of violence. But Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 takes a slightly different approach, choosing to focus on more psychological fears.
Without spoiling too much, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War featured a mission in which the player controls a character in the midst of an identity crisis, resulting in mind-blowing gameplay. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 takes these themes one step further by introducing two missions that focus on psychological horror, one of which feels like a love letter to the franchise's zombie mode.
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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign ending explained
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is full of twists and turns and political intrigue, and its final moments both wrap things up and tease what's to come.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 'Emergence' is like a love letter to zombies
Occurs about halfway through Call of Duty: Black Ops 6In Emergence, Frank Woods' team of rogue agents search an old CIA research facility in Kentucky in hopes of learning more about a mysterious bioweapon known as the Cradle. Upon reaching the facility, player character William “Case” Calderon falls into an elevator shaft, isolating him from the rest of the team.
Upon hitting the bottom of the mine, Case's gas mask breaks and he is forced to inhale an unknown green gas. The psychoactive effects of the gas soon begin to rear their head as the mannequins around Case begin to move every time his back is turned. The player will eventually find himself in a large atrium and is told that he needs to find four keys to access the elevator that will reunite him with the team.
Emergence is essentially a zombie narrative mission
Once this target appears, players will hear a cohort of guttural sounds behind them. Turning around, the player will come face to face with a small horde of undead explorers and worker objects that they will need to disperse with their equipped axe.
The next 20-30 minutes see the player embark on what is essentially a narrative-driven, single-player Call of Duty Zombies experience. Players will need to make their way to four access keys scattered throughout the facility, fighting off waves of hallucinating zombies between each one. To obtain each key, the player must fight a mini-boss, each of which is taken from Black Ops 6Zombie Mode or Link to the Past Call of Duty Zombies antagonist.
Players will face the Mangler, the Abomination, and a monster that can suddenly turn invisible and hide in objects, which may be a shadow version of the Amalgam boss Terminus. The final boss players fight Call of Duty: Black Ops 6The 'Emergence' card is a floating undead explorer that has a yellow lightning attack. While this boss doesn't have a 1:1 comparison, it could be a subtle reference to Avogadro, the electric boss from Black Ops 2's TranZit and Black Ops 4Alpha Omega.
At one point in Emergence, a zombie scientist flies past the player as they open a door, which could be a reference to the Pentagon Five thief.
Emergence has a direct reference to Kino der Toten's famous easter egg
But by far the most overt reference to Call of Duty Zombies'long history of Black Ops 6'Emergence' takes place during the third boss fight of the mission. After all, the aforementioned invisible boss appears for the first time in a long time Call of Duty fans are in for a strong blast of nostalgia, like the first riff to a favorite song 115 starts playing.
Written by Kevin Sherwood and originally performed by Elena Sigman, 115 first heard in 2009 as death screen music Call of Duty: World at War map Der Riese. Full version 115 then you could hear on Call of Duty: Black Ops the Kino der Toten card, where it acted as the card's musical Easter egg.