It looks like Call of Duty: Warzone is teasing the arrival of Zombies for season two
Trial machine! Scrambled visuals! More!
Call of Duty: Warzone has begun teasing the arrival of Zombies with a new object found in the game and occasional cryptic screen distortion.
After last night's playlist update for the battle royale behemoth, players discovered the Cold War Zombies trial machine popped up in the hospital in Warzone's rumble playlist.
This challenge machine has a popup for an interaction labelled "ZAI/ACTIVATE_ZOMBIES", but it currently does nothing. In Black Ops Cold War's Zombies mode, the trial machine lets you exchange points to trigger challenges for rewards.
The video below from YouTuber TheCityofZ reveals the challenge machine:
Elsewhere, players have reported an odd graphical scrambling effect on occasion while playing Warzone, sometimes accompanied by speech, sometimes accompanied by Morse code.
Here's how it looks, courtesy of the Warzone subreddit:
Playing warzone went in the office next to headquarters 2nd floor and this weird pop up plays and Russian voices start playing.WHAT IS THIS! from r/Warzone
Here's a translation of the Russian by redditor Wolf-of-icewrack:
"Dispatch, this is Russian ship Vodianoy, channel 1-2. Over.
"This is dispatch, requesting shipping permit to Verdansk. Over.
"Dispatch, cargo secured, all systems are fine. Get ready to go. Over."
What does this have to do with anything? The current speculation is the Vodianoy is being used to ship Nova gas in and out of Rebirth Island. You can actually see the Vodianoy while in a game on Rebirth Island, as spotted by Twitter user @KStidge.
Nova 6 is a biochemical weapon developed by Nazi, Soviet, and Coalescence scientists in the Call of Duty: Black Ops continuity.
A similar graphical effect was added to Warzone to tease the reveal of Black Ops Cold War back in August 2020. Current speculation suggests this new effect is also tied into the launch of a Zombies-flavoured season two.
As we reported last week, for the first time, Call of Duty's four main storylines are all connected. It means the worlds of Warzone, Modern Warfare, Black Ops and Zombies appear canon within a single universe.
The latest Zombies mode ending cutscene suggests Black Ops Cold War's next Zombies map is set in the Ural mountains. Black Ops Cold War has a Fireteam map called Ruka that's set in the Ural Mountains, and it has a campaign level set in Mount Yamantau, a Russian nuclear facility located within the Ural Mountains.
It'll be interesting to see how Warzone developer Raven weaves all this Zombies lore into the battle royale. The latest cutscene for Warzone and Black Ops Cold War saw rivals Stitch and Adler face off inside Cold War map The Pines. It ends with Adler kidnapped and Stitch declaring: "see you in hell." A hell from which Zombies spew forth, perhaps?
The cutscene is below:
