Wake up babe, White Cliff Games posted a new video ❤️

I think you nailed it on the distinction between "zombies" and "zombies 2.0." I loved origins both with and without my friends who were more 2.0 types, but I struggled to enjoy bo3's maps without a full team of people to drag me though the 2.0 system

I think casual does a dis-service to the original style of map design. I think what works better is arcadey. Older zombies was more about your in the moment to moment skill and how well you could do (like an arcade game) where later zombies is where it began to become more about optimizing a set of objectives to be completed as efficiently and quickly as possible, to then reap the rewards. The original formula is incredibly easy to pickup and play, but hard to master.

My only problem with the shift in direction that origins started, is that it’s not just one map you need to learn. It’s most maps that are very complicated to learn. So much knowledge needed to really enjoy the game mode vs to enjoy a particular map. Especially as the years go by

I love this map but being the only “zombies 2.0” guy amongst my friends who were more 1.0 fans, it did in a very real sense also feel like the end of an era.

As much as it is completely stupid from a gameplay perspective, I love the sheer balls of whichever developer decided to make a bunch of 14 year olds learn ANCIENT SUMERIAN in order to upgrade a weapon.

I love Origins but it’s refreshing to see someone not blind fanboying over it

Since we've reached Origins I think it's relevant to ask this question. When you get to the Zombie Chronicles DLC for Black Ops III I'd suggest doing 1 video, about the length of maybe 10 - 15 minutes talking about the changes done for each map. No need to go though them all again. But also hurrah of having the classics back.

These videos have single-handedly revived my love for the Zombies franchise. Awesome work!

4:28 this. This is the only Easter egg I was able to complete in the whole series because it was just the right amount of convoluted and could be done whenever you had enough points to unlock that part of the map. There's some tedium but it's worth the reward.

still my all time favorite map since this was around the time my crew did LAN parties to beat all the zombie map easter eggs. we actually encountered a few glitches since we only played local and had one where a panzer spawned on top of a electrical tower and we had to restart XD

I feel like the best part of this kind of zombies map is that once you learn the set up it's unlikely you will ever forget. I have never forgotten how to build the staffs find the maxis drone turn on pack a punch whereas in maps like moon and acension the steps just feel completely random leading me to forget entirely.

The thing I remember most about this map is a conversation with my older brother: "So who's flying the planes?" "Zombies" "woooah, they can use planes?" "Yeah"

I think the one issue I have with Origins' Easter egg is that the first steps are to fully upgrade all four staves and put them in the robots, but then they aren't actually used at any point. You can beat the entire egg without firing a wonder weapon. It just seems weird to me that they'd have you make these powerful weapons only to then completely ignore them.

dont stop making these. Its like SolarSands played zombies. I love the doc series

This series has a wonderful balance of nostalgia accompanied with a mature retrospective view. The time and effort you put it in is always worth the wait.

I took a break from zombies right before Origins came out and tried the map a month of two later with my friend at a sleepover. I was embarrassed by how bad i was doing because the map put so much emphasis on knowledge. I (an experienced veteran player) was getting destroyed doing traditional strategies that were completely viable on every map before it. Origins was definitely a huge change that demanded familiarity with the map more so than traditional 'zombie' skills. Personally, I really disliked that and never bought the map.

This map fucked how maps onward worked, now every map is a quest and not just fucking around with friends its always a step

Kills me to remember blops2 is ten years old. Ten.

Ah yes, the point I stopped liking the mode.

Even when this series ends I still feel like I’ll watch all your videos. With writing as good as this watching you talk about anything you are passionate about will be a treat

I respect this map for being bold and different but wow it really set a trend in the series that I didn't enjoy. BO1 will always be my fav! Simple to pick up but hard to master.

Banger videos. I’ll always watch a zombies retrospective, especially when they’re THIS high of quality

You’ve easily become my #1 KZfaq channel as of late, don’t stop pumping out the content man we need more 🤙

I just found your channel and I don’t know how it didn’t happen sooner. Thank you algorithm. I can’t wait to binge your videos this weekend

My only real issue with Origins is it is SO clearly designed for four players, and I mostly play solo when I fire up zombies. So I don’t really play it.

Bruh I've played zombies since WaW nacht and this is the only video I've seen that actually explains why people like this map rather than just circlejerking about it 24/7

Origins was the first and only easter egg I ever finished, and solo too, besides Cod World War 2’s base map easter egg. Both of those were definitely tedious but very fun and rewarding to get down. It felt like learning how to solve a rubik’s cube in how formulaic it became, to the point that I showed a friend how I’d been spending the past week doing it and got it on that go from start to finish. Very fond memories with that map.

Wow actually a beautifully done video. I like that bit where u used same saying this is step one while talking about how this is the first real leap into a new era. Good touch :)

I'm not fully through the video but I want to point out the only "tedious" part is waiting for the right robot foot to open for the second step. Awesome video so far though :)

The reason Origins is my #1 map of all time is because beyond the nostalgia for me it brought that perfect level of both being challenging and fun and the easter egg is honestly also a perfect balance of not being too hard not too easy, and not having super annoying steps

When I was 10 years old, Origins came out, immediately I was hooked. I spent most of my younger years playing Origins. I seriously put hundreds, maybe thousands of hours in the game. Throughout middle school, I had a notebook that I turned into an Origins guidebook that me and one of my friends wrote together. We wrote many pages and studied the map for hours upon hours. I played it damn near everyday between the release of Origins and Black Ops 3, even when BO3 came out, I didn't really like Shadows of Evil that much so I would just go back into Origins until Der Eisendrache came out. To this day, I still play both the BO2 and BO3 Origins regularly and I've completed the Easter Egg so many times both with friends and solo. It has been such an impact on my childhood, it truly was something I could grasp, nerd about, enjoy, and grow from. I will never forget how special this map is to me even 11 years later.

Back in the day this was MY zombies map, even as a casual player I always had fun and was always able to get a staff on time for the panzer. So fun

Been waiting for the Origins video ever since I discovered this channel. You did not disappoint, love the vid!

I was JUST thinking about you, you sneaky devil.

“Never waiting for any external factors” *flashbacks of waiting for the robots to spawn*

My favorite Map and youre 100% right with needing to learn this map so you could really enjoy it. Back in the day me and my friends would always do the easter egg seeing how fast we could do it, cant believe that it already has been 10 years .

I KNOW you did not just say there's no tedium or randomness in this map. There are only 2 staffs that are not RNG based to retrieve. Then, beyond that, getting the necessary robots for the wind staff and easter egg step is a pain. Also I know you specifically mentioned solo being a struggle, but I have gone til round 20 without receiving the ice staff from dig sites. though, I have also got it on round 4 before. Origins used far too much RNG, an issue they changed in BO3 much more creatively.

Ive only just gotten bo3 and have been playing these maps. This video gave me a new respect for origins that at first glance seemed so excessive that it became inaccessible.

Origins was really my first foray into doing easter egg quests. They were something I never really bothered with before because they just toom so much work, but Origins put it at the forefront in a way that fit so naturally within the gameplay loop.

Honestly by the time origins came out i was already fed up with extra steps going on in zombies from the easter eggs in bo1 and even more so the buildables and interactive type stuff throught bo2. But i think origins was the map that got me on board with this new style of playing probably because it was so rewarding for the effort you put in.

4:30 Others have probably said it, but the step where you need to go into the robot then throw the g strike outside of the map sucks, especially on solo, since it takes forever for the right one to appear and you have no time to do it on solo Edit- I paused the video right before you said that, oops, I'll leave thia here just for algorithm purposes though

I don’t think I know anyone who played every map up to that point and got to origins on bo2 and went….nah this is the turning point I’m done playing lol

Where is the bo3 retrospectives 😭 we need them

Man I missed your vids

I absolutely love your content.

I absolutely love this map so much. There is so much to it that’s just so awesome and amazing

Incredible video.... exactly the kind of thoughtful game analysis for zombies I have been wanting to see so bad on youtube...

The constant gnawing of the story at you, is why I do not prefer Origins or Mob over the Victis crew maps. Besides the obvious that the Victis maps have more intrigue, and aren't formulaic. I always play Origins by skipping everything in map, concerning buildables and quests. Persistent Upgrades/Perks are incredible! And DO NOT exist on anything other than Tranzit, Die Rise and Buried. It baffles me that people still do not know (ten years later) that the lightning staff does NOT hit zombies! You must strike the ground with the normal attack and the zombies near it get damaged.

I've played this map for years and I never knew the maxis drone can revive downed players

"You never need to wait for something to spawn" Cough, cough, ice staff parts, cough, cough.

I cannot believe there is some level of parallel in the narratives of COD Zombies and goddamn Pathologic

Origins is not only the best map because of how amazing the experience was crafting the staffs, or seeing the robots the first time, or fighting your way through the muddy trenches, or using the maxis drone to drill down a horde, or finally entering the portal to another world to craft your nuke staff while still being able to upgrade it to have an awesome ability and even more nuke power, or doing creative and fun challenges to get crazy perks, or because of how insanely complex, epic, and rewarding the Easter egg is. No no no, it’s because of how influential it was for making all the maps that came after it and switching up a simple sandbox formula into a epic complex narrative focused experience with characters that have emotions and have impact on the world, for making maps that have the same epic insane feel. Gorod Krovi, Der Eisendrac, Zetubo Noshima, SHADOWS OF EVIL, WALL OF THE DEAD. People really fail to realize that BO3 was such an awesome zombies experience because of what they were built from. Origin’s was the ground work for all of the fan bases more beloved maps. That’s why it’s still to this day my favorite zombies map. It’s a bridge from the old to the new, you still have that old pre BO2 feel, while having the epicness of the later maps.

Been loving these videos keep it up!

i love it when waiting for robots is down to my own execution

My big issue with Zombies becoming more and more focused on the """easter egg quests""" over time is that, despite the developers clearly integrating the quests as intended parts of the maps to be cleared, they continued to keep all the steps to said quests vague and obscure as if they were still meant to be little easter eggs. I would argue they stopped being easter eggs as early as the latter maps of BO1, but especially near the end of BO2 and 3 they're just straight up story quests, it's very difficult to call them easter eggs anymore. There are a FEW maps where the first handful of steps make sense and are easily discovered by the average player, but most of the time you just need to look up a guide and spoil yourself on the quest just to solve it. And the worst part of all of this is, I WANT to complete the story quests. I really do, but they're so irritatingly opaque and convoluted to figure out that I can't be bothered most of the time. And hell, they often require a full team of four players to complete, which means not only do I need to figure out the quest, but I need three other people who also want to complete the quest and have the brain power to complete all the steps alongside me Maybe I'm in the minority, but I just got back into BO3 after many years away from Zombies, and I just feel that the quest steps need to be far, FAR more transparent and easy to understand. I would have had a blast with Shadows of Evil in BO3 if I didn't have to look up how to do something as simple as unlocking the staircases to the perk machines, but because I had to look up nearly everything, it kinda spoiled the fun of the map, and now it's just become a glorified checklist

I think it's fair to call the quests from Der Riese to the Victis Black Ops 2 maps easter eggs but once they become so front and center from Mob and Origins onwards I don't think that label really applies.

4:25 I really think that placing the staffs in each robot is a really tedious step (unless of course you do the bo2 glitch, however, that was patched in bo3), especially in solo as you are going to wait for a specific robot without being able to place another staff if another robot comes. I think the robots should have a set pattern, at least for that step, maybe it could be triggered when placing the fire staff, this way the player could determine which staff to hold and where to wait without leaving it up to luck

22:00 hits on a really unique point. Despite Mob being one of my favorite maps and having my mind blown when I first got it, after awhile I couldn't play it all the time because of how fatiguing it felt to "oh yeah I need to wait for the dog to finish chewing before killing another" or "oh yeah I couldve shocked that with my afterlife but I wasnt fast enough" or... the list goes on. Because of this, Die Rise would be my go-to map.

1:54 Little Girl Lost lol

25:35 ah yes the 'the wunderfizz'' machine

been dying waiting for this tysm

gotta love when the community writes your own lore

Been looking forward to this

Irvin’s is my absolute favorite map!! I used to play it all the time as a kid and then when I got old enough I got it for my ps5 spent months grinding beat the Easter egg and felt complete! I even love to play it for fun!! First Easter egg I ever beat with friends and it makes me want to do them all

Incredible vid, couldn't of hit the nail on the head better. Definitely your best yet!

Origins is the most important map ever , also the steps were not cryptic, we all played vorkuta in bo1 haha

I Think you nailed all my points for why I think Origins is the best map ever made. It is able to cater to every skill level and guide you on how you can start to progress. I can remember as a kid being satisfied with just a Mark 2 pack-a-punched riding the tank aroumd the map, to getting a staff, to making multiple staffs, upgrading, getting the other equipment, to now i've done the easter egg at least twice (once with no perks). It's perfect

Great map , I agree with most of it but the staff upgrades were awful . While most of the maps progression , is a challenge you need to complete like soul boxes or melee kills or finding the staff parts the upgrades are a puzzle that 99% of people need a guide for because they aren’t intuitive . Cept the fire one

My first Zombies experience was Kino Der Toten when I was in high school. It took my friend and I at least 10 games to get past the dog rounds, and another 10 to figure out power/PaP. At the time, it was the scariest game I'd ever played, and one of the three games (the other two being Call of Duty 3 and Killzone) that elevated me from childhood games like Crash Bandicoot, Tony Hawk, and Mx Unleashed.

Great analysis video, straight to your point no annoying shitty humour just clean and concise, keep it up looking forward to more

3:13 upgrading your drone??? are you high? lol

This is such a great series I'm always surprised at the low view count. I know you'll really blow up soon!

Origins was my favourite map, and I have been waiting for this video since I discovered you. Hope to see more soon :)

Great vid, im not against complexity, im against whenever im done with the easter egg Id have to repeat the setup, I don’t have all the time in the world, make it electively to choose from both

Half an hour, lets go!😁

a note on statement about optimizing gameplay: sometime ago recently there was a debate sparked when a gaming news article posted that there was a speedrun of Ocarina of Time that was completed in a little under 5 minutes. people read the headline of that article and questioned how much optimism is too much to where you miss out of core experiences, and how speedrunning games and overly optimized gameplay is ruining games. and where i agree that some speedruns are dumb to where full 6+ hour games are finished in a 10th of the time is wild and little jimmy who saw that speedrun and wants to copy what that one guy did, getting upset that he couldnt do the time saving strats and never picking up the game again because of such. theres a fine line to where between making gameplay more efficient and missing out on content due to over optimization and people have to understand that. also for reference: that OOT speedrun i mentioned was done on the super smash bros brawl demo version of the game where the games because the demo only gave you 5 minutes to play it.

I’d love these to be made like podcasts so I can listen to it while walking and stuff

How white cliff games improved on a perfect formula. Amazing content as usual

I'm sad I didn't play this map more back in the day. At the time it was too complex for me to follow and I was not so interested in doing a bunch of KZfaq research. I wish they had the next step listed on the pause or scoreboard menu, similar to the first map in WWII zombies.

I freaking love this map.

I do wanna say on the whole that this is an excellent review on its own. Even if I disagree on points, I was still enjoying myself and it has a decent presentation throughout. I did want to mention two points as I walked from this video: 1. A lot of design decisions are very intentional. But I feel like you end up giving a lot of forgiveness because of that. Yes, the power is meant to give you a choice on if you want to get a max ammo or not. But if what you get for saying no is having to reactivate multiple power stations (or even all of them if you really let the knights go), then it's not a choice. You're being forced to do it if you want to keep perks and pack a punch on. That is the intention I got from it. 2. I am curious on if you're saving this point for BO4 (when this issue really starts to rear its ugly head), but when Zombies switched to this new philosophy, it had a lot of... unintended consequences. The obvious and immediate one is that a lot of people who didn't have interest in Zombies before will probably not be convinced to play it when they have to do a lot of objectives to get the most fun. But the long term one? It bred a whole different community to emerge. For BO3, they were fine and most of the spinoffs from other studios were following in Treyarch's way so there wasn't much problem (plus they were probably waiting for Treyarch anyway). BO4? The community turned vile. A lot of attacks were made to members of the studio as they felt betrayed with how zombies was treated during that game and many of the design choices that occurred in BO4. And it never ended there. For Cold War, the game had switched to a system that could easily be played by causals and they saw a lot of growth *because* of that. The problem is that the hardcore community from BO2-4 felt betrayed once again because there was nothing cryptic to find or the easter eggs didn't take a whole ass week to find the steps for. It does sound hyperbole but there really was people who believed that. For Vanguard... I rather not talk about what happened with that, especially with came out of the original zombies creators. That second one has a lot of nuance to it. It really was a problem that occurred over time rather than something we saw immediately. Other than that, great review as always. (currently going through everything myself and i am enjoying myself.)

I think this map is what made me the gamer I am today and probably mob of the dead to but to a less extent. I became that personality type to absolutely master this map (from a normal playthrough perspective, not speedrun or anything). I took dozens and dozens of pug lobbies through the easter egg just to help them out bc it was fun doing it with people who were bad bc it added challenge.

I think BO4 imo went too far one way in terms of evolving. With BO2 and BO3, they evolved in similar styles but added too much of the same thing but made zombies simpler but easy. BO4 made it heavily based on objectives, instead of traditional survival. Cold War got the balance right but still lacked a lot of the original quality between 2&3.

Origins hit a near-perfect balance of complexity and classic zombies gameplay before bo3 went too far into the complexity aspect for many players, still the best map in zombies history

Your videos and the new plutonium servers on pc have made me fall in love with zombies again. So much so that I bought black ops three and an beginning to experience “the golden age of zombies” for the first time.

If you really think about it, Origins is the perfected version of Transit. I feel like nobody has ever made a video of how they’re actually more similar then you might think.

One thing I miss about Black Ops 2 zombies is the ranking system it gave you like the skull with two shotguns which meant you were really good at zombies

When you think about it, it’s kind of hard to believe that this map came out on the same game that had some objectively very bad maps such as farm, tranzit, town, bus depot etc. mainly what I’m getting at here b are the BO2 launch maps

Absolute entertainment and review videos you make man 👏👏👏

Been waiting for this video so pumped it's out🎉🎉🎉

After this map came out with all the complicated steps just for that terrible ending I thought zombies was dead for sure. Luckily they pulled a Payday 2 and the new writer had an actual vision for the characters.

Cool Video Bro!

11:55 Bro I’m just saying, there is almost nobody who played origins the first few times and actually built the staffs without looking it up. Finding the records in particular was probably the hardest thing. Basically every one has like 1 obvious spot, 1 kinda obvious spot, and 1 out of the way spot. Seriously the only way that was happening is if someone decided to keep a crawler for 30 minutes while they searched for everything. The whole “the records are all on the other side of the map from the tunnel that it marks” was such a weird design choice to me, and probably the biggest thing that made it frustrating. (I remember thinking the fire record just HAD to be around gen 3 and the tun I also distinctly remember my first few times playing the game having fits looking for the main gramophone record, or getting the ice staff before round 15-20 because nobody understood to keep the zombie only on snow. Also yea obviously you have to shoot a ducking glowing plane to get the last piece of what to that point, was the most straightforward staff to get. (everybody else had to be told or look up a vid for that too right?) I appreciate that they at least made PaP pretty straightforward. I thought the power system was the coolest thing about the map when I first played and really appreciated how not convoluted it was to turn on the power for everything without needing a guide, especially compared to tranzit/MOD. Blops 2 also understood that if you don’t have a staff by round 8 you should still be able to kill the panzer with guns. Meanwhile blops 3 is literally just death without a staff or ray gun. Sorry I’m rambling now it’s a good map but god damn it is one of the least noob friendly maps I’d ever played. Seriously I think people really forget that if you played origins for the first time without a video you were unbelievably out of your element. Even the map itself is crazy big and hard to get a feel for when u play it for the first time. It’s the first map where stamin up is basically needed because you are 100% going down in the mud without it once u pass round 13. It’s a map that has the biggest environmental threat to the player since the falls of die rise. (Seriously don’t underestimate how many people get fucked by the robots at first, because the natural training spots were the robots foot spots which again would slow you terribly without stamin up.). Every trip to the crazy place was soooo hard at first because the wall rng is brutal if u don’t know the general layout. Still great map tho. Just seriously brutal to noobs in a way I think people forgot with age.

yo yo yo yo

gorod krovi was almost perfect for a balance between being casually playable and also having extra stuff to do. the ray gun mark 3 being a box wonder weapon was cool, pack a punch took steps but you could figure them out yourself, you could go for the melee weapon and do the trials. Only thing it was missing imo is some sort of buildable wonder weapons like the staffs or bows in addition to the mark 3.

was waiting for this 🖤

You can kill panzers without headshots. It just takes longer

I love your thumbnail ❤

Little bit surprised you didn’t talk about how awesome the Avenged Sevenfold music video of an opening cutscene is tbh.