InfestLithium

Yes. Treyarch has given us enough detail on Stuhlinger's importance in the current storyline. At this moment, we are getting closer to understanding what "mend[ing] the rift" actually means. It also allows us to better analyze The Flesh cult and how Stuhlinger is incorporated into it exactly. We know that he was a part of them, but for what reason did he leave? And what will become of him when the others discover his grueling history? It's a setup for a cliffhanger until we gain more evidence/theories.

Good observation, friendo! You may also want to keep in mind that Stuhlinger is very paranoid much like Richtofen is/was. This makes him also a very susceptible person of interest to be manipulated.

Technically, the zombies had not controller before Samantha was in charge. You could say that the entity within the MPD would be some kind of overseer, but there was no definite "dictator". After all, they did not exist until the first MTD was constructed.

Yes, you can obtain Quick Revive even if the perk machine is gone. Receiving free perks do not count as actually purchasing them from the perk machines. This is why completing the High Maintenance Achievement or Jumping Jack round will not count towards the Shafted Achievement (purchase every perk and Pack-a-Punch a weapon). Unlimited Quick Revive for everyone!

The garbled voice cannot be 100% determined as Richtofen's, but there is no other explanation to actually connect it to this "dark entity" inside the Aether. The muffling of his voice is to give us the clear clues of Stuhlinger's involvement in The Flesh cult and some procedure of "mending the rift". It's set up to make us think hard about was has just been presented to us. Towards the end of the cutscene, Richtofen's voice becomes much clearer so we can hear the repeated "Accept your fate, begin anew" phrase. This seems to be a foretold message that the crew would eventually perish, so there is no point in surviving. In response, time is bent backwards to the crew's entrance in Shanghai. Beginning anew is either two things: resurrection, or time distortion. Maxis and Richtofen need the crew, so they surely do not want them to die. If we follow the time distortion concept, it would be easy to say that Richtofen has just enough power to reverse time to a period from a very short timeline. Therefore, the crew would've had to fail within a short matter of time before meeting their small demise.

Hey friendo, welcome to the community! I see that you've already been observing the forum, so that's a good start. I can't wait to see what ideas/theories you'll share, I am sure that we'd all love to hear and discuss about them! Enjoy your stay, and I'll be holding you to your word about being around often!

Try to keep yourself in areas where you can easily navigate through, and acknowledge your Who's Who spawn points. If you have an empty cushion around you upon "being the replacement", train for as long as you can in an area away from your downed body until you have enough space to make a clear and quick revive. If you need to buy a weapon off the wall in the meanwhile or spend some points, do so. If I know I can't make it, I'll save my own hide to ensure my survival. Accept your fate, begin anew. As for spawning in a cloud of zombies, there really is not much hope for you there. All I can suggest is to recognize possible spawn hotspots in order to prevent such a catastrophe to happen. Yes, nobody intentionally decides to go down in a bad area just for fun, but you should know where it's better to be downed than some places. The PDW room is a perfect area, since you spawn inside the SVU room.

The hype of new content causes a scramble between priorities and deep investigating. When a Zombies map first comes out, there is a particular agenda to what should be discovered first: 1. New perk machines/weapons found 2. Easter Egg/Side Quest introduction 3. Determination of layout 4. Steps to accomplishing Side Quest 5. Radio or audio transmissions 6. Finalization of Side Quest(s) 7. Understanding location and history behind map 8. Concrete evidence about characters/Side Quest/objective 9. The latter of map and event details This is a very broad checklist that people tend to follow based on the release hype of new DLC. While this setup is not 100% accurate, it covers the general areas of what players strive for. We have actually just finished #6 and are stuck between #7 and #8. With enough time and community effort, we can piece the rest together. Some players, however, do not wish to participate in the great adventure of research, as they would rather talk about the smaller details of new content like glitches and new exploitables that have already been mentioned before. It's not Treyarch's fault that they are focusing more on story content than character background. We get some tidbits about our new crew here and there while we are presented with story material. Did you forget about Marlton's experience during Nuketown Zombies, or the connection between each "faction" (Misty & Marlton versus Samuel & Russman)? While our new audio transmissions don't exploit it too much, we can see how each character plays a vital role in the story. When we are directly given evidence like Stuhlinger's involvement in The Flesh in Die Rise, it only created more questions, not answers. We don't know why or how he was in the cult; we only assume that he belongs because everything we learned pointed right towards him and was made clear as day. There will be a continuous hype of "what will happen next" to keep fresh ideas rolling in. We have to also know how Richtofen and Maxis will counter one another in the race for power. It's not that easy to create two perspectives of the storyline into one, large "book".

Welcome to the community, Ari! So I see that your hobbies are relatively similar to what 90% of our members do as well (maybe not the drinking aspect, but who knows). We have a nifty little section for those moments when you're looking to assemble either an Easter Egg/Side Quest hinting squad, or just a team of fun players to slay freakbags here: viewforum.php?f=13 Enjoy your stay, and continue to participate in our many, many discussions. Hope to see you around often, friendo. :)

Welcome to the community friendo! You'll find that a lot of us - if not all - are zombie addicts like yourself. And don't worry; we have a very active member community, so I'm sure you'll come across some awesome people while you partake in our discussions. Enjoy your stay, and I hope to see you around often. Slay on!

It's not a black hole. The Gersch Device is a mechanism that creates a time distortion that rips through the fabric of space within a particular boundary. This is why there is a beam of light much similar to the Mystery Box. Supposedly, you are passing through the Aether at such high velocity unlike the MTD teleporters in Der Riese and Kino Der Toten. It acts as centrifugal force (or the concept of such) which will obliterate zombies since they cannot withstand the space transfer, yet the human body is able to. I'm not calling out your theory; in fact, it's a very unique one and quite plausible when you use these kind of connects including supporting details. Very nice, friendo! It's just that the Gersch Device - as previously stated - would not be capable of teleporting a whole map / creating a zone warp of said magnitude. But it doesn't necessarily mean Gersch is not involved in some way. Keep 'em coming friendo!

Some are saying that it's been fixed, while others [like myself] are still experiencing it. If it's a crawler, it will die out in a matter of seconds when abandoned. If it's missing a limb, it can last for a couple of minutes before respawning or dying out (50/50). A fully unharmed zombie will eventually respawn, but may die randomly at times.

I'm certain that Richtofen was talking to Samuel the whole cutscene, but made him muffled and inaudible to us so we could become more entranced into what Stuhlinger was being commanded to do. As time went on in the scene, you begin to hear Richtofen a little clearer, saying "Accept your fate, begin anew!" twice. It was evident to him that the crew would perish, and that is why they must choose to "accept [their] fate". As for the gain/loss of power, it varies in which perspective you choose to view from. Like I said above, it seems more as an obstacle to players so we could try to piece together what the conversations where about exactly (the flesh, mending the rift). If you follow the Side Quests, it is true that Richtofen gains or loses power from whatever side you support.

Like most have already said, the challenge is no longer being able to obtain a reward or say "I killed ______". The structure and layout of Great Leap Forward is vastly different from anything that we have ever encountered before. We're forced to understand vertical alignments, take risks for jumps, recognize key areas for survival, acknowledge the mixing & matching of perk machines, elevator transportation that could end your game within a few seconds, the list goes on. That sounds pretty challenging already, and to think that most people haven't even played Die Rise yet. The map is a mix between good ol' Verruckt and Shangri-la with the combined teammwork effort of Five. Who's to say that it's not a challenge? You become well-equipped with heightened senses as you conquer your way through the difficult rounds. Sure, anyone can hit the high rounds on Solo, but this ideology pertains to every map realistically. You have to bust a nut if you plan on reaching past the 50's with two or more other people. This map screams teammwork.

Hm, that would mean we'd have to go through another nine entries just to reach the first one. And keep in mind that we don't obtain these diary entries through DLC, but rather the quick hotfixes. I have a feeling we'll get another one of these in about two months or so.

I thought that was what he said as well, but either or, he wants the world to himself. What a selfish controller he is. :P

Before I reply, I'd just likely to give a friendly mention that it was PINNAZ who made the comments on colors, not me. viewtopic.php?f=103&t=28533#p275426 Just wanted to point it out so he gets the recognition for it, not me. We can assume that some third entity is being involved here, but it isn't the first time that this has happened. Samuel is most likely hearing the same voices that Richtofen had heard ever since he first touched the MPD. These voices are of evil essence, but are seemingly inaudible to us as human beings yet quite clear to our characters. Samantha even mentions that something darker lies within the Aether. Vril-ya entities? They were very neutral with humans if you decide to consider the Nazi party making amends with them to create Hitler's perfect Aryan race. The two groups would exchange "gifts" to obtain another. See this thread for exact detail as to what the connection might be: viewtopic.php?f=103&t=28480 This is what eventually became of the Vril Society. Sacrifices of humans for the power and knowledge of the Vril-ya? Seems pretty reasonable to me. The same dark energies that reside in the Aether along the controller (in this case, Richtofen) could be using him as a puppet for doing their bidding. It's like a chain: Samuel obeys Richtofen, Richtofen obeys voices. But now the voices have come into contact with Samuel instead, possible to alter time so Richtofen is no longer in power, but whatever lurks in the Aether? Possibilities, possibilities.

I think we spammed the usage of Death Machines in Zombies already. We have "Five", Ascension, Call of the Dead, and Moon. Having that beast of a Gatling gun may seem like a great idea here and there, but as an obtainable weapon from the Mystery Box? I wouldn't count on it. I'm not saying that it will never happen, because it's essentially a rather balanced weapon. Takes down hordes within seconds, most powerful gun (aside Wonder Weapons) in any given game, extremely large ammo capacity. Then you have its disadvantages of being heavy (causing the player to painfully walk around with it), only has one clip of 999 bullets, long swap time for pulling it out, very concentrated shots that won't help if zombies are not lined up. Good weapon to have here and there, but just not an ideal weapon to regularly obtain in-game.

No thanks. This isn't typical Multiplayer; this is zombies. We're lucky that we can achieve free perks via Side Quests or successfully completing a boss round while meeting certain requirements; why would we need to make the game easier than the difficulty it is at now? All I can see are people finding ways to work around this concept to abuse the system. I'll have to say no on this 100%; good idea if you're looking through the glass, but it would definitely kill Zombies. And not in the slaying way either.

I thought that was supposed to be the shadow of Samantha? Notice the Teddy Bear seen in her left hand, and the silhouette of her dress' shape.

So you're saying that Richtofen wants to repair the time distortion to make everything fall under a single timeline as if he had been ruling the Aether the whole time, somewhat similar to Samantha? My my, this is a very interesting concept, friendo! Richtofen stated in Green Run that he wanted to restore the Earth so he could be for him "to plague". We never truly got our heads around how he'd accomplish such a task, but this idea of prevent multiple paradoxes from ever occurring sounds like it will do the trick. The events leading up to the switch of power during Moon (all those maps before it) would have never occurred, since we are technically in the future. In turn, this allows history to be rewritten in the favor of Richtofen. Very plausible idea indeed!

Or even perhaps this:

This sums up the perfect answer. We could say that the original three are dead, but at the same time, we could even say that they escaped and are very well alive. Keep in mind that they still have access to Earth via teleporter to Area 51, so they could just as easily leave to a new location. Where is that said location, is shrouded in mystery at the moment.

That was not leaked information nor gameplay; it was a troll who...well, did it for teh lulz. He event stated it himself in the comments. The advantages of a PC are endless; all he did was change the map preview picture, the text on the loading page, and use an area outside an existing map and injected the source code into the game. You don't need Dev Tools to do this, since all you need to know is how to access the in-game files. It's already been done in regards to text commands (what dialogue is displayed in the game). I wouldn't use a troll video as any kind of source to be honest. The film reel on the lower right-hand corner could be anything, really. It could be a hint towards the new map, a refurbished map, or some kind of object we'll be obtaining soon in the next map.

I'm glad to see that the human-like cutout on the loading screen is getting some recognition, but I'm even happier to see such an informative analysis on the shape itself. Great observations, friendo! What we can suggest is that this cutout is supposed to resemble someone. Some may say Gersch, others may say it's the person from Nacht der Untoten. Is it possible that it could actually be Maxis? We really do not have any valid form of physical characteristics, and this may prove to be true even more so if we could link the shape back to the blacked-out portrait in Kino der Toten. And suppose that the portrait is actually of Maxis, since the blackening-out may symbolize him being "terminated"?