The player character (voiced by Ben Browder if male and Abby Brammell if female) and Jacob Hendricks (Sean Douglas) are members of the faction's wetwork team, while Commander John Taylor (Christopher Meloni) and his team Sebastian Diaz (Reynaldo Gallegos), Sarah Hall (Katee Sackhoff), and Peter Maretti (Ary Katz), compose the faction's cybernetics division.

[13][14] Additional characters include: Rachel Kane (Rachel Kimsey), a CIA agent who was romantically involved with Taylor; Sebastian Krueger (Robert Picardo), CEO of the Coalescence Corporation; Yousef Salim (Tony Amendola), a therapist who once worked for Coalescence; and Goh Xiulan (Lynn Chen), leader of the Singaporean criminal organization 54 Immortals.

In response, the governments of the world seal off the worst infected areas into Quarantine Zones and form the Deadkillers, cybernetic soldiers trained to exterminate zombies.

The Zombies story in Black Ops III is told in an episodic format, with the launch map, "Shadows of Evil", focusing on a new group of characters: Nero Blackstone (Jeff Goldblum), Jessica Rose (Heather Graham), Jack Vincent (Neal McDonough) and Floyd Campbell (Ron Perlman), who reside in the fictional Morg City.

The four characters are thrown into a twisted version of the city, overrun by zombies, and are guided by a mysterious, unreliable figure called the Shadowman (Robert Picardo).

[15] "Shadows of Evil" acts as a prologue that leads into the core storyline, focusing on the Dimension 63 version of the original characters: "Tank" Dempsey (Steve Blum), Nikolai Belinski (Fred Tatasciore), Takeo Masaki (Tom Kane) and Edward Richtofen (Nolan North), who were introduced in the Black Ops II map "Origins", referred to collectively as Primis.

[16] The downloadable content maps feature the original versions of Primis, referred to as Ultimis,[e] and reintroduce various minor characters mentioned/featured in previous games, including Group 935 scientist Doctor Groph (also voiced by Blum), the OSS spy Peter McCain, Dr. Maxis' assistant Sophia (Christa Lewis),[17] the Ascension Group scientist Gersh, as well as introduces the mysterious omnipotent being Doctor Monty (Malcolm McDowell).

On October 27, 2065, the Player and their teammate Jacob Hendricks of the Winslow Accord Black Ops Cyber Division are deployed to Ethiopia to rescue the Egyptian Prime Minister and other hostages from the tyrannical Nile River Coalition (NRC).

They find the area attacked by the paramilitary crime syndicate 54 Immortals and the site's data stolen, after which Kane concludes that Taylor and his team defected and murdered the staff.

They manage to recover data regarding Taylor's last known location, a facility of the Coalescence Corporation in Singapore (destroyed ten years prior in a mysterious explosion that killed 300,000 people and turned most of the island's east inhospitable).

Interfacing with Diaz's DNI, Hendricks discovers Taylor is trying to find the two survivors of the explosion: Coalescence's CEO Sebastian Krueger and Dr. Yousef Salim.

The Multiplayer mode of Black Ops III features a shared narrative setting with the campaign, in which players battle in virtual simulations across a variety of battlefields, while wielding the avatars of nine elite soldiers, referred to collectively as "Specialists": infantry grunt Donnie "Ruin" Walsh; scoutswoman Alessandra "Outrider" Castillo; engineer David "Prophet" Wilkes; demolitions expert Erin "Battery" Baker; 54 Immortals enforcer He "Seraph" Zhen-Zhen; survivalist Tavo "Nomad" Rojas; specialized combat robot "Reaper"; assassin "Spectre"; and arsonist Krystof "Firebreak" Hejek.

To do so, Maxis instructs his friend Doctor Edward Richtofen to retrieve the Kronorium, an ancient book detailing the events of every universe and dimension, which contains the location of the Key.

The crew then teleports to another fractured timeline and lands in a war-torn Stalingrad in 1945, where the Soviet Union has stolen Group 935's technology to create their own giant robots and mechanical soldiers, while Nazi Germany is aided by ancient dragons resurrected and bred by Division 9.

As the crew traverses across the city, they are forced to help Sophia, Maxis' former assistant who has been transformed into a machine, to initiate the Ascension Protocol, allowing her to gain knowledge of interdimensional travel.

The group returns to Agartha and arrives in "The House", a place built by Monty to prevent all forces of evil from infecting it, ensuring the safety of Samantha and the crew's cleansed souls, who have been given child-like physical forms.

In a moment, the four begin to fade away, then reappear in ancient medieval times, where they would be remembered as "Primis", heroes who aided the Keepers in sealing away the Apothicons in the Great War, effectively "completing the cycle" of the universe.

[21] According to gaming journalist Jason Schreier, Call of Duty: Black Ops III was initially intended to include an open-world campaign, but was scrapped during development, resulting in a period of crunch for employees.

[26] Additionally, both Wall, Tuey and Treyarch's Sound Designer Kevin Sherwood contributed to the composition of the Zombies mode's soundtrack, including several new songs performed by Elena Siegman and Malukah for each of the maps.

[32] Seize Glory is an official live action trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 that was directed by Wayne McClammy and starring Michael B. Jordan, Cara Delevingne and Marshawn Lynch.

Then, Marshawn Lynch, a star running back in the National Football League, fully geared with weapons and armor slides in, ready to take out a whole room of zombies.

[38] Actors Michael B. Jordan and Cara Delevingne were chosen to star in the trailer as both were known by Activision to be fans of the Call of Duty series.

[43] The story takes place several years prior to the main events of the game, and stars Jacob Hendricks and John Taylor along with their black ops squadmates in an attempt to stop a Russian terrorist plot.

The story features the return of the TranZit team: Abigail "Misty" Briarton, Marlton Johnson, Russman and Samuel Stuhlinger, previously the main protagonists of Call of Duty: Black Ops II, as they embark on a search for an artifact known as the Kronorium, while discovering the truth behind Edward Richtofen's reappearance.

The miniseries, also published by Dark Horse, features Justin Jordan as the writer and Jonathan Wayshak as the main artist, while Simon Bisley draws the cover art of each issue.

It is a remake of the Call of Duty: World at War map "Der Riese", and features the original characters, Dempsey, Nikolai, Takeo, and Richtofen.

A fifth and final map pack, Zombies Chronicles, contains remastered versions of 8 Zombies maps from previous games: "Nacht Der Untoten", "Verrückt", and "Shi no Numa" from World at War, "Kino Der Toten", "Ascension", "Shangri-La", and "Moon" from Black Ops, and "Origins" from Black Ops II, and is not included in the season pass of the game.

[52][53][55] GameSpot awarded it a score of 7 out of 10, saying, "Black Ops III doesn't offer anything remarkable to the series, but does just enough to maintain the Call of Duty status quo.

"[62] IGN awarded it a score of 9.2 out of 10, saying "With fun 4-player co-op, new powers, and a fleshed out Zombies mode, Black Ops 3 is the biggest Call of Duty game yet.

"[60] Stuart Andrews of Trusted Reviews criticized the setting and narrative, writing "Black Ops 3 is a solid installment that will please the series' hardcore fans, but it's not a mainstream crowd-pleaser in the way that last year's Advanced Warfare was", and unfavorably compared it to its predecessors, disparaging that it "focuses entirely on the sci-fi stuff, loses most of its conspiracy theory trappings and brings augmented super-soldiers in.