Activision isn't known for going cheap on their games, look at Destiny's 500 million price tag for proof of that, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is no exception to the rule. Going with a longer time frame and more innovations than we've seen from Call of Duty in a long, long time, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3's zombie mode is coming with a full campaign from developer Treyarch who began the series tradition.
They are calling the co-op set zombie campaign Shadows of Evil, and while the rest of the Call of Duty franchise is going more and more into the future, Shadows of Evil takes us back to the 1940s with a noir inspired world for you to explore with your fellow players. The voice talent for Shadows of Evil is a hefty list, with the four main characters shown being voiced by Jeff Goldblum, Heather Graham, Neal McDonough, and Ron Pearlman.
The prologue trailer here does a good job of establishing some of the world and characters that set it up—tone and atmosphere are incredibly important to nailing the film-noir aspect they are going for. Notably as well, this is the only campaign version that the Playstation 3, and XBox 360 versions will have, as the main campaign is being excluded for performance reasons.
The four characters who you meet in the trailer are given somewhat archetype-based titles on the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 website: the Femme Fatal, The Magician, The Cop, and The Boxer, each of whom have a bit of their own backstories that you can see on their website. Additionally, there will be an XP-Based progression system.
Here is the trailer where you can see the characters in the fictional Morg City:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nusN4tZYoo Quick Take
They appear to have nailed the tone in the trailer at least, so it will be interesting to see if they continue there. If so, it could be some of the best storytelling a Call of Duty game has done, which while not the highest bar is still something. One thing not mentioned and might be interesting is if the different characters will have their own different "class" abilities based on which one you are as that type of class based specials is seen in the multiplayer now and would help further differentiate each of the characters to make it play more interestingly. While I'm not a shooter player, it is interesting to see where Treyarch is going with Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.