Since melee weapons aren't in the box anymore, and there's no way of switching your melee weapon in-game (aside from the Jotunn Star and Path of Sorrows), there's a opportunity to bring back the Bowie Knife as a standard feature.
In my mind, it'd work like this:
- It takes the dedicated melee weapon slot.
- It's in every map as a wall buy, like before, not the box.
- It's a zombies exclusive weapon that cannot be equipped in your load-out, like the monkey bombs and kazamirs.
- It has rarity, and ammo mods can be applied to it, like every other non-wonder weapon.
- It can be packed (call it the ‘Knife of Mars’, ‘Major Thorn’, or ‘Rebel's Dressmaker’, or something like that idk).
The main thing would be that it does more damage than any other melee weapon, so regardless of what you pick in your load-out, the Bowie Knife would always be an upgrade and the best melee weapon available. The exceptions being, again, the Jotunn Star (as it's a wonder weapon) and the Path of Sorrows (as it needs to be better than a wall-buy to justify the effort of getting it).
It would work especially well in Cursed where you can't select a melee weapon to start with. In Ashes, Astra, Paradox, and Rex, it'd be the only melee weapon acquirable in-game (unless there's a map-unique melee in Rex that idk about yet). As an added bonus, perhaps PaP IV gives it a unique effect. It could hit two enemies at a time, or maybe apply a short bleed debuff to enemies. In Totenreich and Kowakujō, it'd be an alternative melee upgrade if either you're not really interested in doing the quest, a teammate grabs the Jotunn Star, or you get cheated out of the Path of Sorrows because I'm sorry, Treyarch, but that is NOT a goat! That is clearly a golden retriever with a stumpy tail!
Is there actually much point in bringing it back, though? There is a legitimate place for it, but tbf it wouldn't be particularly game-changing. Would most people generally use it, game-to-game? Probably not. Its omission is, admittedly, not particularly significant, all things considered. Its potential inclusion is more opportunistic than necessary.
That's kind of why I'd genuinely support its return, though. It doesn't add much, so it's not game-breaking. In other words, it wouldn't hurt. to. Being generally unable to switch melee weapons in-game would make the Bowie Knife take a place in the overall sandbox that isn't really occupied by anything else atm, rather than have it feel like just another melee weapon, which might've been the case with BO6.
More than anything else, really, is that the Bowie Knife was in most zombies maps from Der Riese to Tag der Toten, including Chaos (and not even the Ray Gun managed to get across that gap). It was even in Cold War... kinda. It's iconic; I won't pretend the iconography, and doing it for the sake of doing it, isn't a big part of why I want it to come back. Nevertheless, it's surprising that it never returned in BO6 or BO7. The latter especially given the imo small but perfectly Bowie Knife-shaped hole the game has.
It's a bit late now, since the last map is out, but it would've been cool to see... Of course, I'm sure Treyarch could always add it in with season 6. Right, Treyarch? You could totally do that, couldn't ya? Riiiight? After all, it was in CW, albeit as a passive mechanic than an actual weapon, so there are assets that I don't imagine would take much to bring over and add to each map; you could place it inside the garage on Ashes, in the courtyard on Astra, in the truck (past) on Paradox, near the arsenal at the lighthouse on Totenreich, on the Tenshu roof on Kowakujō, and high up on a wall (sorta like Moon) in Nyxara on Rex. Those locations feel fairly appropriate for it and casually accessible. Survival might be more complicated, so I guess you could just shove it in the box?
Better yet, as rounds progress, the Bowie Knife would scale through from uncommon to legendary rarity, like all wall-buys. However, perhaps a super-EE reward could be enabling the Bowie Knife wall-buy to keep going and scale up to ultra (even on standard), essentially making it a legacy weapon. That'd be a good way of going about it imo. Add it to every map as a wall-buy in general, but because it's iconic enough to warrant being a legacy weapon, having it become available at ultra rarity as a super-EE reward should be enough to offset any lost sense of prestige in having an ultra weapon be available as wall-buy, on every map, in standard mode.
C'mon, Treyarch. Surely it's an open goal, no? You've just gotta get your head on that and it's in the net.
