Call of Duty zou third-person gaan bij Sledgehammer Games

Ontwikkelaar Sledgehammer Games, die momenteel Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare in de maak heeft, had oorspronkelijk een heel ander idee voor de nieuwe Call of Duty. Het bedrijf had namelijk al acht maanden een third-person shooter in ontwikkeling die zich in Vietnam af zou gaan spelen.

Our perspective on this was that we were given a great opportunity to bring Call of Duty to a new genre. We had a lot of experience and a team built to deliver quality like we did with previous games. We had spent six or eight months on it, and were really getting into the story. We had some really cool mechanics. We had a big moment that I would love to get into a game someday, but it’s not something we could do in first-person.

Glen Schofield, mede-oprichter van Sledgehammer, zegt dat het tijd was om volledig zelf iets op te zetten. Het zou dan ook niets te maken hebben met een first-person shooter, want door de ervaring van de Dead Space-titels bij Visceral Games wilden ze hiermee op verder borduren, aldus Glen Schofield en Michael Condrey.

De mannen achter Sledgehammer deden destijds veel onderzoek naar de gebeurtenissen omtrent de Vietnamoorlog, wat het thema van de third-person shooter zou gaan worden. Volgens uitlatingen van Schofield zouden we afreizen naar Laos en Cambodja om daar te strijden in onder andere donkere tunnels, om zo het Dead Space-gevoel terug te laten keren. Echter, acht maanden ontwikkeltijd later en vijftien minuten speelbare content verder, kwam er contact met Activision.

Everyone thought that war was in Vietnam, right? It was Cambodia and Laos, too. We did a lot of research on that war, a hidden war, and there were thousands of miles of underground tunnels. We had the tunnels, and we were definitely going for some Dead Space moments. It was going to be a fresh take on war, that’s for sure.

Activision wilde dat Schofield, Condrey en de rest van Sledgehammer mee ging helpen aan Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Die vraag ging rond tijdens de periode dat Vince Zampella en Jason West, de oorspronkelijke oprichters van Infinity Ward, die studio verlieten. Echter, het was voor Sledgehammer niet gemakkelijk de keuze te maken mee te helpen, gezien de shooter rondom de Vietnamoorlog.

From day one, we started Sledgehammer Games to deliver our game. Not to deliver somebody else’s game or co-develop. We had a set vision for what we wanted Sledgehammer Games to become, and neither Glen nor I were going to make that decision on our own. We wanted it to be an all-in studio decision. The first reaction was, ‘Wow…we have our game here. We have this game. Are we willing to give up our pursuit of that to join with another studio?

It took a few days for the whole studio to come together and be ready to commit. Once that happened, we were off like race horses. It was part of our culture that we were all gonna make that decision together. We would have loved to make that [third-person] game. It was in a space that we enjoyed, but how does anything compare to the first-person blockbuster release of 2011?

Na de ontwikkeling van Modern Warfare 3 werd mocht Sledgehammer Games een volledig eigen project gaan opzetten binnen de Call of Duty-wereld. We weten inmiddels welke keuze Schofield en Condrey hebben gemaakt en daaruit is Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare ontstaan, die op 4 november verschijnt voor de PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 en pc.