Over this past weekend, Sledgehammer Games – co-developers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – decided to be jerks and reveal their latest game, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. They posted up a trailer… but I immediately ignored it and went back to enjoying grocery store wine and burgers. I’m a man of simple tastes.
But let me be perfectly clear here: even if I weren’t enjoying delicious wine and burgers, I normally wouldn’t have given another Call of Duty game much thought. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that they’re all basically the same. Call of Duty is the Fifa Soccer of the FPS world. The only reason I bothered watching was because I heard that Kevin Spacey was the voice of one of the characters, and I wanted to see if the performance would be anything like House of Cards, ie: completely awful.
Here’s said trailer…
So what immediately struck me about this was that I didn’t hate it. In fact, I was actually getting a bit hard watching it. It just looked… difference. And given that I have a passion bordering on obsession for new technologies and gadgets, well, let’s just say I’m willing to give this one a chance.
Kevin Spacey’s performance was about what I expected, but I really can’t blame the man. I think he’s a wonderful, talented actor, but if someone says “Make this… make this like House of Cards”, then I guess there’s not much a man can do. If we’re lucky, they’ll round things out by having him play a lovable AI as well. Hey, it would fit the universe they’ve created!
The Future of Warfare… and Pretty Screenshots
The Call of Duty franchise has always drawn from real life for inspiration. They’ve thrown in a whole lot of extra explosions for good measure, but by and large what they portray could potentially, maybe, possibly… be how combat actually goes down.
But what happens when you try and predict the future? Well, for Sledgehammer Games, this is what it looks like.
You’re quickly going to notice that exoskeletons are a common theme here, and for good reason: DARPA is already experimenting with them, and the early results are impressive. I believe that we’ll be seeing these on the battlefield long before 2054 when Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare takes place.
This looks like a hoverbike, and while I think it’s very cool, I’m less convinced we’ll see this one any time soon – at least with a design like this. No, I think it’s more likely that we’ll see something like this instead.
The back of the exoskeleton reminds me of downhill mountain biking armor we see today. Perhaps that’s where they’ve drawn inspiration?
Another powered exoskeleton, and again, this looks both plausible and pretty awesome as well. But I’m going to stop narrating here and let you enjoy the rest of the screenshots, as I believe I’ve made my point.
After the disaster that was Battlefield 4, I’m excited to see a shooter that looks both fun and even inspiring. I believe that the direction Sledgehammer chose for Advanced Warfare is pretty great, and with a little luck, they’ll have made a compelling game to back it.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is arriving November 2014 for all major platforms. I’ll no doubt be covering it in greater detail over the next few months and details emerge.
Looks good, I’ll play it for sure. I like games that run on rails; less stratagy and more guns’n’splosions!