The leaks have been generating plenty of chatter, and now word appears to be leaking out of Activision and Sledgehammer HQ about the next Call Of Duty.
Activision said in February that it was making changes to win back its fanbase. A slide shown during a recent investors presentation suggested the publisher was taking Call Of Duty, “back to its roots”.
That could only mean World War II, which was the setting of the first three Call Of Duty games.
New leaked images suggested that could very well be the case.
A number of reports have since surfaced, with both Gamespot and Eurogamer claiming to have insider knowledge that the series is in fact heading back to where it all began, and that it will actually be called Call Of Duty: WW2, just as the leaked images suggested.
Activision hasn’t responded to the leaks or reports, but just as was the case with last year’s Modern Warfare Remastered leaks, this all appears to fall in line with the publisher’s own rhetoric.
Earlier this year, the publisher praised the quality of both Infinite Warfare and its bundled-in Modern Warfare Remastered, but also it admitted the 2017 entry “wasn’t the success” it had hoped it would be.
“Sales underperformed our expectations, and it’s clear that for a portion of our audience, the space setting just didn’t resonate,” Activision chief operating officer, Thomas Tippl, said during Activision’s Q4 2016 earnings summary. “We had a passionate experienced studio deeply committed to this direction, and despite the risks we saw, we believe it is important to consider the passions of our game teams in deciding what content to create.”
“While [Infinite Warfare] wasn’t the success we planned,” Tipple continued, “it allows us to protect a core tenets of our culture … empowering our talented teams to have the chance to pursue opportunities that they are passionate about.”
Setting the game in that era certainly doesn’t seem that outrageous an idea: EA and DICE brought Battlefield 1 to a relatively untouched era in WWI, and there’s been a loud cry from gamers for shooters to ditch the saturated futuristic setting for something more realistic and historically relevant.
More to the point, both Activision and Call Of Duty 2017 developer, Sledgehammer Games, have shown interest in the WWII setting.
In 2014, studio head Michael Condrey said in an interview with Gamespot that “a next generation game with the latest production values and robustness in a World War II setting like Band of Brothers would be amazing.”
Activision Publishing CEO, Eric Hirshberg, has also expressed interest in bringing the franchise back to that era.
