Cliff Bleszinski Talks About the "Soulless" Development of Call of Duty

Cliff Bleszinski is the lead developer for the upcoming shooter, exclusive for the Xbox 360, Gears of War 2. The sequel to one of the most popular titles for Microsoft's console, this new game is guaranteed to have big sales. Both titles have been developed by Epic Games, more specifically by the same team, led by Cliff Bleszinki, who recently spoke with Develop magazine and expressed his thoughts on the development cycle of the Call of Duty franchise, which he called "soulless."

"Sometimes I feel a franchise loses something when it's shifted off to another shop," Bleszinski said. "You get the primary studio that really understands about the franchise, and sometimes the other studio that takes it over can do well, but there's something lost in translation, like the game's soul has gone."

He is referring to the fact that the franchise is now shared by two separate studios. On the one hand we have its creator, Infinity Ward, which was behind the series up until now, with its CoD 4: Modern Warfare title being very popular. On the other hand, there’s Treyarch Studios, which is currently developing CoD: World at War.

Bleszinski pointed out that shifting a franchise like that definitely has repercussions on the finished product. The second studio just can't comprehend the ideas around the title, no matter how hard it tried. But in the end, for the consumer it's probably best that this "leapfrog" strategy is employed. Actually, this way both worlds get to benefit from it: the publishers get their profit by releasing games every year and the consumers get, at least every two years, decent games made by the original developer. 

This doesn't mean that the Treyarch Studios will develop a low quality game, but most of the reviewers will undoubtebly compare it to the great game that was Call of Duty 4, and you can't really do that with a shooter based in modern times and one that is based in the well known World War II.