Weekend Reading: Call of Duty Is Running Out of History

The first Call of Duty impressed in the way it approached World War II. It had a grandeur and a surge of feelings which were scarce in video gaming at the moment. It was also sober about the horrors of war, which were depicted in a more lively manner than ever before. It was a game which took a historical period loaded with meanings and managed to translate the events into an experience which resonated with gamers.

Call of Duty 2 and 3 were solid in their own right but the series made another great leap with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which took the action out of the most video game friendly conflict ever and into, as the name says, contemporary times, although the plot fictional and only limited inspiration was taken from the socio political situation of the moment.

Modern Warfare 2 took this concept further but the plot was so out of this world and some of the gameplay sequences were so unconnected that some felt the player was less than its predecessor.

And now Call of Duty: Black Ops, developed by Treyarch, is getting more positive reviews by jumping to yet another historical setting, the Cold War, and by making the plot more grounded and the levels more focused.

But the game seems to be quickly running out of historical space to cover, something pretty similar to what is happening to the Total War series.

Total War has solved the problem by picking the best bits for all out warfare and revisiting them, like they plan to do with Japan in Shogun 2: Total War.

So the rumor which came out recently out of a Gamasutra story citing developer resources that are talking about Marines in space as the main concept for the next Call of Duty seem closer to truth when the history of the series is considered.

So expect to see at least another Cold War set game bearing the Call of Duty label soon, maybe from Sledgehammer Games, and then prepare for the big jump into space.