14 DAY TRIAL // It must be nice to be a videogame publisher, looking down on the exciting games your developers are making and deciding what bits of information to release to the public so that they thirst and crave for more and more news on a particular project. Important publishers are especially good at offering up snippets of info while keeping the big picture hidden.
Take for example Activision Blizzard, which held its Analyst Day yesterday and delivered a bunch of press releases related to their upcoming projects and the general direction of the company. One of the press releases makes reference to Call of Duty and to Infinity Ward, so I was naturally interested.
For those who aren't up to speed, Infinity Ward are the guys that developed last year's resounding success Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The game overwhelmed players with its adrenaline generating action, impressive level design and a story which is unique in comparison to what shooters usually offer. Personally, I still think fondly of my experience in the level called “All Ghillied Up”.
Activision is basically confirming that the next game in the Call of Duty series will be developed by Infinity Ward, which we already suspected seeing how the other developer working on the franchise, Treyarch, just wrapped up development on Call of Duty: World at War. But Activision has not offered up any information regarding the setting of the game or the narrative that it would contain. Well, we'd better start guessing.
Chances are that the game will be set in modern times, because the World War II background seems so used up and there are no good stories left to tell about it. As gamers, we've seen Berlin stormed a few times, we've seen Stalingrad burned and we’ve landed in Normandy, so the basic blueprint of Call of Duty 4, that of a strong narrative set in the modern world, will probably be used again. Other than that, I just hope that Infinity Ward manages to create an experience as engrossing as that of its previous game.