By no means-before-seen footage of an in the end canceled Call of Duty sport has emerged on-line, offering a glimpse at what was deliberate, at one stage a minimum of, to be Call of Duty’s first main bounce into sci-fi and outer area. Footage from a “Future Warfare” sport codenamed NXI was posted on-line just lately.
Brian Brilliant, a online game business veteran who labored on the sport, confirmed NX1 was made after Infinity Ward “imploded,” so that might have been round 2010. Neversoft, beforehand identified for its Tony Hawk video games, was making this sport after pivoting from its work on the Guitar Hero sequence. The purpose, Brilliant mentioned, was to make a “futuristic Call of Duty sport.”
In the leaked marketing campaign footage, we see a mission to the moon. The footage emerged from a take a look at, Brilliant recommended. “This mission was on the moon, some experiments with low g and was actually in regards to the staff studying the engine,” he mentioned. “We had been making GH video games on our THPS engine prior.”
Brilliant was the multiplayer lead on Future Warfare. He mentioned this sport would have been “instead of” Call of Duty: Ghosts, which launched in 2013 from Infinity Ward.
“We had 2-3 marketing campaign missions, and a bunch of MP work accomplished (I used to be MP lead on this) earlier than cancellation,” Brilliant mentioned. “One factor we actually favored in MP was the primary Escort mode in COD. There’s footage on the market on this.”
The Escort mode, Bright said, concerned groups pushing an unmanned floor automobile (UGV) by way of a map’s checkpoints. Presumably one aspect tried to assault it whereas the opposite tried to destroy it. The UGV had a trophy system hooked up to it to robotically destroy close by explosives.
Work-in-progress footage of NX1’s multiplayer mode has leaked, too, displaying futuristic weapons in motion. As Brilliant mentioned, multiplayer was not finished–and the sport was in the end canceled–which helps clarify why the footage doesn’t appear like a sport that is prepared for launch.
In 2010, it got here to mild that Activision registered domains for Call of Duty: Future Warfare, in addition to Area Warfare, Secret Warfare, and Superior Warfare. Of these, solely Superior Warfare (2014) would go to turn out to be an actual product.
Wanting forward, Activision has Call of Duty’s product roadmap outlined by way of 2027. The corporate was just lately acquired by Microsoft, which just lately laid off 1,900 individuals inside the Xbox gaming division. Call of Duty builders around the globe had been amongst these impacted.