You only need to look at the wildly different responses to the new Call of Duty and Battlefield games to see that one is – at least on the surface – more popular than the other.
Battlefield 1’s WWI setting was met with massive acclaim, while Infinite Warfare’s sci-fi trappings left many feeling cold.
To be honest, you even get the idea that publisher Activision aren’t that confident in the game – especially considering they announced a remaster of the popular Modern Warfare to be bundled with the game.
With that in mind, it’s clear the Call of Duty franchise needs to shake things up and listen to what fans are saying. While there’s far more that can make or break a game than the time and place that it’s set, it does have a big influence of FPS titles.
As you probably know, Activision releases COD games annually, and has a three year development cycle, so that multiple devs are working on different games at different times.
2017 should see Sledgehammer Games (who last worked on Advanced Warfare) return to the franchise, so what are they working on?
Bear in mind that everything that follows is speculation, but grounded in fact and not completely out of the realms of possibility.
Now, Sledgehammer Games were at one point actually working on a title called Call of Duty: Fog of War – a third-person shooter with a Vietnam setting.
This game was ultimately canned for a number of reasons, but could the team feasibly come back to Vietnam for 2017’s instalment?
Without knowing the extent of research and work put into bringing that particular game to life, it’s hard to say. But if there was a reasonable amount of groundwork already there, and a clear indication from the fans that they’re sick of visiting the future, then it’s a safe bet.
What’s more, I can’t imagine they’d do WWII (as it’s been done to death), and the new Battlefield has WWI sewn up – there aren’t many more places the franchise can go without repeating itself – though I imagine they’d drop the third-person approach.
Again, this is nothing more than a little light speculation – but if I were a betting man, I’d say there’s a strong chance this could happen.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.