You can tell that Sledgehammer Games is excited about their take on Call of Duty. At E3, we were treated to a video featuring Glen Schofield as excited as a car salesman talking to us about the new game. He was unscripted, and it felt like he had just walked out of a pep rally after shouting “you can do this!” and “you guys are killing it!” to his team. At least, that’s what I imagined. He could have sold me shoe polish for socks that day and I would have gobbled it up.
There’s a reason that his enthusiasm is infectious, though. It didn’t appear so when his message appeared on the screen, but by the time our preview was over I was thoroughly excited for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. It’s the future of the series, in more ways than one.
I once learned that for something to be truly exciting, it needs to be both cool and bad ass. Explosions help, nice designs help, but a certain magic needs to be there to achieve both. It’s actually kind of rare. Advanced Warfare achieves this by embracing the far future setting, and then blowing up our eyeballs.
Our preview began with the cool.
Featuring an in-engine introduction by one of the game’s characters that includes far too much talking, my focus immediately centers on his pupils. As the lights brighten up the scene, his eyes dilate. A bead of sweat traces down the side of his forhead. A skin discoloration is hidden off to the side of his brow. But I see it all. It’s a level of interesting detail that trumps just seeing technology, mechs, and ships hover across a battlefield — though there is plenty of that as well. But that eye is enough to make me lean in closer to the giant screen.
As for the rest of the cool? The futuristic setting provides artistic license to create new weapons and ammo gauges (no on the gun, or floating just off to the side of it with a slight transparency). This leads to a minimized HUD, which in turn allows us to see more of the environment and the setting.
The future is in more than just HUD elements and guns, it’s in everything, and it’s exemplified best during the “Collapse” mission that we watch unfold. In it, I notice freeway signs made from glowing plexiglass, streets made from a hybrid cement mixture and bolted together, and car tires with functional-looking tread for said street. Even the cars on the road have an “advanced” sheen on them, as vehicles based on Smart Cars, F150s, MKZs and Acuras all look like their inspiration, but are clearly meant to feel like concept vehicles come to reality.
But it all looks great, even if it’s a bit overkill. I can value and appreciate the attention to detail in changing everthing, as it can only come from the three years that meticulous eyes poured over it.
Now on to the bad ass.
There are explosions. A LOT OF EXPLOSIONS. But that’s quite alright; In the future explosions will be a part of life, right? The smoke is well-rendered, and the fire looks extremely realistic. Massive structures topple around the map, cars flip over, and a bridge that we cross begins to crumble below us. It’s the kind of big screen action that Call of Duty is known for, but Sledgehammer take an extra step to squeeze out a few more milimeters of detail.
I notice it in an unusual place, too: the game’s hand grenades. In the “Induction” mission we view, Mitchell (our POV character) holds up a grenade mid-battle. We see his hand, his fingers, wrapped around the grenade in front of us. As he determines which kind of grenade he’d like to use — we see “frag”, “smoke” and “smart” listed — we see his thumb rotate a dial on the bomb, with the description listed on its surface. As “smart” is selected and the grenade is thrown, it seeks out the nearest enemy soldiers and explodes on them. I already imagine what this means to players, as it could open up a huge amount of battle options in multiplayer combat.
Further into the battle, we see waves of drones surround us like a swarm of bees. We see one-way energy shields that block incoming fire but still let us shoot out. We see individual armor suits. We see a giant spider-tank walk over us as we duck behind wreckage. And it’s all happening as missiles scream past us, comrades are blown backward, and cars crash into posts. There are so many things happening around us that it’s clear “next gen” was invented for eye candy, and Advanced Warfare is putting that to the test.
The devs seem to have taken everything we know as “modern warfare” — every detail, every aspect of an environment, every thing — thrown it onto a canvas, and Bob Ross’ed it with a giant futuristic paint brush. It’s a cyborg Bob Ross, probably.
I haven’t been this excited for a Call of Duty in a long time. It seems like Sledgehammer Games had fun creating the game, and a long leash to do what they wanted. It’s cliche to say it, but they seem to take everything to an eleven, which is fitting because this is the eleventh main line game in the series.
With all of this going for it, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare looks like it may definitely be both cool and bad ass.
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