Details About Sledeghammer's Canceled Third-Person Call of Duty
We’ve known a little about the third-person Call of Duty project that Sledgehammer was working on before it switched to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but Sledgehammer studio heads Michael Condry and Glen Schofield recently shared more comprehensive details about what might have been.
The studio spent six to eight months on the game, which was set during the Vietnam war but took place in another country embroiled in the conflict, Cambodia. The third-person mechanics were important to the design of the game, and let Sledgehammer create gameplay moments that would not have worked in first-person.
“We had the underground tunnels,” Schofield says. “We were definitely getting some Dead Space (Sledgehammer’s earlier series) moments. I don’t mean that from sci-fi, I mean that was a war that was scary for the [American soldiers]. They didn’t know if in the jungle there was a booby trap, or what was in those tunnels. And there were thousands of miles of tunnel underground. It was a hidden war, right? Everybody thought the war was in Vietnam, but it was in Cambodia and Laos. So we were telling a cool story. “
Only about 10 to 15 minutes of playable content was created, but that was enough to get Activision’s attention when it was looking for help after Vince Zampella, Jason West, and other Infinity Ward talent left the company.
“Let’s be frank, Infinity Ward was going through some transition,” Condrey says. “We were growing with a triple-A team here, and the chance to work on the biggest game at that time and this fiction and space was super exciting for us. We would’ve loved to have made [the third-person Call of Duty]. It was in a space that we enjoyed, but how does anything compare to the first-person blockbuster release of 2011?”
So, will the company ever return to the shelved project? Maybe. Schofield said that after further research the company discovered that the negative perceptions of America’s role in the Vietnam war would make it a tough sell internationally. But even so, he said, if they ever bring back the third-person Call of Duty concept he’d go back to the shelved project.
[Source: Game Informer]