Treyarch says future Call of Duty games may still be set in the Second World War, as there are still a lot of “untold stories” the series can explore.
Treyarch, which has split development duties on the various Call of Duty games with Infinity Ward, elected to return to the Second World War for Call of Duty: World at War, despite the runaway success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the first game in the series to be set in the modern day. Call of Duty 4 was a major hit, punching out over ten million copies and powering Activision to the top of the publisher rankings.
“I can’t say that there won’t ever be a WWII Call of Duty game again, but we’re glad we were able to end the war and we’re glad we’re going to support the title with lots of downloadable content,” Senior Producer Noah Heller said in an interview with CVG. “It’s gratifying that we’re able to show the close for once, rather than the opening. The war is over and both campaigns have a very clear ending.”
“If we had time we might have shown the end of the war from many different country’s perspectives, and maybe that’s a story still untold,” he continued. “But in the meantime people definitely haven’t seen the final charge of the Red Army, people haven’t seen what the fighting was like in Okinawa and I think it’s definitely important to show those stories from a polished perspective rather than show some of the mopping up elsewhere in the world.”
I don’t necessarily want to contradict a Senior Producer, but I don’t think I can agree with this sentiment. World War Two is a fantastic game setting but eventually a point is reached where all the polish in the world can’t hide the fact that you’re about to plug your 27-bazillionth kraut. The only Second World War shooters I’ve ever replayed are the Wolfenstein games, and while I’m doubtless in a minority as far as that goes I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Technology may advance but you can only go through so many iterations of D-Day or Stalingrad before you realize you’ve done this all before.
