When Sledgehammer Games and Activison announced that the studio that helped make Modern Warfare 3 happen would be joining the Call of Duty annual game rotation, I thought immediately that their 3rd person concept and franchise spin off would be shelved or completely dead.
Glen Shofield and Sledgehammer Games were brought on to supposedly create a third person action game in the Call of Duty franchise. I got really excited with this notion as some of the guys at Sledgehammer made Dead Space which is obviously one of the best third person shooters / survival games of the previous generation.
Of course this dream is now likely on ice as Sledgehammer will be making annual sequels as part of the three studio, three year development cycle announced by Activision. This means of course Sledgehammer will be making first person shooters as that is the series bread and butter and I cannot see Activision risking an annual entry into their flagship series that is not a first person game.
The studio was hard at work at the third person prototype when the team was pulled off to help Infinity Ward finish Modern Warfare 3 after the studio implosion in 2009. Modern Warfare 3 of course released and was a good game to finish off the Modern Warfare storyline.
So what will Sledgehammer’s Call of Duty game be? We are pretty sure it won’t be a third person space warfare game and likely be a new sub-franchise after Modern Warfare, Black Ops and now Ghosts. Sledgehammer needs their own brand but the question is, what will it be?
I would personally like to see a futuristic Call of Duty game along the lines of Mass Effect or Dead Space, even if it were to be a first person shooter but at least it would be different enough to breathe some fresh air into the series. Alternatively, I could play another World War II shooter now that tech has advanced and the series took a long enough break but you can guess these chances being slim as well.
This summer at E3 we will likely find out just what this Call of Duty game is since Sledgehammer will have its turn this year at a next-gen Call of Duty game that has been in the works for a while.
