After a journey into a moderately distant future in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, with its lukewarm (at best) reception, it was probably time for Activision to re-evaluate where they are going with the franchise. The result of this is Call of Duty: WWII, bringing the series back to where it started out 14 years ago.
Let’s take a look where this year’s installment of the venerable franchise will take us.
The Big Red One
Since a good part of marketing for each Call of Duty game is its single-player story campaign, it comes as no surprise, that CoD:WWII comes with one as well. Unlike last year’s Battlefield 1 anthology campaign, Sledgehammer Games is treating us to a character-driven, focused story about the American involvement in World War II in the European theater.
The protagonist of CoD:WW2 is Ronald Daniels, nicknamed “Red”, a freshly minted private, assigned to the 1st Infantry Division (a famous company celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year) in 1944. The entire story is going to be focused on the internal dynamics of the squad Red is a part of, comprised of three more soldiers, all more experienced and jaded, than Daniels.
The campaign, for the first time over a decade in mainstream gaming, will let the players play through the D-Day strike on Omaha. It may well be a first time many of the younger gamers are going to experience what was a staple of World War II shooters released near the turn of centuries.
In addition to the D-Day, we’ll also support the French resistance, infiltrate German installations, all in order to finally make our way to Berlin.
As an interesting departure from modern standards, the single-player campaign is going to ditch magically regenerating health in favour of med-kits, like in the old days. Don’t worry, in the multiplayer mode your mutant healing factor is going to work just fine.
War Mode
While CoD retains all the staple game modes we’ve learned to expect from online shooters, such as Team Deathmatch, Free-for-All, or the indispensable Capture-the-Flag, it’s the War Mode that’s likely to truly stand out from others.
The War Mode, despite its rather unimaginative and straightforward name, is going to be a narrative-driven multi-stage operation. It’s a defend-attack-based mode, with each stage presenting a new strategic objective to capture, defend, or a payload to protect. In the latter case, such a payload may be a tank, which can later double as a defensive turret.
The one map revealed so far is call Operation Breakout, and it involves, among others, a real-time construction of a bridge, which can progress if you maintain control of a specific area. Each of War Mode’s locations are going to be designed for it specifically, avoiding the risky generality which would result from recycling TD or CtF locations for the purposes.
More grounded
With the jetpacks and the futuristic setting gone, it’s time to go back to the old and tested boots to the ground approach.
The changes made towards that direction include movement not only bereft of the verticality and advanced manoeuvres, but also made generally slower in a bid to impart a sense of weight and a modicum of realism to the entire experience. It remains to be seen how popular it will turn out to be among the CoD playerbase, but a change of pace after multiple twitchy shooters probably isn’t a bad idea.
Similarly the relations between Daniels and his squad mates are likely to be more believable, albeit it’s still smart to expect a decent serving of military blockbuster clichés.
Zombies
Although is clashes thematically with the previous paragraph, we can’t not mention that the upcoming CoD, like many CoDs before it, is going to have cooperative zombies mode. It was a given, really. With a World War II setup and the rich trope of Nazi forces meddling with powers beyond the grave and reality, seeing the zombies mode announcement was no surprise at all. Which doesn’t change the fact, that, as always, it is welcome. Judging by the trailer, the atmosphere may abandon the cheesy and cheeky vibe of previous editions and go for more of a survival horror atmosphere.
The end
The new CoD is apparently going to take some risks which may not appeal to the current player-base, and it feel strangely in line with the decision made by Ubisoft regarding the new Assassin’s Creed: can’t go further into the future? Let’s go way back into the past. It’s not necessarily bad, so let’s hope the execution is good, the story campaign doesn’t fall flat, and the multiplayer, although slower, remains exciting.
Call of Duty: WWII launches on November 3 this year, leaving just about two weeks to get a pre-order before it’s too late, if you like having your games ready to go the moment they are unlocked in your distribution platform.