Call of Duty has been somewhat stale as of late due to the fact that we keep getting modern/futuristic shooters each and every year now from the franchise. Now with rumors of the next game set in Vietnam I started to think about what could actually spice the franchise up even more than going back to Vietnam. I made mention of it during Episode 8 of my podcast Two Jersey Kids while we were on the subject of Call of Duty. But here is a basic idea for what I was thinking:

I am basically saying fuck it with the whole let the game make sense because it is a video game and more creative writers than me can figure out how to make it work. I think it would be sweet if the Call of Duty franchise went back to the revolutionary war/colonial era in history...however technology has grown at a rapid pace and both sides are using more modern type weapons used today...maybe an alternative timeline where the industrial revolution occurs earlier on in America's history. Again I'm not a writer as you can see by my rambling style of writing. I just think it would be really fun to fight the red coats with modern weapons, and take part in crucial historical battles adjusted for the new firepower between the two sides.

Let's just go for broke and just get ridiculous because sometimes video games don't need to make complete sense in our world they just have to be fun and make sense in the context of the story they are telling.

I would love to hear more crazy ideas!

I doubt they'll ever truly go off the rails with Call of Duty, but I really liked Advanced Warfare and how it was feasible but still future forward. I wanted COD to return to the more "war is hell" and heavy stuff, but Battlefield 1 is doing that from what I've played of the preview, so there's definitely room for things to get a bit bonkers.

That idea of time slips or something could be pretty interesting, and I'd like to see something like that Reddit post called Rome, sweet Rome - a group of marines is basically shifted back to Roman times - and could explore the sheer insanity of what that situation might be like for both sides - or something in the setting of 300 - invading Persians, when all of a sudden the Spartans get some new backup.

I'd also kind of like to see something like Demolition Man or a Judge Dredd style game. Now that I'm thinking of it The Raid style would be incredible too - just something that either has some intense chasing and feeling of tension and deadline - or that claustrophobia of being locked in one compound for the entirety of a game with no backup would be interesting.

It's all probably way too far out there honestly to make something like a full 6-10 hour campaign plus a compelling multiplayer mode - the biggest thing I wanted to see was some cool mech stuff and Titanfall has picked up that mantle, BF is going back to war is hell, and COD seems to be going near(ish) future war or maybe back to historical conflict (weird that they're bouncing back after Battlefield made that choice).

Call of Duty 1, and set it in WW2.

@joe_mccallister: All of those suggestions sound interesting! I would 100% be interested in playing those games. Oh it makes sense now why 300 Spartans were able to stand up against tens of thousands of Persians...they all had M4s!

Do the newer Call of Duties have any meaningful through-line in terms of story? I liked how MW1 through 3 had a story that you could generally follow, and returning characters. Is Infinity Ward following up at all on the story of Ghosts?

Based on the information I can find I don't think Infinite Warfare is following up on the Ghosts story line, i'm making this assumption based on the time period for the two games. Infinite war is considered to be in the "distant future" where Ghosts took place around 2017.

I skipped COD Ghosts when it came out so I'm not too familiar with the story line , but it seems like both games are dealing with space alliances so I wouldn't be surprised if there is some reference to Ghost. Honestly your guess is as good as mine on this.

Enough with sci-fi. I love how they go sci-fi and think they are doing something fresh when there are already a billion sci-fi shooters. Try again.

Love BF going back to a historical setting.

This is for multiplayer only.

Take Black Ops 3 (fuck yea movement!) or CoD2 (fuck yea slow paced gameplay!) as base.

Remove scorestreaks.

Focus on specialists abilities.

Rebalance the game so perks aren't needed.

Remove all bullshit.

Watch it as it all come down because people want their easy point and click Modern Warfare mechanics and gameplay. CoD is doomed if you want to make any real changes. That's fine since games like Titanfall, Counter Strike, Overwatch ect exist.

Street level call of duty, like a battlefield hardline but less bad and tone-deaf to the cultural going ons of the era. Rather than being about cops using excessive force on robbers, it would be more about morally grey dealings between various gangs or factions. This could be a present day kind of thing (sort of like an open world crime game but of course linear and with COD gameplay), or could be an historical Gangs of New York kind of deal. The idea would be everything would be a bit smaller scale. Less ammo, less militarized weapons, more personal story, differently paced multiplayer. Maybe multiplayer matches are built around having less ammunition and having smaller spaces.

Stop making them every year?

They don't. Every COD for a while now has had a three year development cycle.

So they're making 3 every year but only 1 comes out? Ok.

Anyway I don't think they need to spice CoD up. There's a certain demographic who want that game, and that's fine as there's a billion other fps for those who don't want it.

Its kind of anint broke enough

Yep, its basically an aint broke enough situation. The series has certain perceived expectations, COD has more in common with Fifa or Madden in many ways, imagine those games introduced a circular pitch or aliens... wait.. what if they did though.

@alexw00d: No, they don't make three every year. They have three studios, each making one every three years, but the development cycles are staggered in a way so that each studio gets three years to make their game. So yes, there is a call of duty every year, but each game has way more than one year to be made.

Also, I think we all know the real answer to this question: Bring back spec ops mode!

@jdizzlefoshizzle: I mean, yeah, I was being sarcastic. But technically they do make 3 a year, as in 3 CoD games are being made at once.

I would just go with an alternate reality.

- What if Europe suffered a second Black Plague in 1620 stopping all European colonization, what would a war in 1939 look like then?

- What if the Computer age happened in 1840 not 1940 (The Difference Engine story)?

- What if small-pox had been introduced to North America in 900 AD, so 600 years later the civilizations of the 'Americas' were strong, vibrant, and more than a match for Europeans?

- What if a British soldier in time travel experiment gone wrong arrived in 1750 with a SA80 assault rifles, field manuals and rucksack of mechanical history books) into James Watt (Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist) workshop. Using the books and samples Watt released a few minor inventions to become rich before creating his own 'whole self owned' company that makes assault rifles and ammunition to be sold to the British army. This is all in time for the Seven Year War, and THAT is where the CoD game picks up. Basically, the Brits with machine guns fighting the French who have muskets.

Everybody was complaining about how boring and stale the Modern Warfare style games were when Ghosts came out, saying they need to change something about the series because it was the same thing every year. Seven to eight years before that, everyone was complaining about how stale shooters were because everything was a WW2 shooter and something needs to change.

The problem is these games take three years to make so they are trying to predict the future. When IW started on Infinite Warfare, the only thing they heard was they couldn't make another modern era CoD. And as I recall, people weren't exactly clamoring for another WW2 shooter either. And yet already here we are with their reveal trailer just a couple months back revealing Infinite Warfare and it becomes the most disliked video in internet history partially because they tried to do exactly what the community was begging for just 2 1/2 years ago. In truth, with three studios running, basically each one has to stick to a certain era to try to appease the fickle fanbase who are becoming more and more tired of repeating trends. Each person has their preference and each game can only serve one of the three basic preferences.

It's hard to tell what Sledgehammer is doing as they seemed to view AW as a trilogy of games but maybe Activision decreed to them to scrap whatever the first year's worth of work was put into AW2 and instead build a modern or historical era shooter.

Honestly, if they changed enough for me to want to play them, they'd be alienating their core audience.

I want CoD 1-4 boots on the ground action, drastically toned down killstreaks, and weapons that are actually challenging to handle. I like the cosmetic supply drop stuff but no more dlc weapons from them. Vietnam or Korean war would be dope

more sriracha sauce.

Considering Blops3 did so well much better than Ghosts & AW and with COD having so much MTX, attachments, voice packs and crafting etc and a bunch of other crap I can't see them ever going back to basics as long as they continue to sell even though a loud minority wants to, it would be much easier just to remaster MW2 next year.

I think... The guns, there are too many of them. And there are too many dudes to shoot the guns at.

Set it in Australia with pepper spray weapons.

Do what every tired franchise does, set it in SPAAAAC--

Oh.

giant robots in bikinis that battle using slam poetry. then nukes happen and you have to fight Hitler using a bayonet dipped in the blood of Captain Price. you get a sick gun and then the game tells you war is hell.

multiplayer is just fy_snow and the only killsteak is summoning your giant robot bro to launch UAVs into the level, killing anyone on any team. this also destroys the map and everyone falls for 5 minutes. you can shoot each other while in the air. when you land you have to eat a nuke or the game will crash and nobody gets XP.

every gunshot sound effect is the level up riff, and in the inevitable sequel every weapon must be used akimbo.

zombie mode is typical shit but you have to use tank controls. between waves you have to do some Telltale stuff with rations and stupid NPCs. when you finish a match you hear this and then watch an unmarked bar fill up a few dozen times and it makes you feel very accomplished.

also it'll be called Call of Star: Wars of Titanwatch. the sequel will be call Max of Duty: Duty Duty Duty.

Hardcore nudity.

Make it an 8-bit MOBA with a CCG game built in. Then fill it with a bunch of memes and self-referential jokes. Also, they should add some kind of Twitch functionality. Lastly, add a photo/selfie mode.

Scale it up and add more variables. I'm not talking Battlefield scale but bring it up to maybe 36 players and add a few vehicles. Remember CoD 1 multiplayer with that expansion? That was some good shit.

Enemy variety? Different death animations? Bad guys that arent laughably cheesy supervillians? Or go the other way with it and not make the games so damn serious.

To be honest i'm fine with Call of Duty it is what it is but certain aspects feel dated (see above) The people who want grit in their shooters should probably play something less arcadey.

I really wish there would be a billion other shooters out there, or even half a billion ones, that would offer a linear single-player experience to go through, besides CoD campaigns. I can only really think of the new Doom and Wolfenstein from the last few years as games that didn't have any side-activities or open-world elements slapped to them.

I'm guessing that you'll likely enjoy the Titanfall 2 campaign. I'd wait for reviews to see how that area of the game turns out, but I expect good things if you enjoyed the campaigns in the first two Modern Warfare titles.

Yeah, already mentioned here that that I'm certainly interested, even if the multiplayer part is kinda whatever for me. I'd almost say the same for BF1, except that their trackrecord hasn't exactly been too amazing when it comes to them campaigns. Plus the WW1 setting isn't as appealing to me as sci-fi.

I guess Dishonored 2 is also a thing that's coming out in about a month. Not exactly completely linear and not a shooter in the same sense, but enough so. Plus I really enjoyed the world in the first game already, so that helps.

You could try Hard Reset

One word.

Hiatus

I'm not sure that they need to.

I mean, I loathe CoD. I hate it with every fiber of my being. I view it as being emblematic of the super-corporate, ultra-safe, money-grubbing, creativity-is-death attitude that plagues a lot of this industry. And yet I have to admit I respect it to a certain extent. The people who make CoD know who their audience is make a game those people want to play. I think that sets them apart from some other developers who are constantly chasing the white whale of "expanding their audience" and ending up making mediocre games that alienate the very audience that made them successful (looking at you BioWare).

That said, if they did want to take a risk, they could maybe use one of games made by whatever-developer-takes-CoD-in-an-off-year (I admit I cannot keep track of however many developers seem to have the license) to do that. Speaking as someone who really hates the series and has no interest in it, if you wanted to attract me, you need to make a game that is more than just "bros shooting other bros with assault rifles." Dump multiplayer. Give me an actual story, maybe with branching paths and stuff you can actually miss. Stop with the ridiculous over-the-top set pieces. Anything other than moving down another corridor with a bunch of people shouting vaguely "tactical" sounding stuff.

Paprika and a hint of sage.

I'll see myself out.....

The first step they have to make is recognizing that Advanced Warfare is the best COD they've made. After that I think it will all fall in line.

Pretty much this. Remove weapon customisation, leveling all that shit. Just give us COD3 style MP where its two opposing sides, each with the same class names, with similar weaponry.

Honestly, they would have to make a story that isn't complete ass in which you do more than get dragged around by the hand killing the same enemy over and over again. I think the days where linear set piece driven games in which your challenge is simply not to break the scripting are over. The multiplayer is always gonna have its bullshit in it, but they can at least do something with these awful campaigns. Playing through CoD 4 again is more of a reminder of a time when this was new and exciting, but now the wrinkles are more than visible.

Also, I stand by those who say get rid of yearly entries. Games shouldn't be treated like assembly lines in a cafeteria where we go back once a year to get a new one. It just breeds mediocrity. This bullshit about 3 year development cycles divided amongst the devs is among the worst PR has to offer. It's not a perk to have your game be worked on for 3 years, it's expected that time and effort be put into them.

Hats.

If any drastic changes are made to CoD to please more savvy gamers such as ourselves then Activision would be potentially be losing their main market of "CoD" gamers (which I don't mean in a derogatory sense, I've played and enjoyed most CoD games including the new sci-fi ones).

I personally don't mind CoD existing in the state it's in for two reasons, firstly because the FPS genre is one of the most talked and played genres in gaming and there is plenty of choice with games like Battlefield, Overwatch, Doom and much more which offer something different to the CoD formula. Also from a personal point of view I quite like the consistency of how the CoD series plays and a sudden change might put me off. That isn't to say that all video game series should never evolve but I think CoD is a special case in that it's built up a certain fanbase that wants to be able to jump right into a new CoD game without having to adapt to any major changes.

I wouldn't call myself a huge fan of the series but I quite like the idea of being able to pick up Infinite Warfare and just play some MP matches and have a bit of fun.

Idk, it feels like those games have gotten way too complicated but haven't actually added any depth or meaningful game play changes. There are just so many better shooters out now that I have no real reason to bother with CoD.