E3 2014: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare First Look Preview – Loud and Proud

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Richard Walker

Kevin Spacey's good, isn't he? Practically everything he touches turns to gold; from The Usual Suspects to American Beauty and House of Cards, he's an actor who seldom makes a bad choice. Whether his involvement in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, as shady PMC boss Jonathan Irons, will have that same kind of galvanising effect has yet to be determined. Spacey is, for all intents and purposes, the face of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but he's nowhere to be seen during our first look at the game.

Instead the emphasis is upon main character Mitchell, and his squad of 'EXO' exoskeleton armoured buddies. Together you work for Irons' Atlas, one of the game's PMCs that finds itself pitted against the rival KVA. “You're the Tier 1 Operator of the future,” says Sledgehammer Studio Head and Co-Founder Michael Condrey, summarising the game's shift towards futuristic, but plausible technology that you'll frequently use and come to rely on in Advanced Warfare. “You are the advanced soldier.”

You'll assume the role of this single protagonist throughout Advanced Warfare, as the game's narrative plays out in chronological order. There'll be no flashbacks, no jumping between timeframes; this is Mitchell's story, first and foremost. Sledgehammer stresses that telling a compelling and engaging narrative for its single-player story is paramount.

“The story moves across almost ten years of (Mitchell's) life, from being a private in the marines where he's green to being a hardened veteran at the end of the game,” says Co-Founder and Studio Executive Glen Schofield. “The rise of great television over the last ten years with Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead; they're telling a great story, as good, if not better than Hollywood movies right now. And what they have is characters that you want to follow that you are engaged with, and that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to bring life to the characters in our game and have you emotionally connect with them.”

Having worked on Dead Space in the past, Schofield and Condrey know the importance of an engaging story too, but it's difficult to get a sense of how you'll connect with the game's characters on the basis of the two missions we're shown. The overriding sense is that Advanced Warfare is Call of Duty at its bombastic best, albeit with the occasional shift in mood and pacing, as you follow your coarse British guide Gideon (played by Wolfenstein: The New Order's Fergus Reid, actor Gideon Emery) through each mission.

The mission we're shown is called Bio Lab, and starts off in classic 'All Ghillied Up' territory, as you respond to Gideon's instructions and slip past enemy patrols. Opening with a fraught sprint from a relentlessly pursuing helicopter sniper, the mission soon switches up to a more tense and stealth-focused approach; something that Schofield describes as a “new flavour” for Call of Duty.

Your EXO suits are malfunctioning, limiting their capabilities. But as luck would have it, you still have its integrated cloak to aid you in your stealthy endeavour, although its battery runs down over time. There's no need to worry though, as Gideon tells you when to deactivate your cloak and recharge. The shadow of that classic Call of Duty 4 mission still looms large it seems, even six games on.

Keeping up with Gideon, you'll beat a path through the Bulgarian forest to your objective, getting dangerously close to troops in enormous tank-like exoskeletons and avoiding enemy vehicles with seeker laser tech that can see you even when you're cloaked. The pace slows right down with stealth takedowns only advisable when Gideon says so, and it's not long before we rendezvous with allies Knox and Cormack.

Infiltrating the Bio Lab itself with a breach and clear, aided by a mute charge that temporarily drowns out the sound of your gunfire, you'll subsequently extract data from a computer uplink, after which point it all kicks off in typical Call of Duty fashion. Being an advanced soldier, you have a range of cutting edge guns and gadgets at your disposal, including a whole new weapon category; namely 'directed energy weapons'. With this mission set during 2058 – four years into the story – Mitchell still has rifles that fire metal projectiles into enemy hides at great speed, but directed energy weapons also means that you'll have laser-flavoured guns to play with too.

We also get to see multi-purpose grenades that can be switched up on the fly to serve as Semtex, an EMP blast, homing smart grenade, humble frag grenade or an explosive that goes off on contact. Alternatively, you can throw out a threat detection grenade, highlighting on your HUD any enemies caught within the radius of its pulse. It appears to tip the odds massively in your favour, although Schofield is quick to remind us that most enemies have the same technological advantage as you.

Shooting your merry way through waves of cannon fodder, the squad soon happens upon a prototype T740 hovertank; a hulking piece of advanced military hardware ripe for the taking. Having experience piloting the old T600 hovertank, Mitchell takes the helm and sets off on a cavalcade of carnage, raining missiles, minigun fire and EMP blasts at a terrifying rate. This is Call of Duty turned all the way up to 11, with incendiary explosions, incandescent sparks flying and all-encompassing destruction ricocheting across the entire screen, and you're free to drive the hovertank wherever you like, within the constraints of the prescribed path. It's not on-rails.

Quiet in and loud out in a cacophony of devastation is of course the Call of Duty way, and on the basis of this first mission we're demoed, Advanced Warfare is no exception. Which leads us to the second mission we're shown in strict confidentiality. We can't talk specifics about this particular portion of the story, but it's what Schofield says is an example of the studio liking to “change up the pace” and indeed the overall mood.

Here we see a shift in tone and atmosphere, as well as Advanced Warfare's hoverbikes; chunky lumps of angular metal that can quietly glide delicately over any surface, including deep water. Again, the mission starts slow and gathers momentum, throwing in moments of tension to mix things up. And again, it ends with an explosive bang. Nonetheless, Sledgehammer is looking to put its own style and stamp on the Call of Duty series, whether that's in the narrative or the yet to be revealed multiplayer.

“We still have those big, epic Call of Duty moments that you've come to know from the franchise,” says Condrey. “It's a new engine built for a new generation, it's a new team, it's a new three-year development cycle. Everything you've seen, you can imagine what it means for our MP announcements later this year as well as what we're bringing to co-op and how the advanced soldier changes all that.

“Activision really encouraged us to take some risks and put our mark on this franchise,” Condrey adds. “And part of that is, we were a team built from a certain focus on narrative and storytelling, as well as gameplay, mood and pacing. For MW3 we had the opportunity to do some really amazing, epic Call of Duty levels, and we're really proud of what we've done there. But from Dead Space and even CoD 4 where you had 'All Ghillied Up' and some of those levels that were really just about the pacing and more subtle nature of how to shock and surprise a player, I think we were inspired by all of that.”

And Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is looking like a forward step for the series, even if it's only an incremental one. Sledgehammer touches upon light RPG elements with your EXO having a skill tree, although Schofield is keen to stress, it is very light. “I can change up my EXO and make it different to anybody else's  and if you want to go back and you want to earn it all, you're going to have to play it more than once to get it anyway,” he tells us, estimating more than two playthroughs to max out your EXO suit.

As the first truly next-gen focused Call of Duty, Advanced Warfare certainly looks the part, but as ever with these things, the proof of this particular loud and bullet-riddled pudding will be in the eating. We'll get to tuck in when Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare launches worldwide on November 4th, 2014.

Comments
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  • What? I'm enjoying the solid narrative and gunplay of Wolfenstein.
  • Only took CoD 7 years to get it's shit together.... I for one, as an Avid CoD noy-sayer (who only plays them for the co-op) am excited for this.
  • This game looks awesome. I was slightly skeptical at first, but I'm definitely picking this up now after watching the E3 video.
  • So I'm assuming the antagonists are North Koreans? Why else would the sneak peek mission take place in Seoul? But then again, how could the North Koreans have technology like us? Idk, but this'll be more interesting than seeing the cliched russians
  • Yep E3 had to have a game for the generic non creative gamer
  • I'll just wait how the campaign turns out, maybe I'll pick it up 6 months post release. But I will never touch CoD MP again, that chapter is closed for me!
  • looks like butt but the mountain dew addicted white boys will love it. it'll be a financial success, I'm sure the eventual double xp tie in with mountain dew will help them break yet another sales record. sheep.
  • # I like how in every one of your posts you tell US how you feel about white people! :-) Thank god black and hispanic folks don't play CoD... oh wait!
  • I dont care what COD haters gonna say. Im not neither fan nor hater. but this huge.Its unique.Its not a copy/paste of anything(either Ideas or gameplay presentation,to haters saying its Halo's, Titanfall's...u can keep saying bullshit)Its not Sci fi.Its realistic Futuristic.they had some research done.if exosceletond were in Elisyum,... that doesnt mean theyve copied.Its all about facts. n the gameplay is what it should be fluid Call of Duty.cudve had some jet pack wall run mimick from Titanfall but they didnt because its not believable for 2054. just compare any futuristic game/movie ever released.overall its got the best Ideas. the story,s also got some cool ideas n I dont need to notice the majic of Kevin Spacey. hate as much as u can...They are doing what exactly they should do
  • just one thing. I wonder what people who nagged about the graphics engine all the time have to say now. cause after the division this ones got the most "photorealistic" looks Ive seen n the fact that its gonna be 60ps makes it greater. Ive never been a fan but I pertty much like this one n respect it.they just did the right move for COD. btw, dont forget to keep hating all the time!thats what u do all the time right?cause u r a hater
  • Lol are you kidding me? This is one of the worst attempts at futuristic I've ever seen. Stop trying to justify this bullshit.
  • @11 its has "call of duty" in its title so kids 12 and under will be defending it and saying its the most innovative thing they've ever seen. When in fact its not and never will be
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