It would seem that the times are quite literally a’changing for the Call of Duty series this year, as Sledgehammer Games prepare to transport players back to the historical era where it all began.
Following countless rumours from Eurogamer and other sources surrounding the title’s existence, the FPS franchise’s official Twitter account confirmed yesterday that its fourteenth instalment will indeed go by the name Call of Duty: WWII. “After three years in the making,” Eric Hirshberg, the CEO of publisher Activision, tweeted, “Call of Duty is going back to its roots.”
Short of a colossal rug-pull of M. Night Shyamalan proportions, the news all but confirms that as with the first, second, third and fifth core COD entries, fans will swap the space-bound action of last year’s Infinite Warfare for the trench combat and gruelling brutality of the Second World War (1939-1945) here.
The possible reasons for this sudden time-jump after years of the annual saga dabbling with modern and near-future conflicts are endless, but that EA’s rival shooter Battlefield 1 ditched its franchise’s recent modern warfare trappings last year and scored 10 points higher than Infinite Warfare on Metacritic won’t likely have gone unnoticed despite the latter’s superior sales.
Further details are few and far between at present, though UK retailer GAME’s pre-order listing of a “standard edition” of WWII may hint that announcements of the franchise’s trademark special editions mightn’t be far behind. What’s more, if Sledgehammer views EA’s recent FPS development strategy as a guide, then the revelation that Star Wars: Battlefront II won’t feature a season pass could prove influential too.
What we do know for certain, though, is that more information on the project will follow this Wednesday, April 26th at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT / 5pm GMT via a worldwide reveal on WW2‘s official website. Expect talking heads aplenty, war movie references by the bucketload and – God willing – 100% less discussion of dog animations than was the case with Advanced Warfare, but whatever happens, be sure to check back at D-Pad Joy afterwards for a full rundown of all of the key details.
In the meantime, why not check out this video retrospective on some of the Call of Duty franchise’s finest moments to date…