Since 2003, not a year has gone by without the release of a Call of Duty title. This year's Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will mark 11 years of explosive set pieces, tight gunplay and addictive multiplayer, and today the franchise is synonymous with cool gadgets, killstreaks and customization.
But it wasn't always like that. Once upon a time Call of Duty was about men, more specifically the men who fought in World War II. Back in the late '90s and early 2000s, EA's Medal of Honor franchise held the distinction of being the premier World War II shooter. For many, that franchise peaked with the PC-only Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in 2002. The game received universal critical acclaim, but when EA failed to purchase the developer of the game, 2015, Inc., they sealed their fate. The team rebranded themselves Infinity Ward and signed a deal with Activision to create a Medal of Honor "killer."
At first that proved to be a challenge. Infinity Ward struggled to make a game set apart from Allied Assault. In the beginning, Call of Duty was the story of an American spy attempting to stop the Nazis from creating a nuclear bomb. As Infinity Ward crafted the PC version of the game, another studio named Spark Unlimited was working on a console version. It was Spark Unlimited that hit upon the idea of playing from different allied perspectives. Ziede Rieke, the design lead on Call of Duty, told MCVUK it was a breakthrough moment.
"That clicked for us immediately," Rieke told the site. "That solved a lot of problems in terms of we were looking for a new ‘D-Day' moment. We had a lot of ‘moments' in Allied Assault and we wanted to do something comparable, and with the Russians we could do Stalingrad.
"We also had been developing a friendly AI. We liked that from a gameplay point of view, but when the idea came to make the game about the story of the war and less a clandestine story with the war as the backdrop, all of a sudden the tagline ‘no one fights alone' came about. And it became a game about you and your buddies experiencing WWII battles from different points-of-view."
Thus Call of Duty was born, and it instantly made waves. The game took the unique approach of allowing players to step into the boots of American, Russian and British soldiers in the war against the Third Reich. Players were never alone, either. The vast majority of the time players fought side-by-side with AI controlled comrades. This was once again a far cry from shooters like Medal of Honor, which routinely had players go deep behind enemy lines and wage one man warfare. Call of Duty was also one of the first games to feature a mechanic that has now become an almost universal element of FPS game design -- ADS, or aim-down-sights.
The game received strong ratings from critics, but it would be with Spark Unlimited's Call of Duty: Finest Hour, released a year later in 2004, that the franchise would find huge commercial success. Finest Hour, while competent, didn't find the same level of acclaim at its PC predecessor, but it stayed true to the Call of Duty formula and would introduce console players to the franchise for the first time.
Infinity Ward, emboldened by its success, moved on to craft the next installment of the franchise. It proved to be a turning point. For starters, Call of Duty 2 was a great game. It identified and improved upon nearly every aspect of the original, while also delivering greatly improved visuals and even more explosive set pieces.
But Call of Duty 2 isn't important just because of its quality. Timing also proved to be important for the title's success. The game launched with the Xbox 360 in 2005, and stood out even more to consumers among an ocean of mediocre launch titles. It would go on to become the best selling Xbox 360 launch game, and firmly planted Call of Duty's flag as a champion of console shooters. With their success, Infinity Ward felt confident, finally moving away from World War II, and would begin working on a completely new take on the franchise.
While Infinity Ward plugged away on what would become Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, two often forgotten entries in the franchise released. Call of Duty 2: Big Red One landed on the original Xbox, PlayStation 2 and Gamecube around the same time as Call of Duty 2, but the two titles shared little in common outside of their WWII setting, both in story and gameplay.
Activision also tasked another developer, Treyarch, to create Call of Duty 3 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2006. Like the game's before it, Call of Duty 3 saw players jumping to different viewpoints throughout the European theater of the war. It didn't make much of an impact, but it did give Treyarch valuable experience. The developer would go on to become one of the handful of development studios working on Call of Duty as Activision moved forward with annualizing the franchise, and would eventually be responsible for what many consider to be some of Call of Duty's strongest entries.
Everything would change with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, released in 2007. For the first time the franchise stepped away from its WWII roots to explore a fictional, modern conflict. Like the games before it, players still jumped to different allied perspectives, playing as American and British soldiers. Unlike the previous entries, Call of Duty began to move away from the idea of being an everyday soldier. The majority of player characters were instead special operatives, often going deep behind enemy lines alone or with a small squad in a plot that wasn't too far removed from what the original Call of Duty might have been, as they attempt to stop Russian revolutionaries from launching nuclear warheads. It's a trend that is still seen in the franchise today.
It wasn't only in the single-player department that Modern Warfare would change the game. For the first time multiplayer became the most important aspect of Call of Duty. Nearly every aspect of modern Call of Duty games like progression, prestige ranks, killstreaks, perks, customizable weapons -- it all started here.
And fans couldn't get enough of it. It became the best-selling game of 2007. The game's multiplayer catapulted Call of Duty from popular game franchise and into mainstream consciousness.
That put Treyarch in the unenviable task of following it up in 2008 with Call of Duty: World at War. The game returned players to WWII, but for the first time took players to the Pacific Theater of the war. While Call of Duty had always been violent, World at War didn't shy away from depicting the raw brutality of the Pacific theater or Russia's absolute hatred of Nazi Germany. World at War also saw the introduction of the silly-yet-addicting "Zombie" mode to the franchise for the first time, something that would become a staple of Treyarch's Call of Duty titles.
Despite World at War's success, the game ultimately felt like a stepping stone for Infinity Ward's triumphant return. And what a return it was. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 released in 2008 would expand upon everything seen in the first Modern Warfare, but up the stakes considerably. Most notoriously, it would have players (undercover, of course) join a Russian terrorist organization in the "No Russian" mission, where players could participate in gunning down dozens of innocent civilians in a busy Moscow airport. On the multiplayer side, more perks, weapon add-ons, and killstreaks became available. The game also saw the inclusion of the Spec-Ops mode, a series of hardcore standalone missions that could be played with a friend.
The game would go on to sell more than 22 million copies and would make what came next all the more surprising. Activision in 2010 fired Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella for "breaches of contract and subordination." With the departure of the two leaders, nearly half of Infinity Ward's remaining employees resigned. Zampella and West would go on to sue Activision, saying they had yet to claim all the royalties due to them before their firing by Activision. The two parties settled in 2012.
While Zampella, West and numerous other ex-Infinity Ward members would go on to form Respawn Studios and begin work on what would become the Xbox One exclusive Titanfall, the shake-up made Call of Duty's future look suddenly uncertain. Due to the annualization of the franchise, Treyarch's next entry, Call of Duty: Black Ops, released as planned in the holiday of 2010. It took many gamers by surprise. Treyarch had dramatically stepped up its game, delivering a compelling Cold War story that stepped outside of the comfort zone of the series. Multiplayer proved to be as great as it had ever been, with a number of new additions like the ability to gamble on matches and the introduction of new modes like "Gun Game." The cooperative Zombie mode in Black Ops added even more insanity to the package by allowing players to fight the undead as Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro.
Fans let out a collective sigh of relief. But what of the next installment, supposedly to be developed by the now crippled Infinity Ward in 2011? The fear turned out to be unwarranted. Activision rebuilt Infinity Ward, and with a little help from the newly created Sledgehammer Games, released Modern Warfare 3 to huge commercial and critical success. It concluded the storyline that began in the original Modern Warfare, with America and its NATO allies engaged in World War III with Russian ultranationalist forces. In usual Call of Duty fashion, players traveled the globe in a roller coaster ride of explosive actions scenes, some taking place on American soil for the first time.
Modern Warfare 3 played it safe and it worked. Why fix what isn't broken? But with Call of Duty: Black Ops II the following year, Treyarch crafted what is without a doubt the most unique entry in the franchise. In a series known for its linearity, Treyarch dared to throw the franchise on its head by introducing branching story options and multiple endings decided upon player choices. Special "Strike Force" missions added in strategy elements to the game, all the while telling a story that spanned decades, as a Nicaraguan terrorist seeks to create a new Cold War between America and China. Black Ops II took Call of Duty to the future for the first time, introducing a number of new weapons and abilities like drones and invisibility cloaks. The changes weren't exclusive to the single-player portions of the game either. Treyarch allowed for even more customization options in multiplayer with the "Pick 10" system.
The effort paid off. Black Ops II went on to earn more than $800 million in its first five days available, surpassing that of Modern Warfare 3. Treyarch, the studio that began with the underwhelming Call of Duty 3, was now on top. The franchise would make the jump to another generation of consoles with Call of Duty: Ghosts in 2013, which launched on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 alongside last-gen versions of the game. Set in an alternate history where the Middle-East ceases to exist due to nuclear war and America's military has been crippled, Ghosts followed a group of clandestine soldiers operating in the jungles of South America as they attempt to bring down the new South American superpower known as the Federation. It introduced the game's first playable animal companion, the German Shepherd, Riley.
Critics viewed the game favorably, but ultimately Ghosts failed to sell as well as previous entries like Black Ops or Modern Warfare 3. This year brings Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and will once again bring players to the future in a world where soldiers use an Exo suit to augment their abilities. The Exo Suit promises to bring big changes to multiplayer in the form of dashing and double jumps, alongside plenty of new weaponry. It's also the first title in the franchise to be solely developed by Sledgehammer Games, the studio that worked alongside Infinity Ward to finish Modern Warfare 3.
With some analysts predicting sales to be down once again this year, has Call of Duty reached its peak? Maybe. It's possible that even the new innovations introduced in Advanced Warfare won't be enough to turn the franchise around from its slow but steady decline, or it could be the boost the franchise needs. Critics are already praising the game's new focus on mobility and even deeper multiplayer customization. Either way, the success of the Call of Duty franchise as a whole is one envied by companies the world over, and you can be sure that the franchise will continue to be an entertainment juggernaut for years to come.
Photo: Activision
