GameSpot's The Lobby: Can space rejuvenate Call of Duty?

[MUSIC] Let's get into it, Michael [UNKNOWN], do you like the Call of Duty? Yeah Yeah? I used to much more What is your favorite Call of Duty game? The first modern warfare or Call of Duty 2 Call of Duty 2. A lot of people like Call of Duty 2. Do you play it on a console? Yeah, that was my first Xbox 360 game. I think that's why a lot of people like it. I worked at a Game Stop back there and when we were selling 360s, everyone was getting Call of Duty 2. It was one of the best first. I think it was like everyone was waiting for Halo 3 or something. It was Call of Duty 2 Madden '06 or something. And then Perfect Dark Zero, which didn't really- Yeah, Project Gotham Racing, man. And that. Yeah, everyone wanted that. I didn't play that. Alan, what about yourself? You're more of a Battlefield man. But you liked Call of Duty. I did, I started. I went up through I just played Modern Warfare 2. And at that point I was like, this series has hit its pinnacle. I don't know if I really need to continue from here, but I know a lot of people love the Black Ops series. I played the single player and loved it. I'm at a point now where I actually will play Call of Duty for the single player and I play Battlefield for the multiplayer cuz I feel like I've done it. But I gotta say, that was the first game where I remember, Modern Warfare was the game that Kick the whole generation out of the World War II genre. Yes, totally. Like that is what put a fork in World War II and it's funny because I feel like we're coming back around again where now people are sick of the modern warfare and we're like coming back to people asking for World war 2 again. For sure, I think that people would not have been surprised if this, or I guess the battlefield reveal will be on thursday, if either of them went towards world war 2 again. We'll talk about it later in the show, but yea interesting to see the news has come out that call of duty infinite warfare going to double down on its space levels and is straight up a Your game set in space with asteroid mining and off-world development and stuff like that. It did have a sick Major Tom trailer. It did. It wasn't Eminem, so. Well, yeah, I've decided I was like, fair enough, okay, good timing, respect to David Bowie. But then They could have Eminem doing Major Town. God, no. No thanks. [LAUGH] I thought it was a decent trailer. The first half with General [UNKNOWN] was super hard on, but the second half was a little better. So let's dive into the meat and potatoes of this. First of all I got a quote here which was given directly to GameSpot. Infinite Warfare So Infinity War, god that's gonna be really complicated. Can we just call it Infini-duty. I feel ike they missed a lot of poop jokes. Infini-duty, duty never stops? Hard Duty, Call to Duty. Jacob Minkoff says, the approach that we've taken with this game, the inspiration don't come from sci-fi or space in any way. The inspiration comes from war stories. This is Call of Duty we're talking about. Warfare, and in this case, infinite warfare. What we feel is that classically told narratives can take place in any settings. They are very worried about saying that this thing is a sci fi shooter, I feel like they are worried about loosing their crowd. Which is a problem that activism has with this series, which is too big of a seller to take any risks. So what do you guys think about the fact they're going for the sort of [LAUGHS] Modern Warfare future warfare, and there a future, future warfare. The live commentary had two very contradictory tones to it. On one hand they said yes multiplayer is going to take place on other planets and potentially on space station. But in Ascends Layers they're like we're not going to change anything because we don't want to scare off our crowd, basically. Right. What they said So it makes me worry that they're just gonna change the skybox and the level design and then keep the same gameplay. Whereas I would love it if some developer would change the formula first person shooters. And start doing things like forget flat maps, let's do maps on a spherical asteroid. Let's do like variable gravity, or let's do Just something that's different from these black static mats we've been getting for the last decade. Mm. [UNKNOWN] from Battlefield wasn't that big of a thing. Call of Duty's had one or two destructible items in their environment. And sometimes things happen to change routes. But I would really like one of these developers to get creative with multi-player. They've dipped their toes in the water with the Kevin Spacey, I always forget that, Advanced Warfare Which one? Advanced Warfare, sorry. And then [INAUDIBLE] as well. They sort of had Some of the, you know, [UNKNOWN] in there, but you're right in saying that like you know we think about quality for modern warfare out of this game that really broke the genre because they took it out of World War 2, but actually though it had that big dramatic shift in terms of the game play, it also sorta really changed is the game that made, first of all, a really solid, very Mechanically single player campaign I wasn't just having different warfare in different places it was like different types of warfare like the ghillie suit stuff, big massive battles and then sort of smaller stealthy stuff and then alongside that they basically invented the type of multiplayer that we've now been playing for ten years. So, since then, we've had all these tiny little iterative steps and every once in a while they take like a bigger little step, like double down on the zombies or go towards the future stuff. But Mike at this age, is it time for them to marry the thematic step they're taking here with some actual changes to how Call of Duty plays? Yeah, 100%, I don't want it to be, I mean the thing that would get me and a lot of people interested in the series again is if they, like Aaron was saying, it's not just a new paint, it's an actual Functional change they make to the game. You said I know they were talking about zero G combat, which they did have at the beginning of ghosts, which infinity ward also did. It wasn't the best game, but I thought if they did more of that it would have made for an interesting game or at least kind of change up how we are approaching this. It's not just this stop and pop shooter. Right. I like them to actually kind of. Whatever happened back then, because they had a big audience with their World War II shooters, but they took a chance with modern warfare. They, like you said, they implemented this multi player that's become so pervasive. I would love for them to just say, All right, **** it, let's try something new and maybe spark another ten years of Something, and for the first time for years we can be excited again. Yeh, I mean there's been so much evolution in terms of first person games in recent years as well. Like, the open world thing has completely changed. Like Far Cry changed the rulebook a lot. Games like Dying Light even just took on what Meer's Edge tried to do and then expanded it out in so many interesting ways. Call of Duty is still the same. Like, super, hyper-linear and I don't really, like I'm totally with you. I enjoy playing The single [UNKNOWN] in these, but I also enjoy them a lot because they're short, like I could not deal with that for 15 hours, but I can like deal with it for a weekend. It's kind of fun and a little bit entertaining, but even in that, they're never really, the hook really isn't there that it was back in 2006, 7. Also, you get used to adrenaline rush of these games. It becomes normal to you. When Modern Warfare first came out, it was the only game I played where I was literally shaking at the end of a round because there had never been multiplayers that intense before, but then by Modern Warfare 2 it was a little bit less and then Black Ops came around and I was whatever, I'm already immune to this level of crack. [LAUGH] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, and then it started getting boring cuz it was I just walk around the corned and shoot somebody, I respond for my old body hits the floor and I do it again and again and again and just- Yeah. It lost the intensity because the intensity was so consistent. Yeah. And I think it's what you're saying, they need to somehow bring that level of intensity. In a new way. And I don't know. I can't tell you what that is. When you say space to me I get excited. I wanted battle front to be more space and that didn't even have it. Right. So to me space It's such an amazing palette for a game play, like your can have ships. You can fight on the hulls of ships. You can fight inside ships. You can fight in asteroid belts. Think of games like Deadspace for instance, like all the various things they managed to do with that. There's so much you can do when you just get rid of the ground. Earth's gravity. And you have the future setting but Yeah, well these guys take the risk. They have their franchise crowd. I am speaking to that. They're sort of having the cake and eating it. Having to decide to a remastered version of what many consider to be the best Call of Duty Game starting in the past modern era. Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. Sock rocker Seven asking a question a lot of people are wondering. What do you think about the fact that they're now allowing people to buy this separately? This is only for people who pre-order the new game Infinite Warfare. I think it's telling of what they think might happen. I mean. Right. I think a certain time after release they will just put it on PSN or something or Xbox Live, but I'm expecting this package to come out, and I think modern warfare will hold up. And I'm hoping infinite warfare is better. Right. But I'm curious as to whether people will like the new game more than the game that gets packaged in with it. Can you imagine if they sold it separately and COD four gets more? Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised, but it would still be. indicative of where that series has come since that first really great game. Yeah, I guess it depends how much they sell it for, at the end of that. Okay, final thoughts on that, are you guys excited about the same sorts of stuff? Is it new? You were saying before, shades of another game, right? I sat there at E3 last year and they were talking about [UNKNOWN] All the movement mechanics were new and now it's kind of scratching my head like, this is Titan Fall? And then, [INAUDIBLE] movement mechanics and I was watching this trailer and they were talking about fighting over colonies and resources and going into space, and I was scratching my head again going, you guys are still chasing Titan Fall? Yeah. So I want to see what Titanfall 2 does, Respawn to me is a much more exciting studio at this stage because.. 'cause they're actually there and it's not just a ghost giving them ideas You know they showed incredible creativity with Titanfall, and I would just love to see what they can do with that franchise, and if we're talking about space that's where my head's at Infinite warfare. I'll give it a chance like other Call of Duty games but they have the constraint of their past and Titanfall doesn't. So I think Titanfall has more potential. Yeah, you're right. Success is a double edged sword. Thank you so much both for talking about. Call of Duty, Infinite Warfare. It's got a release date as well. It is coming out, I'm gonna guess it's November 6th or something. It's coming out November Fourth, for Playstation 4, X-box 1 and PC. I wonder if there will be special neographics, as well. I guess there has to be actually, on the Playstation 4, because that's a rule now. Yeah.>> Let us know if your excited about Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, after the talk, put your thoughts and comments below.