CoD: Advanced Warfare Multiplayer Just Copycat Gameplay Or Based On Real Life Military Technology?

Will Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer represent a “big step forward” for gaming as the developer Sledgehammer claims, or is just copycat gameplay that rips off other shooters from years past?

In a related report by The Inquisitr, could CoD: Advanced Warfare be a marriage killer? It’s said that Call Of Duty bros are angering the girls gamers by the way they prioritize their life. When it comes to the gaming news, the Battlefield series is the biggest competitor to Call Of Duty but unlike Activision Electronic Arts does not plan on over-milking that cow by releasing annual updates to the series. You might also want to check out a behind the scenes video with Sledgehammer, who claims that Advanced Warfare will not be 720p on the Xbox One.

Speaking of making big claims, Sledgehammer Games co-founder Michael Condrey is saying the CoD: Advanced Warfare multiplayer mode will represent a big departure from the norm:

“Our multiplayer has what I’m going to call the biggest set of new, as you call it, cool gear that you’ve seen in a long time. It’s a big step forward. From three years in development we’ve been able to innovate across the game. Everything you saw [in the game’s E3 demo]… just imagine what that’s going to mean for multiplayer.”

Of course, when CoD: Advanced Warfare was first announced practically everyone noticed how the focus was on the exoskeleton and potential military hardware of the future. But many of the gameplay concepts seemed ripped straight out of other games like Crysis, which also focuses on the capabilities of the suit.

Now as Condrey points out video games development cycles happen to last several years, so it is not exactly like the latest CoD is directly copying from recent games. For example, some people say Advanced Warfare is ripping off the popular game Metal Gear Solid or Titanfall, which was created by former CoD developers, but if you want to extend that argument even Mechwarrior could be said to be the gameplay grandfather of them all. Every game is going to derivative of past games to a certain extent but it’s the nuances and the implementation that make it play differently.

Even then Sledgehammer claims they are looking at recent real technological advances in order to derive what possible forms warfare of the future may take:

“The advanced soldier, that was the idea from the start and everything that can go into that we put in. Because that’s sort of ripped from the headlines, the downsizing of the military but the upsizing of the amount of investment and the money and technology and everything else that they’re putting into one of these soldiers. And that’s where the future’s going.”

As an example, even the rocket jumps and spider tanks are supposedly based upon technology being developed by military contractors and NASA:

“[W]e really said, ‘Because we’re going to the future, and because we need it to be relatable Call Of Duty, if it’s in the game it has to be based off of technology we know is in development today. It can be on the battlefield tomorrow. And so we’ve been doing this now for three years and things like the exoskeleton, we know are viable and ready in two years. Directed energy weapons, we know that that exists today. We know that smart grenades and AR and walking tech… we saw it! That stuff is working…. It was at NASA. It was a tank, not a tank with a turret but it was a tank that they had built to send it to mine rare minerals on asteroids and bring ’em back. So it had six legs and wheels and it could climb things… and you were a turret away from what you see in the game. So at first blush you might say, ‘Well, that’s just science fiction’. But we can tell you that if you see it in the game then it is something they’re working on and in many cases it’s already happened. Crazy, right?”

In the interview with Metrothey also mention how the U.S. Air Force is developing high altitude airships, DARPA is working on cloaking technology, and the U.S. Navy is implementing directed energy weapons:

“It’s weaponised energy, right? And there’s lots of different forms, whether it’s sound, heat, or light. And the navy just announced they have a working one sitting on a navy ship. It’s a railgun that’s using energy to fire chunks of metal at Mach 7, with a massive destructive force. And that’s working today.”

While much of the gameplay of the CoD: Advanced Warfare multiplayer sounds like science fiction they do make the good point that much of it hinges on developments in battery technology. The main problem is not the basic ideas. Miniaturizing the batteries to the point that they can store enough energy safely to be used on the battlefield is an issue the affects everything from electric cars to smartphones.

Do you think CoD: Advanced Warfare is ripping off other games?