More than a decade ago, a Call of Duty game subtitled ‘Future Warfare’ was in development. It was being created by Neversoft, an almost forgotten studio that was merged with Infinity Ward in 2014. In a post on Twitter, a two-minute gameplay snippet from an early build of Future Warfare has been revealed. It shows a player narrowly escaping an attack on the Moon, along with a mission list that loosely showcases what the plot of Future Warfare would have been.
Following the clip being posted, a developer by the name of Brian Bright offered up further context. He stressed that the game – codenamed ‘NX1’ – was in development by Neversoft following a pivot from Guitar Hero. It was ultimately cancelled by Activision, but not before Neversoft had created some campaign missions and worked on fleshing out the game’s multiplayer mechanics. Eventually, some of the assets used in Future Warfare were rolled up into 2013’s COD Ghosts. The Future Warfare build in the snippet (shown below) was from 2011.
Forgotten Future
In the clip shared on Twitter, we see a few moments of intense gameplay on a lunar base that’s attacked by an unknown enemy. There’s also a look at a mission list that roughly highlights the scope of the game that could have been. Ironically, even though Future Warfare was canned by Activision, Infinity Ward would go on to release a remarkably similar game – Infinite Warfare – in 2016. Here’s the post:
In the comments made by developer Brian Bright, it was revealed that Future Warfare would have featured the series’ first ‘Escort’ mode. It was ultimately replaced by Call of Duty Ghosts, despite a fair amount of development having been done on Future Warfare. There was a multiplayer map list shared by another user in the Twitter thread, too. This showcased maps that included ‘legacy’ remakes:
- Afghan
- Crash
- Outpost
- Overgrown
- Terminal
- Whiteout
- Apartment
- Bin Laden’s Compound
- Gladiator Assault
Neversoft pivoted from Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater to try and develop a futuristic Call of Duty title but it ultimately fell flat. From 2011 onwards, Neversoft contributed to the development of three Call of Duty games before falling into obscurity after being wrapped up in Infinity Ward in 2014.
If we’d gotten our hands on Future Warfare, it would have been a spree of futuristic Call of Duty games kicked off with 2012’s Black Ops II. It would have then been Future Warfare (2013), Advanced Warfare (2014), Black Ops III (2015), Infinite Warfare (2016), and finally the futuristic spree would have ended in 2017 with WWII.
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