In 2008, Vicarious Visions, a studio Activision had bought in 2005 and has been working on Skylanders since its launch, was working on something much more secret and much more interesting. The developers were working on a Call of Duty game that would have taken us away from its future themes and thrown us back in time.
Apparently, this missing link in the Call of Duty franchise would have been called Call of Duty: Roman Wars. If it had been able to release, it would have followed Julius Caesar's Tenth Legion, essentially Caesar's "special forces."
In this game, players could have ridden horses, ridden elephants and even have used catapults. The combat, if the player chose the third-person perspective instead of first-person, would have been similar to Gears of War and focus on shield-sword, block and parrying. Additionally, bows, spears, axes and pocket sand were being worked into the game as well.
“I really thought an ancient warfare game would do well, re-skinned with the Call of Duty engine,” said an anonymous developer for Roman Wars in an interview with GamesRadar.
“Basically we were following Julius Caesar’s Tenth Legion – his special forces during those times – and we were doing a one level prototype based on the Battle of Alesia. So we built the one mission based on that. We had everything from riding horses, to riding an elephant, to working with catapults. All done in the Unreal Engine for rapid prototyping”.
Call of Duty: Roman Wars made it as far as having a playable demo, but Activision shot down the idea. Oddly enough, Roman Wars would have released in direct competition with Ryse Son of Rome for the Xbox One. Looks like Roman Wars could have been a thing, if Activision hadn't kept on the future-themed Call of Duty.
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