Sledgehammer’s now-canceled third-person Call of Duty offered ‘a fresh take on war’

Before helping finish Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and moving on to this year's Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, developer Sledgehammer Games was first tasked by Activision to create a third-person off-shoot of the Call of Duty series. The spin-off arose from concerns that the Call of Duty franchise had been suffering from gamer fatigue.

"We had spent six or eight months on it, and were really getting into the story," Sledgehammer co-founder Glen Schofield told Game Informer in this month's cover story. The now-canceled game was set in one specific area during the Vietnam War.

"Everyone thought that war was in Vietnam, right?" Schofield explained. "It was in Cambodia and Laos, too. We did a lot of research on that war, a hidden war, and there were thousands of miles of underground tunnels."

"We had the tunnels, and we were definitely going for some Dead Space moments," he revealed. "It was gonna be a fresh take on war, that's for sure."

Unfortunately, only 15 minutes of the game were fully playable over half a year into the project when it was scrapped. But the decision had nothing to do with the quality; rather, Activision was so impressed with the demo that they approached Sledgehammer to work on Modern Warfare 3.

Following MW3's release, Activision offered Sledgehammer a spot in the series' rotation of development. Though there was some initial hesitation in canceling the third-person project, the studio eventually came together and decided to work on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. In doing so, it means we are now missing out on what Schofield calls "some really cool mechanics," along with a "big moment" that he says he would "love to get into a game someday." Unfortunately, it's a moment that Schofield says "is not something we could do in first-person."

It's pretty intriguing that Activision actually entertained the idea of a third-person spin-off, and though it doesn't look like this game will ever see the light of release, it's nice knowing that even Activision is aware of the fatigue that's setting in on the yearly release of Call of Duty. The question is will the fatigue ever get bad enough to warrant the release of a spin-off?