Activision once again surprised us unsurprisingly showed off a little more to their next Call of Duty installment, Ghosts. However, before we got to check out actual gameplay, we were shown off a tech demo which highlighted the graphical advancements to the series.
Activision is boasting a huge leap in graphics thanks to a few new technological advancements. One of the new tesselation features is called displacement mapping. This feature allows the team to create high resolution geometry in real-time, on previously flat terrain. Essentially, what you'll be getting now is more detailed ground and environment.
Another new feature is called realtime Sub-D, which sub divides polygons as they get closer to the player. An example of this would be as you're bringing up the scope of your gun close to your face, the scope doesn't lose any additional details, and instead keeps subdividing the polygons to ensure that the roundness stays completely perfect.
Alright, technical mumbo jumbo aside, let's get to the three levels I got to see.
The first mission was No Man's Land, where the player, along with his brother and Riley the dog are on a mission to stealthily take down enemies in a forest. I can easily sum up this mission with "MOAR CALL OF DUTY!" The new features showcased here were the dog mechanics. We could send Riley out to scout for enemies and take them out in stealth. In true COD style, we were even shown a breach scene, complete with slowed down time and everything, except for one major difference; The enemies busted out the door instead of us busting in, since we sicked Riley in on them through a window.
Federation Day was definitely a bit more interesting. This whole level focused on verticality, as it had the player scale a giant skyscraper, taking enemies out in stealth. It looked like you had to carefully pick off enemies as to not alert the others, which seemed like a pretty sweet gameplay mechanic. Of course, as expected, sh*t hits the fan relatively soon, and the team has to rappel down that same building as fast as they possibly could.
The last level titled, Into the Deep, which takes place underwater, was definitely the prettiest of all the levels shown. From the light refracting into the water, to the individual fish, it looked absolutely breathtaking. We also got to see a real world weapon in use, called the APS Rifle, which is an underwater rifle.
So far, every level would start off with a heavy reliance on stealth, and would turn into an all out shooting spree. For Call of Duty, that sounds about right.
Ghosts is scheduled to come out on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC later this year.
