The Call of Duty franchise as a reaction against the "lone supersoldier" trend of first-person shooter games before it. With the mantra of "ordinary soldiers, fighting together," you played average joe soldiers in the US, UK, and USSR militaries, defending bridges, taking crossroads, etc, surrounded by dozens of other average joe soldiers. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-8vx6fGJZU"]Call of Duty 1 Trailer - YouTube[/ame] Fast forward a decade, and the franchise has now officially become the lovechild of Unreal Tournament and TitanFall, complete with ninjas, flying, and robots with gatling guns for arms. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpm1yk3enzY"]Official Call of Duty®: Black Ops III - Multiplayer Reveal Trailer - YouTube[/ame] Is it just me, or is this is the video game equivalent of Nirvana releasing a hair metal album?
I'm sure they'll comfort themselves on their beds of money. I think they're jumped the shark completely and personally, I never got into a COD properly after Modern Warfare 2. Stopped buying after Black Ops I think. The thing is Call of Duty as a franchise is now recognised as the casual gamers shooter so this was the only direction they could really go. They're never going to step back and try to go the Medal of Honor route, or even the relatively grounded one of Battlefield. That said, there are rumours (I think they're just rumours atm) that they're knocking around going back to WW2 in which case everything I said may turn out to be bollocks. I can only hope.
I only play MW2 these days. Advanced Warfare was awful. . Tbf the last few releases haven't done as well as previous releases. Unless they go back to their roots I can't see me buying another CoD game.
Just like the movie industry video game companies have learned that it's easier to keep beating the existing dead-horse-of-a-franchise than to come up with totally new and innovative games. I mean a lot of games like COD and HALO are still milking the innovation and success of their first few games! But people keep buying it and people will pay to go see remake of the adaptation of the continuation of a superhero movie or sequel after sequel.
I'm just siting here waiting to find out if Square are ever going to release a Vagrant Story 2. The mainstream gaming industry is all about safe bets and pretty lighting as opposed to depth of play, scriptwriting and storytelling. To companies that release these sorts of games new ideas = DLC content.
In their defence gamers aren't free of blame for that. New IP can be a tough sell and while we lambast companies for staying to the tried and tested, an equal number flip out when changes are made to their favourite franchise. As for being pretty...well, gamers are horrible when it comes to that. Companies put all their time into graphics because people are obsessed about FPS and fidelity. And most are only half knowledgable about it at best. For proof look no further than the Fallout trailer. After a year of backlash for"downgrades" (a lot of ignorance here as well) and fake gameplay trailers Bethesda released an actual gameplay trailer and there were a LOT of vocal complaints about its animation and fidelity. Ignoring that people critiquing Bethesda games based on their graphics make me very confused about their experience with the company. I would love to see the new console architecture used to make games bigger and deeper instead of prettier, but with the new generation the only thing gamers seem to care about is the shininess. It is literally the only thing I see being discussed for most games. Theres other reasons devs are being lazy, but their consumers are far from innocent in it
This is true. I remember somewhere around HALO 3 when they literally made all of the textures shinier and it was obscene to the eyes. The problem with this, like most things, is that the masses are dumb and the folks who care about depth and mechanics are the minority. And the ability of gamers to be actively vocal through social media, just as with film and TV, can have some seriously deleterious effects on the end product.
In all fairness, there's innovative new franchises too. Bungie made Halo games for years (though since Halo 4, the games have actually been made by 343 Industries), but also took a huge risk recently with Destiny, bazillion-dollar new IP in a relatively-untested genre (the MMORPG FPS). Sunset Overdrive is new IP from the folks who made the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance franchises. Etc. And continuing an existing franchise is okay when the time is taken to make sure it's being done right. People are darned excited about Fallout 4. Halo 4 was downright fantastic. Etc. The problem with COD is that, by trying to keep up with a one-game-per-year model in a decade-old franchise, they're clearly running out of ideas on how to keep the game feeling fresh while also true to the franchise.
