Three years ago, Sledgehammer Games and Activision were deciding what to do about 2017’s Call of Duty game. They had veered off into science fiction for the billion-dollar-a-year first-person shooter franchise. But after hashing it over, they all agreed to take their “boots on the ground” video game back to its roots in World War II.
The result is Call of Duty: WWII, which debuts on November 3 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox One X, and the PC. And, alongside Destiny 2, the beta version of the multiplayer for Call of Duty: WWII has been playable this week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the big game trade show this week in Los Angeles.
We talked with Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision, at the show, where Activision has a big booth again after a one-year absence last year. Hirshberg acknowledged that the franchise may have stayed with science fiction a year too long, as a lot of fans disliked the sci-fi Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. This time around, after the WWII revelation, fans have had a much more positive reaction.
“We have incredible engagement,” Hirshberg said.
Destiny 2, a sequel to Bungie’s sci-fi shooter from 2011, launches on September 6. I talked with Hirshberg about the company’s launch strategy, among other things. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Image Credit: Dean Takahashi
GamesBeat: I played Destiny 2 at the reveal but not here.
Eric Hirshberg: We’ve got some new content here. You can play the new sub-class today that you couldn’t at the reveal event.
It’s a lot of fun.GamesBeat: With WWII, can you talk about some of the backstory to going back to that setting?
Hirshberg: Almost three years ago now we sat down with Sledgehammer and talked about “what next?” As you know, at the time we had some games that were taking place in the future, both released and in development. That was new to the franchise. It was the right thing to do, and it opened up some innovations and freshness in gameplay that the franchise needed, but we felt like after that, we were trying our best to see three years in the future, and we thought it might be a good time to go back to our roots.
I remember saying, “I really want to play a WWII game made by Sledgehammer Games.” Sledgehammer has that cinematic storytelling gene, that impact in their creative approach that is really well-suited to the anguish and the humanity of the WWII setting. To their credit, they talked to the team, got excited about it, and got on board. We’re all over the opportunity. It’s been off to the races from there.
Everyone talks about “boots on the ground.” I think of it a little differently, in terms of a human scale. There’s a vulnerability to the way you feel when it’s just a man and a gun. That’s what taking Call of Duty back to its roots means to me, that sense of vulnerability. And I think it’s a great game. You’ll play it in a few minutes. In multiplayer we have a new mode, War mode, a collaborative team objective-based mode. We have the divisions approach in multiplayer, which is a unique way of creating your character and selecting your character. Make sure you see the single-player level, too.
Hirshberg: Both got off to a great start when we revealed them a month or two ago. I think we’ve just increased our momentum this week with the assets we’ve put out. As great as the assets are doing on YouTube and social media, though, the response from people who’ve been hands-on in the booth has been the most encouraging to me.
GamesBeat: The hard thing here seems to be anticipating fan taste in any given year, because you’re doing that three years ahead of time. Sci-fi seemed to be a good direction at first. It was very well-received.
Hirshberg: It’s a challenge. What a difference a year makes, right? Black Ops II, Advanced Warfare, Black Ops III, these were all really well-received, high-performing games. Infinite Warfare was a really good, quality product. But it was clearly one future game too many when it came out.
GamesBeat: When it comes to anticipating what fans want in a WWII game, it seems like the technology has caught up to where you can do it justice in a different way.
Hirshberg: Certainly the level of graphic fidelity, the level of emotional connection you have with a human character in a game, the level of immersive, photorealistic environments — all of that has gotten exponentially better since the last time we were in the WWII setting. As a result, I think the impact and the feeling is incredible. It’s a game that not only plays great, but it feels great.
GamesBeat: Even within WWII games, players have expectations. You have to do the D-Day, Omaha Beach scene.
Hirshberg: If we didn’t do it, they’d say, “Where’s the D-Day scene?” When we do it, they say, “Oh, another D-Day scene.” The key to just do it great, whatever you do. But I thought the approach the team took from a narrative standpoint in the campaign was great. It’s all in the European theater. They’re all real-life environments. Some of them have been sort of under-covered in our pop culture examinations of WWII. Obviously there’s the big Christopher Nolan movie about Dunkirk coming now, but there’s a Dunkirk element to our game that was in it from the very beginning….
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