Call of Duty: Ghosts Preview - E3 2013

An annual E3 show wouldn't be complete for the mega-publisher Activision without showing off the latest title in the Call of Duty franchise. Following a reveal during Microsoft's Xbox One announcement, we had a chance to attend a session and see two levels from the game and hear the developers at Infinity Ward talk about the new engine and what progress is being made to bring Call of Duty to next generation platforms.

Call of Duty: Ghosts is a new sub-franchise for the popular series, and will be written by Stephen Gaghan who is best known for his work on films such as Traffic, which should translate into Ghosts having an intense and personal narrative. The game takes place following a devastating event that changed the global balance, with the United States no longer being a superpower. Ten years later, the game kicks off with you and your brother being one of the last remaining pieces of the US military. You then meet Ghosts, a band of elite soldiers waging a war against unknown forces.

Before kicking off the gameplay demo, we were shown technical video to further explore what the developers are doing to take the game into the next generation. A new visual engine has been created for greater visual fidelity. Things like displacement maps, advanced tessellation, and subdeep technologies have found their way to the game. While all these features are new to the franchise, the tech demo wasn't particularly impressive, given that many of these features have long existed in other shooter franchises.

We proceeded to the live gameplay demo, which saw you and your bother returning home to San Diego for the first time in many years. What they saw was a lot of destruction and merely shattered remains of a place they used to call home. The landscape was covered with huge ravines and collapsed terrain, with tremors still shocking the land every few minutes. With you was the service dog named Riley, who is said to play a crucial role in the game with abilities designed based on real US military tactics. Using a camera system on the dog, the player was able to take control of the animal and essentially play from the dog's perspective, utilizing stealth and surprise melee attacks to take out enemies while your brother sniped the rest.

The second level showcased actually took place underwater. The developers were quick to point out that the assault rifles we were seeing are in fact real and have the ability to be used in the deep. Our mission was to sabotage a ship off the coast. Employing much the same elements as on the ground, we followed the character's brother through some submerged structures, pausing to let patrols pass and taking out patrols in sync along the way. Periodic sonar waves also had to be avoided by staying in cover. Upon reaching our destination, we fired a manually guided missile to take out the ship. That's when things went bad.

It appears the explosion triggered some kind of underwater collapse, and we were right in the midst of it. The scene looked impressive, as underwater destruction swept away the player and got him trapped under rubble. But it wasn't long before your brother came to the rescue, and you had to make your way through the collapsing waterbed while occasionally taking out enemies. The demo concluded as we were faced with a great number of enemies jumping in from the surface.

What we saw from Ghosts marks yet another year of Call of Duty. Some fans will be thrilled to hear that, others may be underwhelmed. Action looks solid as always, and the addition of a dog is likely to provide some new gameplay experience just like remotely controlled technology did in Black Ops 2. With the arrival of next generation consoles, there is some concern that the game won't be able to compete right away with the likes of Battlefield or Crysis, but at least it should run at a smooth framerate that so many multiplayer gamers demand. Look for Call of Duty Ghosts to launch this fall for current generation consoles as well as Xbox One and PlayStation 4.