It’s Okay to Be Concerned For the Future of ‘Call of Duty’

Have you seen the latest teaser trailer for the forthcoming third entry in Call of Duty's (now-)near-future-set Black Ops series? It's below. It's okay, I'll wait for you to catch up. Just promise me this: before pressing play, ensure you're sat beside a buddy. That way, should one of you start drifting off to sleep, the other can intervene with a poke or a prod, a kick or a flick, anything to keep your senses from completely shutting down.

Go on, have a look:

'Black Ops III', "Ember" Tease

We're used to movie-style marketing for big-budget video games, and this three-minute clip depicting a future where technology and humanity have become interwoven with inevitably dangerous results is certainly something that'd sit comfortably between the previews preceding any cinema's feature presentation. With its 28 Days Later-recalling post-rock soundtrack, it's stirring visions of a post-significant-events Earth spoiled by mankind's obsession with progression before a single frame has been retinally received. The editing is quick, cutting us from year to year, from the present to a future that exists mainly in the minds of scriptwriters charged with painting a scene for developers Treyarch to strategically position headshot-ready NPCs in front of.

It's so very, very boring. Isn't it? I mean, really, this is not looking a thing like the "loaded with innovation" game promised by publishers Activision in February. Okay, we're yet to see gameplay footage, but come on now: it's Call of Duty. You'll get the end of a gun, some sights, some enemy soldiers to murder. That side of the game's solo campaign appeal isn't changing. Which leaves story to fill the evolutionary void that the series' dyed-in-the-wool mechanics can't.

The next Call of Duty will be exciting. Working within the limitations imposed by the FPS genre, the last title in CoD history, late-2014's Advanced Warfare, had a Hollywood-guff story that sprinted along breathlessly, tossing the player from secretive private-military facilities to warring battleships to collapsing bridges to stealth sequences that were actually, surprisingly, okay. It was a good game – not amazing, not genre-reinventing, and a long way from leaving the impression that Modern Warfare did in 2007. Which is nothing to be ashamed of, at all. Back then, developers Infinity Ward harnessed the power of the PS3 and 360 consoles to deliver a shooter like no other before it, a blockbuster that kicked in the doors of gaming's most conservative and set fire to their furniture. First-person gaming's not been the same since. It's the marker against which all future releases will be measured, until a shooter successfully aims higher.

Might Black Ops III be that successor? A full reveal is coming on the 26th of April, so we'll have a better idea then of just how this chaotic future of Deus Ex: Human Revolution-style implants has impacted on the military that, undoubtedly, you'll be getting pretty familiar with when the game ships at the end of 2015. But having just recently played through the Twine game The Writer Will Do Something (you can play it too, for free, right here), I can't help but be snapped into "the room" with the good people of Treyarch while discussions were being had regarding this oh-no-we've-done-fucked-ourselves-again trailer.

"Okay, Writer, we need something gritty. Something urban. Something that speaks to those out there worried about change, about how these alien devices from overseas might one day upset the very way we live our American lives."

"Okay."

"We need dread, but not outright violence. We need greys, ambiguity, that art-house cinema vibe, that documentary presentation, but with blockbuster intent. We need doubt, seeded amongst all of our fans: is this the future we're making for ourselves, right now?"

"Right. That's great, and everything. I can do that. But, what's the game actually going to be like?"

"You know, killstreaks and that."

*Sigh*

I get it. I'm in a minority, a gamer who actually wouldn't mind a decent story side to a Call of Duty game, because as much as I enjoy spending time with its precision-engineered gameplay, I hate to do so in the company of strangers on the internet shouting garbage down the line as they gang up on me. Multiplayer of this kind holds zero appeal. If it does for you, cool, but I will never be that guy Twitch-streaming their death match superiority. Advanced Warfare in a solo capacity just about held together courtesy of its rollicking narrative and excellent showings from its main cast. Kevin Spacey might've been hamming it up as scheming Atlas CEO Jonathan Irons, but even him phoning it in is better than 99 percent of jobbing games industry actors, while protagonist performer Troy Baker is absolutely in that one percent.

Yet the powers that be behind Call of Duty need to take action – and they need to be engaging more with people like me. Their investment in the eSports world is there for everyone to see – they want their product to be a contender in that market, and are putting some serious money up to ensure that it moves into a position of major appeal for tournament players. But in the commercial sector, gamers are voting with cash of their own – and pre-orders are in serious decline. Eleven percent of British gamers who'd previously pre-ordered new titles are now doing nothing of the sort. That might not sound much, but the UK is the number one territory in Europe for pre-order revenue, so this sort of drop is enough for gaming trade publication MCV to declare the situation "a crisis".

Gamers have grown up. We're not kids, but a lot of us have got some of our own now. We've got mortgages to pay, or rent, or bread and baked beans to buy, so we're careful with our money. We scour the 'net and beyond for the best deals. We're willing to wait unless something really grabs us. With a game series like Call of Duty, which has released at least one new version of close-to-carbon-copy gameplay every year since launching in 2003, the excitement necessary to generate pre-orders, to gain a guaranteed user base ahead of release, is on the wane like never before. Black Ops III won't flop disastrously. It'll be a highly polished shooter that may, indeed, add something, however slight, to the tried-and-tested-and-someone-bought-a-yacht-off-the-back-of-them mechanics endemic to the series. Advanced Warfare's exoskeletons did bring greater verticality to play, which was welcomed – but nabbed-from-other-games-anyway twists on player movement aren't keeping CoD in pole position for the long term. There needs to be more, and it needs to come now.

So allow me a day or two, between this teaser and the gameplay reveal to come, to express a little concern about the state this iconic franchise finds itself in. I am worried that Call of Duty is, to quote VICE Gaming contributor Chris Schilling, becoming "our Coldplay". Reliably familiar. Undemanding. Box ticking and expectations fulfilling and nothing beyond. It could do with a shake up. So long as it's not "A Sky Full of Stars", pretty much anything's fair game for bringing into the mix.

I'm not expecting a truly radical reinvention that sends every FPS naysayer scurrying to their local GAME to pick up a copy before following the bullet-casing trail back through Wolfenstein: The New Order and Bulletstorm to Far Cry 2, Black and Freedom Fighters. But a change needs to come. The whole bleak, self-corrupted future setting has been done to death. Likewise guns-with-power-ups play where avatars don't only wield arms but also possess "magical" abilities – I mean, Plasmids have been around since the 1950s, right? Call of Duty deserves more, and that's the source of my concern. If the best in the game can't noticeably improve itself, what hope is there for the makers of titles living in its shadow?

@MikeDiver

Previously:

These Are the Things You Will Probably Only Ever Do in Video Games

The Movie Tie-In Video Games That You'll Never Play

I'll Always Love 'Grand Theft Auto'