NEW YORK — What’s a “Warnado”? Aside from a combination of a “war” and a “tornado,” of course.
“Warnado” was one of the possible subtitles for “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare,” the first-person shooter coming out this fall for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. The makers of the game said at this summer’s E3 that it could give “Halo 3″ a run for its money.
“We had someone generate thousands of names,” Vince Zampella, studio co-head of “CoD4″ developer Infinity Ward, told GameFile while sitting in a dimly lit room at the Grand Hyatt last week. On a large TV, he had a preview-build of “CoD4″ on pause. Later in the day, after showcasing the demo for several more outlets, hotel security would knock on the door to complain about the noise. But for the moment, the only loud sound in the room was Zampella’s laughter as he recalled those suggested names. “One of them was ‘Warnado,’ ” he said. “Or was it ‘Warricane’?”
Zampella and the rest of Infinity Ward said no to “Warnado” and other suggested titles — including their own “Modern Warfare” — some time ago. He ran through a lot of other things to GameFile that were also rejected in the process of shaping their upcoming game.
But before all those negatives, note some positives about what “CoD4″ is. It’s the return, after a year off, of Infinity Ward to the first-person shooter franchise it built into a market leader. A different development team, Treyarch, developed last year’s “Call of Duty 3.” It was the first game in the franchise to take place in the modern era instead of World War II. And it’s the winner of Best Action Game from the E3 Games Critics Awards. It pits the player in two interlocked campaigns — as an American combating insurgents in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, and as a British SAS trooper in Russia, where the unrest in the Middle East is instigated. It has cutting-edge graphics. It’s cinematic. And it sports a multiplayer mode that Infinity Ward says will be the most fully featured yet.
Back to those responses Zampella delivered in the negative. Here’s a not-so-tough blow: The player-controlled lead characters won’t have feet. Many first-person shooters leave out the feet, and “CoD4″ is yet another. Why? “It’s a lot of work for very little payoff,” Zampella said. “It doesn’t really bring a lot to the game. We have a finite amount of time we can put into the game. I think it’s better served in something that’s a mechanic in the game or something cool that you’re going to see a lot than if I happen to look down to see my feet.” Is that the most significant “no”? No.
Infinity Ward and “CoD” publisher Activision have been crystal clear that this new game is a return to the form of “CoD2,” an acknowledgement that Treyarch’s work on “CoD3″ was not as well received by franchise fans. So will Infinity Ward make every annual installment of the series from now on? No.
“We need two years to make a game,” Zampella said, adding that any given single-player level takes six months to make. Would it be healthier, then, for “Call of Duty” to be released every other year or for it to continue swapping studios? Don’t ask a yes-or-no question — then the answer can’t be a no: “That’s a tough one and I think it’s debatable every way,” Zampella said. “If you can have somebody else do something else and leapfrog everybody every two years, that’s not so bad. I think a year is a long time between games. If a game is good enough and I love the franchise, then, the following year, I’m OK playing another one.”
The game will be coming to Xbox 360 and PS3, and Zampella said there shouldn’t be any discernible differences between the two versions. He said the PS3 version won’t use the motion-sensitivity of that system’s Sixaxis controller. “It doesn’t really fit.”
It’s in vogue for first-person shooters to sometimes show their protagonist’s body in full 3-D. “Halo 3″ zooms out and shows Master Chief as an onscreen character whenever the player makes the Chief pick up the game’s largest, two-handed guns and cannons. “Metroid Prime 3″ zooms out of heroine Samus’ helmet when she rolls into a ball. Will there be any similar third-person views of the player’s character in “CoD4″? “We did not consider it,” Zampella said. “It’s not that it’s bad. It fits some games but it didn’t fit our vision of this game. It’s about the immersion and being that character. Once you pull out of the head [of the character] you’re like, ‘Wait, that’s not me.’ ”
Players won’t be able to see more of their character than hands (and lack of feet). Will they hear him? All the squad-mates and enemy soldiers talk, so would Infinity Ward program their lead character to speak? Zampella said … no. “I don’t want to walk into the room and [hear,] ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ [and then think,] ‘I do?’ If I want you to have a bad feeling, I need to portray it to you in the game, give you a reason to have a bad feeling, not just put a dialogue line in your head.”
“Call of Duty” is one of the rare game franchises that is lauded as an industry leader for both its single-player and multiplayer modes. Why not split the two modes and offer them as separate games on separate schedules? “It’s come up,” Zampella said, noting that what his team currently does is “almost like designing two games for the price of one.” Still, he was leaning toward keeping the solo and multi modes on one disc. “At the end of the day it’s expected and it’s what we do. I don’t think we’ve ever seriously considered splitting them up into two games.” So the answer? It’s no.
A few more negatives: Did the Infinity Ward team start comparing their game to “Halo 3.” No, the press did that. Did publisher Activision offer them a chance to make “Guitar Hero” before giving the series to “Tony Hawk” development studio Neversoft? No — and Infinity Ward is a “one-team studio” anyway, meaning one game at a time.
So to sum up, there is much that “CoD4″ isn’t. There is much that the “CoD” series won’t be. What is Zampella positive about? “It comes down to immersion and detail,” he said. “That’s what makes a ‘Call of Duty’ game: making the world around you come alive, be believable. When you’re there you forget you’re playing a game. It’s a cinematic experience.” There just wouldn’t have been anything believable about a game called “Warnado.” You can’t say no to that.
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