According to rumors, Call of Duty is getting a whole new subfranchise in 2027, this time developed by Sledgehammer Games. This new series won’t be futuristic (God forbid) nor a continuation of SG’s previous titles like Advanced Warfare, nor, unfortunately, put this tired old franchise on a hiatus.
As reported by Insider Gaming, Sledgehammer Games is allegedly going to spearhead an entirely new Call of Duty subfranchise set in modern times, probably akin to the rebooted Modern Warfare games. This new series will put movement at its core and will not feature devil-spawned jetpacks that everyone hates. What’s more, the rumors also say martial arts could feature in the game, with stuff like “karate chops” coming to the series. Big sigh.
Though we should really not fan the flames with rumors and such until we get official information, if anything above is true (or if Activision doesn’t put CoD on pause after this next one comes out) we’re going to go down the same old, tiresome, and beaten path of new year – new CoD.
We’ve had countless “subfranchises” either come or be attempted, from the MW reboot, the billionth Black Ops installment, Advanced and Infinite Warfare, Ghosts, and so on. Most of these were so good that, if the above is real, Activision outright gave up on them, trying for the umpteenth time to start a new one, as if we haven’t seen enough of this game already.
And yes, I said game deliberately, as MW2019 was the last time anything fundamentally changed in CoD. The stuff in between went from bad to worse, what with Vanguard, MW3, Cold War, and BO6 all being borderline the same regurgitated thing, aspiring to be as flashy as possible by using the new engine and providing literally nothing else.
New or not, this apparent upcoming subfranchise won’t provide enough of a shake-up, the karate chops be damned. Activision genuinely needs to press pause on this entire series and rethink how it approaches its development. Having so many studios with so many visions (and, honestly, varying artistic capabilities) produce the same series is simply not working. Either let Infinity Ward handle the whole thing once every few years (like DICE and Battlefield) or just kill it altogether.
Either way, people only stand to win, as CoD hasn’t been CoD for a very, very long time.
