CODNet

After much anticipation for more Call of Duty Ghosts information. Activision held their own pre-E32013 Press Conference called Call of Duty Ghosts All Access. At the All Access event held just moments ago, Activision and Infinity Ward unveiled a short portion of Call of Duty Ghosts single player gameplay…

In the first part of the All Access presentatkon, you start out underwater. In the “Into the Deep” mission the game takes you down under the Caribbean Seas. You will follow an enemy as they prepare for an underwater sneaking mission of sorts. Along the way, you’ll notice small details such as fish moving in real time, and they will move away when you’re close to them. Once you get to a climax point of the underwater campaign, you’ll control some kind of futuristic, portable, remote-controlled torpedo. Activision says the mission is an entire level that you will be playing a lot in. Meaning, it’s not as short as it was in Modern Warfare 3, where you only had to destroy a submarine and get out of the water and into the New York boat chase. In Call of Duty Ghosts, it’s more than that. In fact, you will be escaping from an “accident” that you’ve created earlier with the remote controlled torpedo. The enemy base comes crashing down and you’ve got to move fast!

Ever since Call of Duty Ghosts was revealed, the Call of Duty Dog has been the most talked-about squad member of Call of Duty Ghosts. Today, not only did we learn that Call of Duty Dog is playable, Activision and Infinity Ward unveiled the name of the dog: Riley! We have no idea if this is a killstreak in CODGhosts, but we do know that the dog’s in Single Player. In the “No Man’s Land” demo, which takes place 10 miles north of San Diego, it shows a camera, over Riley’s head. You are sneaking past the enemies and the dog will be helping you eliminate enemies without being noticed. You will walk through an abandoned house that’s destroyed, and is about to become a shaky situation moments later. As you head out, you’re treated to a nice shaky animation, where a abandoned house is being torn down by falling. Once you get to the same house, you will regain control of Riley once again. Riley sneaks, then runs at enemy, and you’re able to move. From here, Riley helps you scout enemies and your squad takes them out. You come to a new door, and your team mate breaks the door for Riley to jump in and bite enemies, they come out, and you’re able to shoot ‘em all. Demo ends here.

There’s another footage shown, but they’re extended videos of footage of what we’ve seen thus far. Its possible these footages will be shown during E32013. It shows some of the locations that we’re going to mission in.

If you’d like to know a little bit about Call of Duty’s story, IGN did a sneak-peak preview of Call of Duty Ghosts last night.

Call of Duty Ghosts will arrive to all current, and next generation consoles: Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PC, and Wii U. It will arrive worldwide on November 5th 2013. We’ll have more information about Call of Duty Ghosts as we get them.

Ever since Call of Duty Ghosts’ gameplay was revealed at the Xbox One announcement, people have been knocking on CODGhosts’ graphics. Most people think the CODGhosts doesn’t look “Next Gen,” even when IW made a comparison video to show the leap in tech and/or graphics. OPM conducted an interview with Infinity Ward to set the record straight about Call of Duty graphics and tech…

Infinity Ward’s Zach Volker explained why they’re building on an old engine:

Developing a new engine comes out of a necessity of something. So it comes out of necessity of what we have now is an open bandwidth that can accept more things going on and so maybe the current engine can’t push that. Or it comes out of a certain particular feature that we want to create that we haven’t been able to in the past. So looking at our current situation, focusing more on the next generation of hardware, we are now going to have the bandwidth to build many more things and our engine just can’t handle as much as we’d like to throw at it right now. And that necessitated the need to go onto a new engine. It’s a fine line when you define a new engine, and augmentations to an engine. What you want to be careful of is making too much of a distinction of a new engine. As we develop and we add features, at what point does it become a new engine? Because it’s impossible to develop a new engine from the ground up in a two year cycle. You would need an army of 200 engineers. So what we do is we say ‘okay what are the things that are significant and that we would say that are encompassing of the engine or its visual quality? Are those being upgraded in a significant way? Alright then, I think that warrants that we’ve got a new engine on our hands.

If you’d like to read the entire transcript of the above video, check the interview at Official PlayStatioon Magazine‘s article.

During Microsoft’s next generation Xbox reveal, Call of Duty Ghosts was revealed. [CODNet article] Activision also showed off the improvements that has been made in Call of Duty: Ghosts during the Xbox One reveal. See for yourself; How much of a leap CODGhosts is over Call of Duty: MW3…

If you think the game looks similar to Battlefield 3 or Battlefield 4, don’t fret. It’s because the Project Manager behind Battlefield over the last 5 years has jumped ship to team Activision. [Source] Not only that, Infinity Ward has confirmed that Raven Software and Neversoft are supporting them in developing Call of Duty Ghosts. [Source]

For the last 6 months, Activision has been teasing small little tidbits about the next Call of Duty title, we were all expecting it to be MW4. Activision peeled off the curtains to reveal that Call of Duty Ghosts is the final name of the next Call of Duty title. [CODNet article] They said the game will be revealed at Microsoft’s headquarters, during their Xbox Reveal. Well, it did actually happen just a few minutes ago. Enjoy behind the scenes with Infinity Ward…

Stephen Gaghan, the award winning writer of films such as “Traffic,” and “Syriana” will be writing the story. Stephen also directed “Syriana.” Call of Duty Ghosts will be a completely new story. Infinity Ward was quick to reiterate that Call of Duty: Ghosts is not a reboot. It won’t be a big spectacle, or large scale like Modern Warfare 3.

Info we know so far:

- It’s been 10 years. They don’t remember anything, they are pondering about memories.
- Ghosts is a faction (as you can see from the patches on their arms), but according to many news sources such as this one, the game is about two brothers who wants to join this “Ghosts” group.
- Call of Duty: Ghosts is not connected to Modern Warfare 3.
- The game seems to take place in present day scenario.
- Ghosts will run on a new engine.
- There will be new animations in Call of Duty Ghosts.
- CODGhosts will be locked at 60 frames per second, meaning ultra-silk movements. The trailer above does NOT do the game justice.
- You’ll be underwater in some missions – and boy it looks beautiful.
- Dogs will be a major part of Call of Duty Ghosts, if comments by IW employees is anything to go by. They’ll sniff out explosives, be your guide through unforeseen circumstances, basically acting as your AI buddy. It’ll attack enemies for you, too.
- DLC will be timed exclusive to Xbox platform(s) once again.
- It’ll be on PC, Wii U, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.

Call of Duty Multiplayer will be reinvented.
- Major new innovation: Dynamic Maps. Ghosts’ maps will be interactive; they’ll have earthquakes, floods (like Black Ops 2′s Uprising pack), logs & objects falling off and crushing players.
- IW has not revealed whether it’s triggered by players, or they go off on it’s own.

“Looking at the interactivity of environmental maps, you start to think ‘what if we could do something different here in this level, that’s appropriate for this level but not for maybe any over MP map? This map is very different. This is something we can do here that isn’t appropriate for any other MP map.’ It spitballed the idea of coming up with some very specific scenes,” says Volker.

“One of the levels has an earthquake that’s constantly going on and off through the level that starts to effect things in different ways. But that’s only that one MP map. So it was really an idea of how can we push things further and this was a really creative way of exploring that.”

- Character customization will be further expanded. It was in Black Ops, but IW is not restricting you to loadout selection. Full-on control.
- Heads, face paint, uniforms, scuba gear are few customizations that you’ll be able to make in Call of Duty Ghosts. It makes sense that their teaser video showed the varying types of masks. [CODNet article] They’re playing on the whole customization of CODGhosts.

To learn more about other multiplayer info that we know thus far, click here.

Possible additions in Call of Duty Ghosts:
- Underwater battles in Multiplayer.
- SmartGlass integration. [Source]

There will be more info about Call of Duty Ghosts come E32013. However, Call of Duty Ghosts will be available for current, and next generation consoles on November 5th, 2013.

Call of Duty: Ghosts has been confirmed. If you pre-order Call of Duty: Ghosts, you get a free poster, and voucher for a Ghost Weapon Camo. A Black Ops 2 player went out and got his Call of Duty: Ghosts pre-order. He found the Ghost Camo in his Black Ops 2 menu and he decided to show off the camo to his subscribers… Enjoy!

Are you interested in the new Ghost Camo in Black Ops 2? Does it entice you to pre-order Call of Duty: Ghosts?

It’s been a while since the first Call of Duty: Ghosts leak. In that leak, there were first talk of multiplayer gameplay. Then, many websites started talking about new multiplayer mechanics that may be released into the next iteration of the Call of Duty series. [Source]

What we know about Call of Duty: Ghosts gameplay thus far:
- Allegedly to be set in the future.
- Will use present-day weaponry.
- Spec Ops mode will be replaced with something else.

New player options…
- Players can slide forward.
- Players can take a peak around the corners.

New loading screens…
- Will be dynamic.
- Will allow you to rappel from helicopters.
- Will allow you to breach and clear.
Sounds like a next gen game to me.

Other websites are saying:
- You can slide forward with your knees.
- When in prone position, you can roll to the side.

Since Call of Duty has been confirmed, these are new information:
- Single player will have some destuctible environments.
- Maps in Call of Duty Ghosts will be more interactive.
- Call of Duty Ghosts will feature traps.

Source: NowGamer

More information is to come soon.

It has been a crazy week for Activision, Infinity Ward, and Call of Duty in general. After a massive leak, followed by confirmations by GameStop, Activision today released a trailer, not only to confirm Call of Duty Ghosts, it also teased at a much bigger reveal…

As you can see, Activision will reveal Call of Duty Ghosts at Microsoft’s next generation Xbox reveal on May 21st. Activision also released the Facebook page for Call of Duty Ghosts. They posted a disclaimer about the page, too:

“Official Call of Duty Ghosts Facebook Page. ESRB Rating: Pending

Any information or content which we make available on our Facebook page is for your personal use only; you may not use it commercially. All intellectual property rights in such information and content belong to Activision. Anything you submit to our Facebook page may be used, reproduced, modified, disclosed, transmitted, published, broadcast and/or posted elsewhere, in whole or in part, either by us or by other users. We can also use any ideas, concepts or techniques that you post. We reserve the right to take down this Facebook page at any time without notice.

© 2013 Activision Publishing Inc. Activision and Call of Duty are registered trademarks. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners.”

Looks like they’re trying to keep all leaks contained as much as possible with this disclaimer. Nonetheless, pre-orders has started for Call of Duty Ghosts [as per the video above] at GameStop, and Amazon. These listings currently show PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and it will also come to Wii U. [Source] If you pre-order Call of Duty Ghosts, you will get a weapon that is coated in Ghost skin. [Source]

Finally, Activision posted a press release to clarify the thought that went into making Call of Duty Ghosts:

Prepare for the next generation of Call of Duty. The franchise that has defined a generation of gaming is set to raise the bar once again with the all-new Call of Duty: Ghosts. Published by Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, and developed by Infinity Ward, the studio that created the original Call of Duty and the seminal Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series, Call of Duty: Ghosts ushers in the next generation of the franchise. The new title delivers a riveting all-new gameplay experience built on an entirely new story, setting and cast of characters, all powered by a new, next generation Call of Duty engine that redefines the series for the next generation.

“Infinity Ward set the gold standard for first-person action for a generation, and they’re going to do it again with Call of Duty: Ghosts,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, Inc. “Ghosts delivers an all-new story, all-new characters, an all-new Call of Duty world, all powered by a next generation Call of Duty engine, which is a leap forward for the franchise. Infinity Ward is going all-in to create the next generation of Call of Duty worthy of the world’s greatest fans.”

“Everyone was expecting us to make Modern Warfare 4, which would have been the safe thing to do. But we’re not resting on our laurels,” said Mark Rubin, executive producer of developer Infinity Ward. “We saw the console transition as the perfect opportunity to start a new chapter for Call of Duty. So we’re building a new sub-brand, a new engine, and a lot of new ideas and experiences for our players. We can’t wait to share them with our community.”

To see an exclusive first look at Call of Duty: Ghosts tune in to Xbox: the Next Generation Revealed on May 21 at 10AM PDT on Xbox.com, Xbox LIVE or SPIKE TV for the debut of the all-new game from Infinity Ward.

“We are consistently thrilled with the overwhelming response received from critics and consumers alike to the Call of Duty series, which has firmly established its home on the Xbox 360 with the game’s largest and most engaged community,” said Don Mattrick, president of the interactive entertainment business at Microsoft. “With Call of Duty: Ghosts, we have no doubt that our longtime partners, Activision and Infinity Ward, will raise the bar higher than ever before for this incredible franchise.”

Starting today, fans can begin pre-ordering their copy of Call of Duty: Ghosts at retail outlets worldwide.

“There’s no other video game property like Call of Duty. It’s the biggest game franchise on the planet that has had some of the biggest game entertainment launches in history,” said Tony Bartel, president of GameStop. “We are very excited for the launch of Call of Duty: Ghosts, as we transition to next generation consoles.”

Call of Duty: Ghosts will release on Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system and PC on November 5. Call of Duty: Ghosts will also be available for next generation platforms.

Source: Activision Press Release

After a huge Call of Duty Ghosts leak, there seems to be more and more confirmations about Call of Duty Ghosts. GameStop got ahold of instructions about putting up signage for a huge reveal on May 1st. [Source] Now, ahead of the reveal on May 1st, GameStop put up signs for… Call of Duty Ghosts. [Source]

There are two posters surrounding Call of Duty Ghosts:

Call of Duty Ghosts will go on sale on November 5th, 2013

As you can see, the game will be developed by Infinity Ward, and will be released on November 5th, 2013. Next up is a marketing poster to go along with the above poster…

The face of a Ghost.

GameStop, Inc. says the game will go on pre-order on May 1st, and there will be a reveal on May 1st. Shortly after this huge leak by GameStop, the Call of Duty Instagram was updated to include the a high-res version of the above image, here. A twitter user has found a Call of Duty Ghosts shirt, lanyards, and posted it to twitter users. IGN posted another image to show what pre-order bonus there is, and shows the character a little better.

No platform has been revealed thus far, but we’ll know more soon.

At first, Tesco Corporation made a listing of Call of Duty Ghosts on their website with a boxart, and no other information. It has since been taken down. [Source] I investigated Tesco’s past history with regards to leaks. [MW4Blog article] It follows the Modern Warfare reveals timeline. More leaks were made since that time, pointing at Call of Duty Ghosts. None of this has been confirmed by Activision, nor Infinity Ward, or any other developer working on the title.

GameStop and similar retailers have gotten their hands on marketing materials for a huge reveal on May 1st. [Source] The marketing material doesn’t show the name of the game. So, one could assume the name is still up in the air. Tesco once again revealed more information about Call of Duty Ghosts:

The franchise that has defined a generation of gaming is set to raise the bar once again with the all-new Call of Duty®: Ghosts. Published by Activision and developed by Infinity Ward, the studio that created the original Call of Duty and the seminal Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® series, Call of Duty: Ghosts ushers in the next generation of the franchise, delivering a riveting all-new gameplay experience built on an entirely new story, setting and cast, all powered by a new next-generation Call of Duty engine.

It’s been taken down once again. [Source] More, and more leaks have come online, this time, it’s from Activision’s own official Call of Duty site. [Source] Then, users started to dig into the website and unearthed that “The ghosts are real.” [Source] It’s a mosiac of Call of Duty players across Facebook, and Twitter. You can add yourself to the mosiac, too!

Soon, we’ll know the official name of the game. Very soon.

With Black Ops 2 “Uprising” making it’s way to Xbox Live on April 16th, there has been a lot of talk, and hype that is surrounding the new Zombies mode that’s called “Mob of the Dead” which is the sequel to the original episodic “Call of the Dead” content. Mob of the Dead is the story of four strangers stuck in Alcatraz. Those strangers are Billy Handsome, Al “The Weasel” Arlington, Salvatore “Sal” DeLuca, and Michael “Finn” O’Leary. Yes, you’ve guessed it: Prohibition-era mobsters. Their mission: Escape from Alcatraz, and find the plane that gets them out of there.

Mob of the Dead has a cast of some well-known actors and they are Chazz Palminteri, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Madsen, and Ray Liotta. Just like “Call of the Dead” before it, Activision is going all out with this Map Pack. It’s easy to see why. Enjoy the new trailer!

Microsoft interviewed the folks at Treyarch to get a “behind-the-scenes” look at Mob of the Dead, to get a better idea of what the episode is about.