5 Wild Directions The Call Of Duty Series Could (Theoretically) Take

5. A Spin-Off In The Vein Of Frozen Synapse

Ever since the first Modern Warfare title, Call of Duty's single player campaign has been a heavily scripted interactive movie. It has many great, adrenaline-inducing moments, of course, but it's all heavily linear and boring after the first play-through. Thus, with this option, we will deal more with the single player side of the coin, although great multiplayer could also be derived. For once, why wouldn't we be the architects of our own CoD experience? Why wouldn't we be the ones who came up with all those gung-ho operations and the way they play out? Instead of being thrown into the boots of one operative, the player would take control of the entire squad, and each operative, as their turn comes up. Here's where the dynamic part comes in: The entirety of the mission would play out in a couple of seconds (in real time, without turns), while the player would control every single move his characters do in that small time window. If you played Frozen Synapse, you know exactly what I'm talking about. After completing a given amount of actions in ordinary, first person CoD view, you would decide whether you did a good job and then "lock" your move. If not, just redo the whole thing. Following your completion of one operative's actions, you would take control of the next one and do something else. When you're done, the AI (or the other player) takes control of his own men, trying to counter what you've done. After both sides have completed their turns, the action would play out in beautiful, cinematic slow motion. Add some rudimentary but deep level editor and you've got something that just might do the trick. Even on mobile platforms. It would be all about micro-management and chess-like approach to the game. A rather interesting take on the classic Call of Duty gameplay, wouldn't you agree?