I lucked into the Call of Duty series many years ago when my mom won a Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle at her work Christmas party. Not having any interest in the franchise until that point, that game won me over in a big way. Gorgeous graphics, a roller coaster ride of a single player campaign and wildly addictive multiplayer had me hooked. I went backwards to experience the original Modern Warfare as well as World at War, and kept up until Advanced Warfare.
As good as those games generally are, I don’t miss the series at all.
After years of leveling up and blasting my way through a series of bombastic campaigns, I’m just tired of the core formula. Moving the setting into the future and adding additional mobility options wasn’t enough to shake my sense of deja vu. This year is a big one, as Call of Duty is going back to WWII for the first time in about a decade, but that doesn’t have me excited either.
At this point, I don’t think there’s any amount of window dressing Activision could add to get me back. The fundamental tenants of the series are what have me down, and I think it’s too difficult for Activision to shake those things up. At a certain point, changing the fundamentals would not make it a Call of Duty anymore.
Just spitballing here, but the one potential shake-up I could see that would get me interested in is to spin the franchise off into a hero shooter, similar to Overwatch. Keep the game in a realistic setting, but design the game around unique character classes that need to work together as a team. It might step too much on Overwatch‘s toes, which are both owned by the same parent company. However, I don’t know what else Activision could do to get me back in without compromising the core Call of Duty experience.
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