Call of Duty is going back to WWII – Is that a good call?

It honestly feels like we’re watching the Call of Duty franchise take ten steps forward, and nine steps back.

So, on April 26th, 2017, Activision released the trailer for the new Call of Duty during a livestream, and it confirms that the game, Call of Duty: WWII, will be taking place in the time period of World War II.

You follow a division called the Bloody First as they try to complete their assigned missions, including the Landing at Normandy. The story seems to be a much larger focus for the game, even with hints about a new multiplayer mode that will be narrative driven with more tactics. Divisions will replace classes, and that’s about all we really know about the game, aside from the fact that it releases on November 3rd 2017.

Now, I must say that I’m not a big fan of the new Call of Duty setting, mostly because it’s already been done to a heavy extent, especially in this franchise. You have Call of Duty: World at War, Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, Call of Duty 3, and the first Call of Duty. I’m not saying that WWII isn’t an interesting place for a game to take place, especially if it’s driven by historical facts, but the series has really covered it a lot. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was enjoying the future warfare, if at least hoping for them to polish it and make it its own story arch that might become more like a large scale combat affair, rather than limited to 16 players in a match.

With that in mind, there’s going to be a Headquarters spot where the game will award recognition to players, much like the Call of Duty Club website that had hung around for awhile, but a bit more flashy.

One of the reasons that people seem to be liking WWII is the fact that it rivals the Battlefield 1 idea of going back to the roots. But it really is detrimental to the overall franchise, for they keep using ideas over and over again. People used to joke, and probably still do, about how CoD is just copying itself over and over again, and that seems to be what they’ve gone back to.

At least the Advanced Warfare and beyond titles tried to have more interesting technology – 3D Printer guns, and energy weapons – but taking the franchise back to the second World War is going to be ridiculously limiting, especially because it will be removing the fast movement options that we grew to love in Infinite Warfare and Black Ops 3. This is of course assumption and until further details drop it’s hard to be sure, but it really is difficult to fly through the air and wall run if you don’t have thrusters…which definitely won’t be in CoD: WW2 unless they want to do a complete satire of it itself.

Now, will it be a fun game? Yeah, and that’s pretty much nailed on. It really isn’t too hard for Call of Duty to ruin their formula at this point, but it really will be more limiting than recent installments in the series. Of course, time will only tell, so set your watches to November 3rd, and mark your calendars, for war – sometimes changes.