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Prior to Call of Duty's current batch of games set in the future, Activision was actually looking to experiment with the series and took pitches for various spin-off titles. This led to Call of Duty: Roman Wars, where the player takes on the role of a soldier in Julius Caesar's army. The game was in development for years before ultimately being canned but a video posted online this week has given us a good look at what could have been.
Call of Duty: Roman Wars was a first-person/third-person shooter in development at Vicarious Vision, who now work on the Skylanders series instead. The in-game footage was released by GamesRadar, in a video going over the rise and downfall of the project.
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9fGcvDt4dA']
The game was in development from 2008 onward with a release date projected for 2013. The title was intended for release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 but given the timing, this could have also ended up as a launch title for the PS4 and Xbox One.
The idea behind this game was actually positively received behind closed doors at Activision but eventually, the publisher decided that it would be safer to release Call of Duty: Advance Warfare instead. Activision also didn't want to over-saturate the market with a main-line Call of Duty title and a spin-off in the same year, according to the sources cited in the video.
KitGuru Says: Call of Duty gets a lot of flack for being too similar each year, so it is interesting to see that Activision was experimenting with such different ideas prior to the current generation of consoles. Do you guys think Activision should have continued experimenting with Call of Duty spin-offs?
I see Ubisoft Logos
Why would they only want to develop it under the CoD name? Surely that would only cause confusion with gamers anyway. Why not build a different franchise, Activision would have definitely had the money to support it, and I don’t doubt that gamers would relish the chance of fighting in Caesar’s armies.
Name recognition. Kotick axed entire franchises that didn’t show “high exploitability” (i.e. endless annual sequels) so sticking the CoD name on it was likely the only way they could’ve gotten it out the door in the first place.
I’m not a CoD fan in the slightest, but I do think it’s a shame this game didn’t get released. A new historical FPS would’ve been nice. I also like the helmet windowing effect seen in the first-person viewpoint.