Call of Duty: Future Warfare Gameplay Leaks Online

Gameplay of a cancelled Call of Duty game seemingly titled Call of Duty: Future Warfare has leaked online out of nowhere. Call of Duty is one of the biggest franchises in all of entertainment. It has existed for over 20 years now and has had a new entry every single year from one of several studios. They’ve all been huge hits, but some have been significantly bigger than others such as the Modern Warfare and Black Ops games. There was a time where Call of Duty tried to get more experimental and riskier, but it didn’t stick. In 2014, Call of Duty flung itself into the future that overhauled the gameplay with new movement via exosuits and jet packs and eventually wall-running in later games. It was met with a mixed reception as some fans thought it was too different, while some felt it was the innovation and evolution the series needed.

However, it seems like Call of Duty had aspirations of going to the future much sooner than that. New gameplay of a Call of Duty game codenamed NX1 has randomly appeared online. The gameplay shows a menu similar to that of the original Modern Warfare trilogy and has a title known as “Future Warfare“. The player goes through a list with some of the prototype levels of which there are several and some of them take place in space. We know the gameplay is legit as ex-Call of Duty developer Brian Bright confirmed as much on Twitter. The level opens with a character named Walker on the moon waking up after being attacked. Walker and his allies retreat inside a base which is being assaulted and various people start getting sucked out after the airlock is breached. There’s not much else to see as the video ends as Walker is running through the base. Bright noted that this game was being developed by Neversoft after Infinity Ward “imploded” during the development of Modern Warfare 2 which resulted in key staff going off to found Respawn Entertainment.

For starters, Future Warfare was a domain registered by Activision back in 2010 along with Secret Warfare and Advanced Warfare, a title that would eventually be used for Sledgehammer’s 2014 game. This may suggest that these domain names were not just placeholders, but all games in active development for the Call of Duty franchise. The gameplay for Call of Duty: Future Warfare also may suggest some of this was recycled for Call of Duty: Ghosts, which would’ve been in the works around this time (the build is dated December 2011, just two years before Ghosts). The game opens with a mission set in space with zero-gravity gameplay, the UI colors/fonts are similar to Ghosts, and the protagonist is named Walker, which is the name of the main character from Call of Duty: Ghosts. There is also a weapon in Ghosts called the NX-1 Disruptor, which may have been a nod to the game’s roots as Future Warfare. Neversoft was also a support studio on Call of Duty: Ghosts, so it would make sense for some of these things to work their way into the 2013 release. Infinity Ward later went on to make Infinite Warfare, a Call of Duty game set in space, in 2016.