Call of Duty: WWII is being sold as return to the series’ roots, but the game is also looking to change and improve its multiplayer experience in a major way. The biggest innovation is Headquarters mode, the new hub where players can chat, share achievements, and compete in various friendly minigames and activities. Developer Sledgehammer Games has big ambitions for Headquarters, and recently gave Game Informer a chance to check out everything they’re planning.
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Some details about Game Informer’s Headquarters hands-on, including the fact that you can watch others open their loot boxes, have trickled out, but on the most recent episode of The Game Informer Show, hosts Dan Tack and Ben Hanson really delved into what they saw. You can check out video of the relevant discussion above, and a rundown of the important points, below…
The Basics
Tack started with a basic description of Headquarters mode…
“So, this is three days after D-Day, so when all the supply trucks and boats had come in after the invasion of Normandy. This is a zone you can actually walk around in and interact with people.”
…which Hanson elaborated on, dropping some details about an interesting perspective change, and how voice chat will work.
“It’s kind of like a circular path. You can’t run down to the water, it’s kind of a defined area. The easy analogy is the Tower from Destiny. It pops you into third person by default. You can’t shoot while walking around the area. There’s proximity-based voice chat.”
The Theater
Want to just take a load off and watch some other people play while in Headquarters? You can do that.
“You can go to the theater, and watch professionals play in there. The theater is like in Red Dead Redemption, and you can just sit down with other players, and there will be Twitch steams of, like, the Call of Duty championships and stuff. Sadly, it won’t be black and white.”
1v1 Battle Pit
But maybe you want to blow off a little steam? You can also engage in a few (somewhat) friendly 1v1 battles.
“Another thing you can do is the 1v1 Battle Pit, where it’s just you versus another player and other people can watch. There’s a one weapon ban, each person can ban a weapon, and you queue up for it. It’s old-school arcade style, so winner stays, loser gets bumped out. If you’re good you could continue cleaning house and get some reputation that way.”
VIP Prestige Area
There’s even special places for top-level players to hang out, because what would a social space be without special treatment for the cool kids?
“When you Prestige in this game, you go to the special VIP zone with the General. It’s Pride Rock. He’ll promote you in front of everybody and you’ll get a big call out. It’s way cooler than just being ‘Yup, I Prestiged, cool.’”
Social Score
And finally, there’s the thing tying all together – your social score. If you behave yourself in the Headquarters and engage in various special missions, you’ll boost your social score, which will result in better loot drops. It seems like Sledgehammer are really pinning their hopes on this system…
“The interesting thing, is Sledgehammer was like ‘Hey, you’re going to have a social score, and we want it to be as popular as the K/D ratio.’ If you’re a nice person, if you do cool things, you’ll get a thumbs up. In theory, it’s like a morality rating within Call of Duty.”
Well, all this stuff certainly sounds good, but, of course, Headquarters being a positive addition to Call of Duty: WWII will entirely depend on players behaving themselves. Headquarters could to be the thing to defeat the toxicity of CoD multiplayer, or it could make it even worse – we’ll just have to wait and see.
Call of Duty: WWII storms on the PC, Xbox One, and PS4 on November 3. You can check out all WWG’s latest Call of Duty coverage here.
[via Game Informer]
