Call of duty: advanced warfare

For Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, we were tasked with developing the sixth level in the campaign, Manhunt. We received a high-level treatment for the level that asked for a sniping sequence that goes wrong, followed by a chase sequence that ultimately ends in the death of the terrorist leader, Hades. From there, we developed what would ultimately become one of the highest rated levels in the campaign. The link below is how one reviewer described it.

Although I didn't initially work on the beginning of the level, the infiltrate and scan sequences of the level soon became my responsibility. As a player, you begin the level undercover and try to identify a terrorist agent through the CCTV cameras in the market, and then follow him to the terrorist safehouse. I made several key design improvements, including the addition of force feedback, camera placement, timing, and difficulty. I worked closely with our UI artists and animators to carry this sequence through these revisions and then in to the polish and bug fix phases.

During this sequence, the player performs a stealth takedown and then infiltrates a safehouse. I took charge of this sequence after it had already undergone a couple of iterations. My primary contributions were to improve pacing, polish, and bug fix the experience. To that end, I made key decisions involving scripting and animation that ultimately made this part of the level a seamless experience that even supports a couple of different ways of playing through it..

I worked on Manhunt together with one other designer and we traded pieces of the level back and forth, but one piece that I owned from beginning to end was the Alleys fight. This section was a more traditional combat sequence where the player pushes forward against entrenched enemy combatants in a dense urban setting. For this sequence I researched all of the best forward-slog combats from the previous call of duty games. In particular, I did a deep dive on War Pig, one of the missions from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. In that mission, the player escorts a tank down the middle of the main street in a war-torn Middle Eastern city. I loved how the level provided multiple paths on either side of the street while still ultimately funneling players in to a climactic linear combat at the end. I wrote a detailed analysis of War Pig before I built the Alleys and arranged a discussion with the design team. In the end, I created a layout that afforded players multiple paths and plenty of freedom to tackle the challenge how they chose while still funneling them towards the next objective.

In the next part of the mission, the player is pinned down by a sniper with a high-powered rifle in a bell tower. The sniper is unassailable until you get close. Until then, you have to stay moving when out in the open and scramble between pieces of cover. This sequence started as one my early prototypes, and the end result stayed mostly true to the initial design. I wanted a pace-breaker for the level that would create a feeling of urgency and danger for the player without relying on standard combat. To achieve this, I knew we couldn't use a standard AI enemy, so we created a fully script-driven system that fires at and around the player, creating the illusion of a powerful sniper. In reality, the "sniper" is just an invisible point on a wall.

Here's a sample playthrough of Manhunt, the sixth campaign mission in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.