Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Developer: High Moon Studios Co-Dev with Sledgehammer Games
Genre: Single-player/Co-op/Multiplayer; First-Person; Shooter
Engine: CoD Tech
Platforms: Playstation 3; Playstation 4; Xbox 360; Xbox One: Microsoft Windows
Released: November 2014
Gameplay Overview: A Call of Duty entry with a near-future twist. The game featured tried-and-true FPS action in the Call of Duty style, but with the addition of the “Exo-suit”, which gave players new traversal abilities, like boost and double jump, special abilities like cloak, and access to sci-fi weaponry like lasers and homing grenades.
My Role: Senior Game Designer (generalist)
Duties: Level design and initial block out, gameplay scripting, bug-fixing, polish for half of the campaign mission, “Manhunt”
Responsibilities:
Principal design, blockout, and gameplay scripting for “Manhunt”, the sixth mission in the single-player campaign.
I specifically worked on the opening; the keyman scanning, follow, and takedown sequences; the post-sniper drone alleyway fights, and the sniper in the tower sequence.
After Transformers: War for Cybertron, High Moon was reallocated to the Call of Duty support division. Sledgehammer was taking the lead on “Advanced Warfare”, the eleventh entry in the series, and we stepped in to help.
Initially, we spent time ramping up on CoD tech and the Call of Duty toolset, including text-based scripting, which was a major change from Unreal’s blueprint system.
We supported each other as a design group so I was able to onboard and start prototyping ideas for the new mission relatively quickly.
I knew from my own experience with previous installments that big set pieces and gameplay variety were the two key ingredients of a good campaign mission (along with solid meat-and-potatoes gunplay).
Highlights for me were:
Brainstorming and pitching ideas for the mission that fit the high-level brief we were given. We considered many different locations and gameplay ideas.
The level of deep focus and high fidelity that we were able to achieve (and that the product demanded).
Learning text-based scripting and realizing both the power and risk involved with such a designer-driven system, at least on the campaign side.
Mission 6: Manhunt
On Manhunt, I started by blocking out and prototyping gameplay for the post-sniper drone alleyway fights and the sniper-in-the-tower sequence, while other designers on our team stood up other sections. I stayed with those sections till the end and later on also inherited the opening, the scanning sequence, and the safehouse infiltration sequence. I took all those sequences through polish, bug-fixing, and ship.
I most enjoyed building out and scripting the high octane shootouts in the post sniper drone alleyway section. My goal was to deliver something that felt like a classic wide-linear Call of Duty bread and butter shooting sequence. One that could feel at home even back in the old WWII or Modern Warfare Call of Duty entries.
To help achieve that, I did several case studies and deep dives of previous Call of Duty levels. I got the purest inspiration from War Pig, from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which featured a forward-push assault up a main street flanked by porous buildings. I played War Pig probably a hundred times, took copious notes, screenshots, and video, and wrote up a deep dive on it that I presented to the design group.
Armed with that info, I did my best to emulate, elevate, and adapt it to the needs of Advanced Warfare broadly and our mission specifically. Towards the end of development, near ship, we were visited by a cadre of Call of Duty execs and leadership to play through our level. I was not present in the playthrough, but my lead came to me afterward and told me that one of the people in the room after playing through the alleyway fight, exclaimed, ”F*** yeah, that’s Call of Duty! Which designer did that?” At that point, I knew I had achieved my goal, and after the game released, the entire mission received wide praise, often cited as one of the highlights of the whole campaign.