.. is in these two trailers.
Here's the Call of Duty: Ghosts reveal trailer. It looks really dramatic and I like the color and graphics a lot. I'd love to see some straight gameplay, but it's meant to make a big splash. I actually didn't see this during last week's Activision E3 Judges Week event. Top brass from both Activision and Infinity Ward, including Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg, talked about how Ghosts would drive home innovation and immersion through next-generation graphics technology. Of course, if you watch the trailer below, you'll get all of this information the same way I did sitting at an event space in Los Angeles last week.
This is the Behind the Scenes preview video. Activision flew me to Southern California to show me this video ahead of Xbox One's debut. I didn't play Call of Duty: Ghosts for myself, but I did see a live demo of the developer tools used to build Ghosts for Xbox One, as well as an underwater gameplay demo (more details on that below).
Inside the developer tools, Infinity Ward walked us through the Sub-D tech that gives Ghosts that next-gen smoothness as seen in the videos above. Sub-D determines which surfaces need a polygonal boost to smooth out. In Los Angeles, they kept going on about how smooth it makes your weapon's iron sights. Flipping back and forth between hip-fire and ADS, I couldn't really tell the difference.
Infinity Ward and Activision claim that Sub-D and a host of other graphical improvements will immerse players further into Call of Duty's world. Stephen Gaghan, writer of Traffic, will capitalize on that added immersion with a whole lot of emotion between the player and the narrative, which focuses on Seal Team operatives scattered around the globe.
I'd like to tell you that Call of Duty: Ghosts will absolutely be better on Xbox One, but I can't. I'd like to say that the leap in graphical fidelity does make an emotional and resonant difference in the player's experience, but I can't. I only watched people talk about Call of Duty, and watched people play Call of Duty.
The gameplay I saw revolved around a pair of scuba-soldiers, headed somewhere in a beautifully rendered ocean environment, complete with sharks and fish. The fish really did swim out of the first-person-diver's way! The duo divers were set upon by enemy soldiers, but it didn't take long for the player used a guided torpedo to bring down a massive submarine. As the two soldiers swam through wreckage and a sunken lighthouse, more and more debris floated down to trap the player.
Perhaps more relevatory, multiplayer maps will dynamically change through player behavior or staged progression, meaning Call of Duty diehards can learn levels, but the action might always take a surprising turn. I'm genuinely intrigued by this, but we saw little more than a few key frames of map-evolution.
And that's it. Call of Duty: Ghosts will be available for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. DLC will once again be timed-exclusive to Xbox (though I'm still not clear on if that means both One and 360, or just One).
