Call of Duty returns to World War II the only way it
can — without fear

For Treyarch, the battle for street cred has been continual — and uphill. The Santa Monica–based studio is constantly being compared to their fellow Activision developers across town at Infinity Ward, having been commissioned to produce follow-ups to both the original Call of Duty (the United Offensive expansion pack) and Call of Duty 2 (2006’s Call of Duty 3).

Each time they’ve been penalized by the online community simply for not being Infinity Ward, despite the laudable critical and commercial success achieved by both of their aforementioned titles. Now they’re being put behind the proverbial 8-ball again: Call of Duty: World at War not only has to live up to the 10-scoring, platinum-selling, Game of the Year–nominated, more-popular-online-than–Halo 3 success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but it also has to do so back in World War II, a setting many thought the series left behind for good after Call of Duty 3.

For the unfairly dubbed “B team” of the franchise, however, this situation serves only as “a strong motivator,” claims Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia with complete conviction. So they’re taking off the gloves and fighting fire with fire…literally.

“T” FOR “TORTURE”

Any concerns about World at War being a paint-bynumbers, blood-free, soldiers-who-say–“Golly gee!” Call of Duty cash-in were put to rest in the opening moments of our demo, set near the beginning of the game. Captured by the Japanese following a nighttime raid, you and a fellow soldier are bound and bruised inside a hut looking out at a rainy village. Pressed for information by your ruthless Japanese captors, your compatriot refuses to break. So, as you watch, the interrogator takes his cigarette and extinguishes it in your ally’s eye. Following a bloodcurdling scream, the Axis foe asks again and receives the same silence. Mercilessly, the American’s throat is cut, sending an arterial spray jetting from his neck as his lifeless body falls limply to the dirt floor.

Just as you’re about to suffer the same fate, the cavalry rides in and saves you, lets loose a profanity or two at your newly dead hosts, hands you a rifle, and the action begins.

So while, yes, this is World War II yet again, it’s a setting — the Pacific theater of operations — that’s never been done well. Medal of Honor: Rising Sun was mediocre, and in a related comparison, the Xbox attempts at the jungles of Vietnam (Men of Valor, Conflict: Vietnam) were underwhelming. And obviously, this effort — like Call of Duty 4 before it — won’t be rated Teen by the ESRB.

“We’re not censoring ourselves,” Lamia acknowledges. “Our marching orders are simply, ‘Make the best game we can make.’”

TACTICAL ADJUSTMENT

The move to the Pacific (there’s also a Russian campaign where you’ll march on Berlin, though we weren’t shown any of it) doesn’t mean a simple new coat of paint on the same gameplay canvas, however. The real-life battles fought in that campaign necessitated a change in tactics by the Americans, explains Call of Duty’s longtime military advisor, the affable U.S. Army Lt. Col. (Ret.) Hank Keirsey.

“The Japanese fought to the death,” he reminds us. “Surrender was an absolute dishonor.”

In the context of World War II, this meant that they’d hide in trees for days and wait to snipe a passing American soldier, or an entire battalion might feign death in a field before all leaping up and ambushing the inspecting U.S. troops, who’d let down their guard to investigate.

We saw the latter scene play out later in the same Makin Island fishing-village level. Upon reaching a moonlit field littered with Japanese bodies, your commanding officer begins to question what happened. Did another team beat us here? We’d better radio in to see what’s… Holy s@#%! Up they spring, and now you have a full-blown ambush on your hands.

Of course, tactics like these tended to make our troops angry, Bruce Banner–style, and Keirsey explained how the Americans eventually stopped taking prisoners and would instead make it a priority to kill every last enemy they came across. It got to a point where the military brass had to start offering bounties to soldiers who brought prisoners back alive — after all, you can’t gather intelligence from a corpse.

The anger comes through loud and clear in the game, just like at the end of the aforementioned ambush scene, in which one of your boys is executed after an American knocked to the ground is run through with a sword by one of the Japanese. World at War is definitely not a sanitized tale of WWII combat.

ANGER LEADS TO HATE, AND HATE LEADS TO…FIRE?

Another way the riled-up American troops changed their tactics in the tropics was to burn foliage to flush out the guerrilla-strategizing Japanese soldiers. That’s right — they busted out flamethrowers. A key new feature in World at War, the fire-shooter is your best defense against the creeping paranoia of nemeses inching among trees or through nearby grass. Simply ignite the brush and watch screaming enemy soldiers be charbroiled — or aim into the top of a tree and see an opponent’s burning body tumble down, then hang like a hideous piñata by the rope he’d tied to his ankles to secure him while he slept, lying in wait for you. You’ll also employ the flamethrower to flush out foxholes, beach bunkers, and other dug-out hidey-holes.

“We want you to have the feeling that the Japanese are stalking you,” Lamia says.

The technology used to bring the flamethrower to life is decidedly impressive — after all, these guys have experience rendering the weapon. A big chunk of the World at War team consists of the Gray Matter folks (Return to Castle Wolfenstein), who were absorbed into Treyarch in 2005. Oh, and there’s the little fact that World at War is using Call of Duty 4’s butter-smooth graphics engine. (And yes, before you ask, framerate whores, “Our goal is 60 frames per second,” Lamia tells us.)

PARTY ON

Of course, having the keys to Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare engine also means Treyarch will get the unparalleled multiplayer suite for their own use. First of all, every good thing you loved in CoD4 is back — which, of course, is most of it. Perks, including many of the core CoD4 features like stopping power and bullet penetration, return for World at War, although some will be relabeled with era-appropriate monikers.

Also returning bigger and better is the lobby’s party system. More in line with the full range of options Halo 3 offered, you’ll not only be able to have private parties, but also, when your group merges with a larger room, your crew becomes a squad once the game launches. This means you’ll be identified as a group-within-a-group, and you’ll respawn closer to your buddies and get perk-like rewards for fighting together.

As for the player count? It’s still being tuned, but certain variants will support 18 players — up from Modern Warfare’s 16 but down from 24 in Call of Duty 3. The latter, of course, offered 24 in the vehicle-laden War mode, and you’ll be happy to hear that War returns in WaW, along with vehicles. We were shown (on paper) a handful of tanks, as well as a couple of personnel carriers. The final vehicle count is still TBD, but what’s interesting is that some modes will support vehicles and some won’t.

Balancing the introduction of fire to the game — and hell yes, you’d better believe the flamethrower will factor into multiplayer — is the addition of water-based gameplay. One multiplayer map we saw had waist-deep water you could wade through to access a ladder leading to an advantageous sniper point, but you had to swim very slowly and expose yourself to gunfire to reach the overlook. Treyarch’s even tweaked the physics system so that Molotov cocktails fizzle out and float, while grenades sink to the bottom, explode, and cause water to bubble to the surface. If we were more clever writers, we’d comment that multiplayer seems to be coming along rather swimmingly. Ahem.

HOUR OF VICTORY?

Treyarch’s previous CoD projects were done in 12-month sprints, so with a full two-year development cycle on WaW, they’ve set their sights high. “We’re out to make the best-looking, most realistic WWII game ever,” says Lamia, shortly before adding something slightly more smacking of a PR rehearsed sales pitch: “We’re not going back to WWII. We’re redefining it.”

We like to think we’ve gotten pretty good at seeing through this type of marketing hype, and what we saw spoke for itself. With its flamethrowers, advanced tactics, and if-it-ain’t-broke approach to online multiplayer, World at War is a good indication that Treyarch’s long, undeserved days of living in Infinity Ward’s giant shadow may soon be over.