As if previous titles in the series didn’t prove it enough, Infinity Ward’s upcoming Call of Duty: Ghosts will be quite linear in its approach – or at least it is judging by gameplay footage we’ve seen thus far.
When speaking to executive producer Mark Rubin, US Gamer asked if there was a way to create a shooter that wasn’t so one-track.
Rubin stated that, “It’s a balance. We want to tell a great story. We want you to be involved. There are a lot of things that we don’t do, but a lot of other single-player campaigns do.
“For instance, we generally don’t try to force you to look at a cutscene. If there’s something happening, we don’t just turn the camera and make you look and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ll just put the controller down. I have to watch this cutscene. Time to eat my popcorn.’ We try to make the player always feel like they’re still part of that world they’re in. They’re not being forced to see those things.
“Now, we do still want to guide the player through the story and have a story happening. We don’t want to go into the open-world idea of, ‘I can do whatever I want. I can break my story. I can make my story uninteresting.’ It’s a weird, fine balance. We want to ensure that the player gets the story and the experience that we’re trying to craft for them, but not have that ‘Press Y to watch the cutscene!’ feel, or put the player in a position where they can make the wrong decision and get stuck or get lost or otherwise not feel like they’re part of the story.
“One of the first things that can happen when you get away from what we try to plan for you is that you realize you’re in a video game. ‘Let’s go see if the toilets flush!’ Flush the toilets. ‘Oh, look, the toilets flush!’ That’s cool. I did it in Duke Nukem every time I saw a toilet. But it pulls you out of the story. You remember that you’re in a game. For us, it’s always about making sure that the player feels like they’re in a movie, that they’re in this cinematic experience. I really think that kind of stuff can pull you away from there.”
Call of Duty: Ghosts is currently set for a November 5th release on Xbox 360, PC and PS3, with PS4 and Xbox One releases due later.