One of the biggest departures that this year’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is making over the previous games in the storied franchise is the setting- unlike previous titles, Infinite Warfare fully embraces a high concept science fiction setting, and takes the series into space for the first time ever.
Speaking to Polygon in an exclusive interview, Infinity Ward’s narrative director, Taylor Kurosaki and writer Brian Bloom revealed that the space setting would have significant repercussions for the game’s story, and for its characters.
“The setting of space puts even more pressure on our characters than even a traditional battlefield would allow for,” Kurosaki said. “In space, there is no gravity. In a lot of cases, most cases have no breathable atmosphere. Take the worst of the world wars and put that in an environment where you can’t breathe, and up is a relative to where you are floating.
“Characters are thrown into conflict and resolve those conflicts,” Bloom added. “War is an incredible background, environment and foreground to navigate those waters. This is not about double and triple crosses, and double and triple agents, and chips in your head, and being a zombie fighter. This is a story about the burden of making choices.”
So it sounds like the game will be as much about the psychological impact of space on warfare as it is about the physical impact- hopefully, it deals with them in a nuanced and developed manner, as opposed to the traditional popcorn movie fare that Call of Duty games have been.