The COD Infinite Warfare Trailer
So, theeighthsixthsecond most disliked video on YouTube is currently a game trailer. I decided to take a look at it. Actually got pretty hyped.
I mean, it opened with the Brotherhood of Nod launching an invasion against the GDI's defenses (which are unprepared yet again), showed off some new units, several returning units, and the graphics are head and tails above anything Command and Conquer has thrown at us before, outside of the live-action cutscenes the series is famous for. The two biggest troubles were that they didn't show off Kane, and that there was no display of the usual over-the-top and awesome acting that the series is known and loved for.
After that, it for some reason switched to showing off the new Mass Effect game? Which was certainly unexpected, but hey, I love that series too. Integrating freefall sections into the combat could certainly be a fun twist, though with ME2 and ME3 having such a huge focus on cover-based combat, I do wonder how it will play out, and how intuitive and free it will truly be. The mechs returning isn't great, though it is expected. I would have vastly preferred to see some of the aliens (show me a Krogan swinging across a room weightlessly, and just crashing into his enemies, yes, please), because they are a huge part of the universe. But, still, good reveal.
The big problem, of course, is that this wasn't a Command and Conquer trailer, or a Mass Effect trailer, but rather, one for a Call of Duty game. Which just had me scratching my head. I mean, I didn't HATE the trailer (though I do think that the "oh no, we've been betrayed by people we trusted and didn't guard against" thing is overplayed by this point). I do enjoy sci-fi settings, and I quite liked some of the vibes. I think the story is likely to be a bit lacking for me to truly enjoy it, but I did think there was some promise to the trailer.
But it isn't, at all, what I think of when I think of Call of Duty, and I can see why the fans of that series would not be happy with this trailer. I think that they went too far sci-fi, too fast. The spaceships are frankly absurd. When your hovercraft makes S.H.I.E.L.D.'s heli-carrier look realistic, you've gone too far. The ground based sections at times made it look like a "speculative look at how future combat may play out", but then they coupled that with the AI mechs, the hovercraft that stay aloft by glowing circles underneath them, and a huge, huge portion of the trailer being taken up specifically by showing how far-future it was, with the launch to space and the clash between two fleets. In space.
That last bit is where I think things truly broke. Where did that come from? Where did those fleets come from? Are we fighting another planet? When did we colonize them? When did we let them build a fleet of spaceships?
It just went too deep, too fast. Have us putting down an insurrection on a newly colonized world, or stopping takeovers of spacecraft. Ease people into this. But we go from "near future of some twenty years hence" to "we've colonized other worlds and built fleets of spaceships just so we can have these massive fights". How? Why? When? It's a jump that's too big for most of the players to connect with, and doesn't well suit what the series is known for or centered around.
But, it might be a fun sci-fi shooter, if the story isn't terrible.
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Originally Posted by Rocket Edge
