Call of Duty 4 Post-Mortem

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  • Spawndemon
    Member
    • Oct 2005
    • 6015

    #1

    Call of Duty 4 Post-Mortem

    IGN has posted up a new article today that takes a look back at what made Call of Duty 4 one of the best games in 2007. This is told through an interview with community manager FourZeroTwo. Take a look:
    Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is proving itself a juggernaut among 2007's first-person shooters. One of last year's best-selling games, COD 4 performed well on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Because, like you, we can't get enough Call of Duty, we sat down with Infinity Ward Community Manager Robert Bowling to talk about what went in to developing COD 4. Bowling revealed that there were once vehicle mission in the game and even Humvees in multiplayer. He went on to explain what was coming in the next patch and explained the process for creating multiplayer maps.

    IGN: How did the AC gunship level come about?

    Bowling: That's one of those things when you're in the middle development of a game, you're constantly looking for inspiration. That's when YouTube links are going around the interoffice email. "Here's some experimental rocket launch in Russia." You click the link and watch [a rocket] blow up a house and you're like, "Wow, they just blew up a [bleep]ing house." Then you see the [AC-130] video and that's not a video where you think, "Boy that looks like fun." You're just in awe. It's just like, "That's really happening. That's war." It's not something you laugh about. It strikes a different emotion than watching a house blown up. That's "Ooh-ahh" and this is just "...Uhh." Once we saw that, we knew that was something we'd never seen in a game before.

    IGN: One thing missing from COD4 were vehicle missions. We've seen plenty of tank action before. Was there a reason vehicles weren't in the game?

    Bowling: There originally were. Early on in development we were playing around with a lot of different levels. There were levels where you controlled vehicles -- tanks and helicopters. In the grand scheme they didn't fit into the storyline and they didn't live up to the standard we had for the other levels. They were good levels, but then once you start fine-tuning, crafting and including elements of those in other missions, you still get the fun aspect of [a vehicle mission] and then drop the rest. We didn't want to trap ourselves into the mindset that we had to have vehicle missions. We have some vehicle-like missions. In Shock and Awe you're on the gunner seat. AC-130 is technically a vehicle mission.

    To check out the rest of this four page interview, be sure to visit here.
  • StoneCold313
    Member
    • Jul 2007
    • 2198

    #2
    IGN: Is there one thing you wish you'd done differently with COD 4?

    Bowling: It felt like the last four or five month of development for multiplayer there was something new every day or something tweaked. We'd have these long arguments where lunch would take three hours because we're arguing about that one change. Half of us would think it was a mistake and half of us would think it was great. Overall I think the game was exactly what we intended. There are different playlists I would like to play around like. Maybe bring back some classic playlists.

    Originally in the game your kill streak rewards-- helicopter support, air strikes and your UAV -- were actually hard points on the map you had to capture and you could only use them if you held those points. I wouldn't say I would want to replace our current system, but I think it would be interesting to see playlists where we switched back to the original idea.

    IGN: Or you could add a brand new air support that only works at a hard point.

    Bowling: Or we could try that.
    I wonder how that would have worked out...

    Comment

    • Repulse
      1&Only!
      • Jun 2007
      • 1072

      #3
      Nice interview there, decent answers :-D.

      Comment

      • FPS[SONIC]
        Member
        • Oct 2006
        • 2106

        #4
        Originally posted by StoneCold313
        I wonder how that would have worked out...
        Awww, I just copied that same bit of info to post here! :shock:

        I think those "hard points" for helos, strikes, etc. are an interesting idea.

        Comment

        • CptainCrunch
          I am the 1%
          • Oct 2007
          • 12976

          #5
          The hard point idea would have been cool, like a communication center to fight over.

          I wonder if people would have done that though or if one or two would and everyone else run around aimlessly. Its hard to get people to shoot at helis when they are dominating.

          Im glad to see they are looking into more content and actually have things on the table for it.

          His comment about going into warpig was interesting. It almost sounded like there was suppose to be a AC130 style thing with warpig, but then it went into fighting instead. That would have been cool if you manned a machine gun or the main gun.

          The backdoor stats thing was a bit surprising to me. Hard to believe that they have some central server gathering all the stats.

          Anyway, good interview and it was nice to see how much they argued over all the details of the game. That type of communication and agreement obviously paid off.

          Crunch
          Twitter: @CptainCrunch
          Battlelog/Origin: CptainCrunch

          Comment

          • Heydude235

            #6
            I want to see my pc stats. I want them now

            Comment

            • Iwantcable
              Member
              • Jul 2007
              • 2362

              #7
              Originally posted by Heydude235
              I want to see my pc stats. I want them now
              Unfortunately, 402 avoids PC gamers at all costs. Note: This was in the PC section on IGN, yet PC was only mentioned when talking about the different platforms CoD4 was created on.

              Comment

              • Micster
                Member
                • Jul 2007
                • 2474

                #8
                Great interview.

                Comment

                • StoneCold313
                  Member
                  • Jul 2007
                  • 2198

                  #9
                  Originally posted by SonicPixel
                  Awww, I just copied that same bit of info to post here! :shock:

                  I think those "hard points" for helos, strikes, etc. are an interesting idea.


                  I was just thinking that on the other hand, how much those "hard points" would have caused people to camp..

                  Comment

                  • TSlaw*

                    #10
                    Well the hard points could have been used like a commander in BF2. Team goes out, needs an airstrike, commander dude on hard point uses it.

                    Comment

                    • Spik3d
                      Member
                      • Feb 2006
                      • 4890

                      #11
                      Originally posted by TSlaw[42SRT]
                      Well the hard points could have been used like a commander in BF2. Team goes out, needs an airstrike, commander dude on hard point uses it.
                      Nobody's going to want to sit at a single point for an entire game.

                      Comment

                      • CptainCrunch
                        I am the 1%
                        • Oct 2007
                        • 12976

                        #12
                        Originally posted by Spik3d
                        Nobody's going to want to sit at a single point for an entire game.
                        They're called campers and at least then they will have something more to do.

                        Crunch
                        Twitter: @CptainCrunch
                        Battlelog/Origin: CptainCrunch

                        Comment

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