Updated Game Engine is the Reason Why Female Soldiers Are in Call of Duty: Ghosts

[Shawn Zipay]

In speaking to Kotaku, Call of Duty: Ghosts Executive Producer, Mark Rubin explained the reason why it took forever for female soldiers were added to the series.

The reason? A change in technology.

"A lot of it was the engine," Rubin said, referring to the tech that runs the game. "Our previous engine would not handle that. The way memory worked in the previous engine, it never would have been able to do that." The "that" he's talking about is the ability to run a multiplayer level that is populated with players who have their own custom looks—looks that include the female look.

"When we got a chance to re-tool the engine completely, that gave us the opportunity to make the change that we could have character customization," he said. "That then gave us the opportunity to do female characters."

The female character model will offer no advantages or disadvantages in the game's multiplayer. So despite how the female models may look different, they'll be bulked up enough that they still occupy the same hitbox space as their male counterparts.

[stilla-killa]

How much more power in the engine did they need to make boobies?

[Anarchy1]

How much more power in the engine did they need to make boobies?

It requires a lot of additional physics calculations

[CptainCrunch]

I am afraid I am not believing this.

There has been a lot of variation on soldiers since MW2 where you could tell what the kit was by looking at the soldier. Not to mention all the camo skins for everything else.

I just finished watching the "No Russian" scene for MW2 as well and there are a lot of different custom women. Yes, they are single player bots, but I don't care.

Then MW3 had the van blow up killing the mom and little girl scene. Again, better detail, more skins and customization than ever before.

That's like saying the new engine was needed to bring in the realistic fish and dog.

[nossirrah]

Should've asked Bioware for their engine .. you know male and female human... 4 kinds of alien of both gender...

[Thortok2000]

What I think he's referring to is the multiplayer, not single player. Single player can have AI or NPC bots predetermined and load with the level.

When you load a multiplayer level of current CoD, it loads all the possible soldiers, like four variations per team or something like that. You don't get to customize, it's automatic based on your primary weapon (or primary perk in some CoD games). But all the soldiers are already loaded so if someone joins they're just gonna be one of the already-loaded soldiers.

With customization, you could theoretically have hundreds of possible looks (or more likely, combinations of possible looks) and the game would have to either load all possibilities, or load on the fly, and if the way multiplayer stores stuff in memory doesn't allow 'on the fly', then you have to modify that so it does.

As a programmer, I understand what he's saying, he just didn't say it very clearly.

Then again, whenever you add something new you're basically changing the engine to add it so it's not like he's really even saying anything important anyway.

[cikame]

I do imagine the 60fps has alot to do with the limited customization of the past, everything needs loading into memory, in this case an entirely different model with different sound effects, probably animations, abit different from a low res gun camo.

[CptainCrunch]

Love the thought guys, very well done, but Im not accepting it. Im sorry.

The reason: AAA title.

They're trying to make CoD "edgy" now with the lady(ies).

[CptainCrunch]

Here is a sniping video of CoD Ghosts:

Also, I have no idea why he has a Battlefield intro.

[5t3v0]

I think its because he does Battlefield 4 videos as well.

watching that, to break the battlefield fanboyish ness, I'm impressed about the Scope Dual rendering. Gameplay otherwise doesn't really attract me, it still seems too actively spammy with the snipers. As such, its going to be fun, but its not my style.