Once again, Call of Duty has leaked a prototype of a very important episode of the saga. Enough to dive into the past, head first on old consoles.
An unreleased prototype of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare recently leaked online, revealing interesting information about the early days of development. This version, intended for the Xbox 360, was originally titled Call of Duty: Phantom. The game then evolved into what we know today.
An early preview of Call of Duty
This is the YouTube channel Alpha Archive who revealed this version from April 26, 2013. More than a year before the official release of Advanced Warfare. At the time, the game was still codenamed Blacksmith, but this prototype shows that the idea of calling it Phantom was considered. This gives an interesting insight into the development of the project.
This prototype appears to have been developed from a version of Call of Duty: Ghostswhich explains the use of the title Phantom. This connection suggests that some fundamentals of the two games may have been shared early in the development process.
Some observers also noticed that visual assets from Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 were used Placeholder in this prototype. However, it is difficult to confirm this hypothesis because Sledgehammer Games (developer of Advanced Warfare) and Infinity Ward (developer of Modern Warfare games) are two separate studios, so it is unlikely that they directly shared their resources.
This prototype contains a preliminary version of the Fission mission that will be found in the final game. In development, this type of version is often referred to as a vertical slice. It is a playable section that allows developers to test key mechanics and features before tweaking them. As you can see on the channel in question, the rendering is still far from optimal compared to what we had at the time of the game’s release.
Source: YouTube
