Call of Duty: Devil’s Brigade was first scrapped after Modern Warfare became such a huge success and scrapped again by SledgeHammer games.
It turns out that Activision was trying to diversify its Call of Duty series and tap into the third-person shooter market as well. However, that plan changed nine months into development of the game.
Apparently, Devil’s Brigade was a third-person shooter take on the World War 2 setting of the Call of Duty series, yet it was scrapped less than six months before the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare hit stores.
The way the game is described it sounds as if it was based loosely on the style that would inspire World at War, which Treyarch developed, in the sense that it was set to be gritty, a trademark of that particular developer.
The studio even had a codename for the project, which was “CODAA” (short for ‘Call of Duty: Action Adventure) and if one comes to think of it, sounds oddly like its closest competitor, MOHAA (Medal of Honour: Allied Assault).
According to Kyle Brink, the lead designer of the game, the merger with Blizzard also had a major role to play in the project being canned.
“We were ready for our final green light just as the merger with Vivendi/Blizzard was announced. As is normal in a merger, you do everything you can to clean up your balance sheet.”
“A studio that isn’t in full production on a title with major revenue attached to it, which is about to ask for tens of millions in development dollars, is a great candidate for closure at that point.”
He continued, “Was this also a way to keep IW (Infinity Ward) happy after they have just produced Modern Warfare and made a hojillion dollars? Perhaps, but nobody ever put it to us that way.”
It turns out the game was scrapped a second time as well when SledgeHammer games opted out of developing the project in favour of working on the latest game in the Call of Duty series, Modern Warfare 3.
So it seems that as long as the first-person shooters sell in the millions there is no chance of a third-person CoD game being developed, and that may not be a bad thing either.
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