Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is officially revealed, and we’ve got a two-and-a-half-minute trailer that’s packed with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it details. Our world might not be as advanced as the one pictured in this first-look trailer, but we’ve come far enough to develop the technology for capturing still images from moving videos.
Related: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare review
Not as awesome as a hover-bike — which popped up in the trailer — but it’s enough to allow us a second, closer look at the newly released video. Read on for a whole lot of informed speculation as we highlight several moments from the trailer that merit additional consideration. Did you spot anything that we missed? Let us know in the comments!
What is Atlas?
The logo for “Atlas” pops up a number of times in the trailer, on soldier chestplates like this one, and on helmets. What is Atlas? We know that Kevin Spacey’s character runs a private military concern. Could that be its name? It’s possible, but the fellow in this screenshot pops up several other times during the trailer, and it appears he’s an ally.
Atlas could be a force aligned against Spacey’s army, or it could be Spacey’s army, which means you’ll probably end up betraying him at some point, after he goes mad with power. It’s hard to say based on the little that’s in the trailer, but it seems clear that Atlas, whatever it is, plays an important role in Advanced Warfare‘s campaign.
Halo jumps!
Just about every soldier that appears in the trailer is wearing a high-tech uniform that seems to enhance their natural physical capabilities. The image above is just one of several clips in which a gun-toting future warrior performs an impossible leap. It looks like jumping is going to be a thing in Advanced Warfare, which should allow for more vertical level layouts.
What’s more, while this trailer doesn’t get into anything other than the game’s campaign, it’s fair to speculate that a lot of the enhanced abilities we see at play on the story side will work their way into multiplayer in some form or another. The “Halo jumper” is one of the most obnoxious Call of Duty killers out there, just bunny-hopping along while scoring frags every which way.
It looks like Advanced Warfare could step that up to the next level with proper Halo jumps, with soldiers launching themselves high enough to make even Master Chief proud.
Peek-a-boo
It wouldn’t be a futuristic warfare game without a way for soldiers to pull a Predator and cloak themselves in active camo. Sure enough, here it is. Again, consider the implications of a feature like this for multiplayer. Could it be a killstreak? A tactical grenade slot item limited by cooldowns? Something we haven’t even considered? We’ll see.
Light ’em all up
We’re not entirely sure of the tech that explains this, but the enhanced view of the environment that you see in the above still kicks in when, seconds before, we see a grenade tossed from the first-person perspective up toward the ceiling. You can actually sort of see it in this screen, top-center of the frame with red beams of light emanating from it.
What is this grenade? Clearly, it’s meant to help highlight enemies and other dangers in the environment, but the visualization doesn’t look like any radar, sonar, or motion detection grenade we’ve ever seen. It’s something along those lines though, and it’ll likely be a handy tactical slot equip in multiplayer.
Go ahead, mech my day
Mech suit alert. Moments after this clip plays out, we see another of the mech suit in action, firing an enormous gatling gun down a night-shrouded roadway. Call of Duty games are typically focused on running through a meat-grinder of standard-issue soldiers that can take only a few bullets before they go down, but the mech could fill a similar role that we’ve seen juggernaut-suited enemies fill in past CoD games. Only with a giant, fast-firing machine gun pointed at your face.
While it’s not quite beastly enough to go toe-to-toe with a Titanfall mech, these suits could also make for some fun times in multiplayer. They’ll almost certainly be treated as killstreak rewards if they stray into the competitive online mode, and that’s fine. One Titanfall is enough.
Doing the things a spider can
Moments after these funky, high-tech gloves run through the activation animation you see here in the trailer, we see a third-person perspective shot of a soldier scaling a wall, Spider-Man-style. Climbing sequences in Call of Duty games have historically happened only at scripted moments. That said, with enhancements like that superjump, it’s possible that the ability to free-climb walls will be freely usable.
Or this could just be another Call of Duty Climbing Sequence.
Take cover? Make cover!
Moments before we get to this image, the soldier crouched behind that barrier actually sets it up by jamming one post into the ground and then stretching it out into makeshift cover. This could be nothing, just a random moment in the story that highlights a nifty tool of high-tech warfare. It could also be a tool that you can actually use. Player-created cover isn’t a new idea for shooters, but it would be new for Call of Duty.
Easy rider
Hover-bikes. Say it out loud. It’s a wonderful thing, no? Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has them, and this brief snippet of the trailer confirms that there’s at least one sequence in which you ride one. Cooooooool.
We probably won’t be seeing hover-bikes pop up in multiplayer unless Sledgehammer is making dramatic changes to map sizes. Such a change would fundamentally shift Call of Duty’s competitive play away from the small-map, small-team focus that it’s always had. But at least you get to ride one at some point, right?
Big gun go boom
Where there are shooters, there are turret sequences. That’s just the way of things. So too in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, there appears to be a turret sequence. Who needs bullets? This is advanced mother-effing warfare! We’ve got railguns here. That’s what this puppy is. And it’s about to give that boat a very bad day.
With great power…
The last thing you see in the trailer is this short tagline, “Power changes everything.” Don’t forget it. Based on everything we saw in this debut trailer, power is a running theme in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Features like super-jumps and active camo could significantly shift the flow of Call of Duty play as we know it.
Game developers often speak of pillars in relation to the key facets of the gameplay they’ve created, and this tagline likely speaks to a core guiding philosophy for Sledgehammer as Advanced Warfare continues to come together.
