I'm not a die hard COD fan, I just really like COD4.

So, I guess that means I'll wait for COD6.

What new theater, do tell us?

Pacific Front anyone?

Either way, it is going to pale in comparison to CoD4, just as CoD3 did compared to CoD2.

Hmm, well, long as it doesn't use the Vietnam War. I can't remember a game about Vietnam that was a fraction as much fun as Cod4, or even as much as the other three. Nothing against Vietnam, it just doesnt make great video games.

God help us if Treyarch ruins the series any further.

It has to be a contractual obligation? I don't understand why you wouldn't have Infinity Ward take over with the sheer awesomeness of CoD4.

The War...on MARS!

Battling aliens. Yep. That's what I expect from Treyarch.

I will not play COD unless Infinity Ward is involved.I played every version of Call of Duty and COD3 was the worst in my opinion.It's not so much Treyarch is bad,as IW is so damn good.

The big question is, who'se making this game? Treyarch Or IW?

Potentially Billions could be decided here. Why? Cause one knows how to make games, and the other knows how to copy games.

My guess? The rumored North America expansion for CoD4 is made out into a fullon game. You're a full on HLS agent this time tasked with saving America. And no, I don't mean from GWB.

why even bother making a ps2 version. so lame. im sure by doing this they will make more money, but it seems like a garauntee that the wii version will not be as good as it could be.

unless the wii is the lead version and the ps2 version is ported significantly down from that, im not happy. as it is, call of duty 5's future on 360/ps3 is questionable.

Given that they want this game out this year, it's pretty obvious that it won't be IW that will do it because that not enough time, not by IW's standards anyways.

'Nam, baby.

@Muffin_Man:

I thoroughly enjoyed Battlefield: Vietnam.

We already knew this, right? The new theater is the Pacific, right? Am I missing something here?

I didn't play COD3 nearly as much as COD2 online and NO WHERE near as much as COD4. But that wasn't because I didn't like the game, I just didn't like the online setup. It was hard as all fucking hell to get a game set up the way I wanted it, my friends and I vs others.

Now if COD5 has a Matchmaking with Party system then i'll be more than willing to give it a try.

Hopefully NOW developers will learn why HALO, COD4, & GTA4 are so fun for online & will always take the top spot: The PARTY system with Matchmaking. That truly is the key to making everyone enjoy playing games online.

@huginn:

The better question:

Is it still going to be a long game of whack-a-mole or will they finally put effort in to AI?

I don't care who makes it. They can put the game in whatever setting they want and throw in the best graphics ever made for all I care. Only when they add real AI to the game (and quit giving the guns wimpy sounds) will it be something worth hyping over.

I'm guessing Vietnam or something pacific, i mean what else could it be? Korea? Afghanistan? And I don't think they would make a wargame without the US being involved.

It's so dumb that they dilute the COD franchise by alternating development between Treyarch and Infinity Ward.

Just please, please, for the love of sense, don't let it take place in World War 2. Anything but World War 2.

@Spoony Bard: I kinda want a future take of war done by COD, just not the COD3 guy doing it. I would like to see an attempt by IW.

@Muffin_Man:

I thought Vietcong was a pretty solid game. It did a great job with the atmosphere, with traps in the jungle, crazy squad member shouting racist slurs and a sergeant riding your ass, probably packed with the most amount of cursing iv heard in a game. It was pretty badass imo

My bet: WW2, Pacific conflict.
At least this will come to the Wii...

I think you're all giving them too much credit. It will be alternate reality WW2, but the only difference will be the uniforms are all a slightly different color.

@tnx3: I sure dont want to see more space marines for the love of god. Dont we have enough of that shit?

---

For a new IW COD it would be interesting too see them do it based on the private sector. Cept the name call of duty wouldnt fit anymore if they did though. Would make for an interesting story and even better MP though. But Id say they would so need to have vehicles for that to work well.

@karasu is my homeboy: Same here. Same here.

Of course their fanbase doubled, it would have happened years ago if they had just left WWII already. They kept getting new players but the old ones kept getting bored and leaving the CoD series altogether.

Hmmm....COD5 Nam.....sounds good but Treyarch has a lot to live up to after COD4. Hmm maybe they should do a American Civil War COD lol anything but Europe WWII. Frankly im tired of WWII weapons since there are limited attachments to them. The weapons and online matchmaking sold COD4 for me how about you Kotakuites?

It seems like more harm will come to the franchise than good if all the new fans brought in by COD4 (read: me) get some crappy Treyarch snoozefest WW2 sim.

They're trying to milk money every year out of this series but people like me just won't buy COD if it isn't modern and similar to COD4. They should just release it every 2 years if IW doesn't want to be rushed.

My take: Revolutionary War. What's more intense than staring at the enemy a mere fifty paces away while you furiously try to reload your musket? That'd be hella intense. ^_^

They should give us a Red Dawn type of scenario. With a full out modern invasion on our home front.

Christ. Put Treyarch back to work on entertaining swords-and-sorcery games, please. THey did a good job with those. Trying to compete with the progenitors of the COD franchise is never gonna end well for them, because they're just placeholding. Not their fault, it's Activision's.

You guys are thinking too recently in history.

I'm ready for a civil war game.

The only CoD game I've played is CoD4. It was enjoyable, although some of the situations can get really frustrating for me and seem to rely more on luck than skill.

How about a WWI game? Trench warfare at its finest.

Since I (we) already know that Treyarch is heading up this title, I can safely say that I'm not even going to blink at COD5. I'll wait for IW to be back at the healm.

@Witzbold: Seen too many space marines done wrong. I want to see an IW space marine, just like how an IW COD2 WW2 stood out.

@tnx3: Come on, there is no reason for them to make a COD based in the future. I mean, look at the Battlefield series with 2142. Horrible. I'll give them credit for trying something new, but it just didn't fit in well enough to be a hit.

And anyways, IW needs to make the damn game. I don't know what Treyarch was on when they were developing COD 3, but they should never again be left with a respectable game franchise to fuck around with. For shame!

This is just me,but I would like to see the Six day War,or the Lebanese War.Or maybe have multiple historic conflicts in one game,playing different characters.

@sakipooh:
Avenge me!!

@Tolgak: AI is hard. Even the best shooters have problems with AI. Very few AI's can find that perfect spot where they can see the player, and the player can't see them like you see in MP.

Even worse when understanding the term flanking. Often times you need a developer's scriping and triggers to get those things to work cause complex AI like that is hard. Even so, you get asshats who will bitch about 'spawnings' that make the game unrealistic.

What made CoD4 so amazing, past the hot MP, was the presentation. Little things and big things were all there, polished and tested. Will Activision give the next CoD5 developer the time and cash to make it 'polished' or will it try to cash in properly for a Q4 release off the hype of 4 is the question of the hour

I'll be passing on any future CODs if they take place in World War II or if they are done by Treyarch. I was lukewarm on COD2 and only bought it because it was "the" Xbox 360 launch title. I played through the single player but never thought it was that great.

COD4, on the other hand, is crack.

@xAnarChisTx: I loved 2142 for that very reason. How often do you get to play in fictional wars, instead of just wars that seem to come out of the news? (Not exactly, but you get my point!)

IMO, futuristic/sci-fi games allow the developers to really get creative, and let loose the reins. Now, whether or not they do it well, that's up too the developer :P

Please don't let Call of Duty become Guitar Hero. :(

How about space? Final frontier anyone?

So how many consecutive posts can we got of military guys wearing various shades of tan?

Perhaps it's a war the United States.... wait for it.... WASN'T INVOLVED IN!!?

Seriously, let's do that. There's a world outside of what the United States participates in. I'd like a game about other things... even if it's a relatively small conflict or completely fictional/alternate history.

CoD5: Martian Warfare

i'll be back for COD6 after trearch screws the pooch on 5

Call of Duty 5: Armageddon, The Final Battle

@huginn:

The problem is that COD4 has almost no AI. The game follows the same formula in almost every level.

Step 1: Arrive
Step 2: Contact never ending set of enemies*
Step 3: Run to a forward location that will stop spawning of enemies
Step 4: Move on in the level
GOTO: Step 2

*Enemies spawn to same positions then remain stationary. Shoot an enemy, and one of two types of soldiers assigned to that position will come up within a few seconds.

Increasing the difficulty only increases the amount of fortifications and the rate of enemy spawning.

It's boring and there's no intelligence to it on either side. I get that AI is difficult, but to remove it almost entirely and then hype that your game is the best ever (and for game reviewers to do the same) shows me that people are caring less and less about gaming quality these days.

The approach is probably simpler than you're imagining. I remember watching some video about how FEAR's AI was extremely simple yet very effective. IIRC, it used a risk/benefit analysis for one of two moves: Flank and Attack. That's all it did and people raved about it.

Incorporate AI like in FEAR, then spawn all enemies in the locations they should be at when you enter the map. If need be, there can be some extra spawning out of view to save system memory.

It's way better than waves of stupid enemies whose only difficulty changes result from different amounts of lead in the air.

@gils0n: Because it takes a lot of time to develop a good next-gen game. So you give your star studio a chance to do that, while you keep the franchise alive (read: bankroll your star studio) with another studio.

Yes, I know COD4 was more focused on the British side than the U.S. but it's hard to think of any military type game in which the United States isn't represented (and they're usually "the good guys").

How about an alternate history/future in which in the government becomes a police-state dictatorship and you lead/participate in a resistance? Sign me up.

@Spaceboy:
Better yet, what if it takes place in the US (or UK), say during an invasion. If handled with the badassity of CoD4, and not chocked full of Patriotic BS, I think it could be totally awesome. Make people think about how lucky we are to live in peace and stability, that kind of thing.

I highly doubt, however, Treyarch has the ability to do something that original. It'll probably be CoD4 in China with a horrible story.

Call Of Duty 5: Suck compared to CoD4.
Call Of Duty 6: Amazing to the point of mindblowing.

I just hope that CoD 5 is not in WWII...

When I think "Military Theater," I think a video capture feature similar to what they have in Halo 3. If true, then that'll be all sorts of fun, and by all means funner.

I'd vote for oh, lets say Panama/south America mixed in with Afghanistan.

Think of it, you have vicious jungle fighting against terrorists/drug lords in one stage, then the mountain/village fighting in the next.

Another neat one to do would be Tears of the Sun style fighting in Africa.

Anyways, if they went south america/western asia, then we could do some whole Iran/Contra style stuff. You could have the rebels in S.A being secretly funded by some deal with the terrorists/insurgents in W.A. the people doing the dealing would be the focus of the last parts of the game, perhaps takign us to the caribian, or even to some shady folks in the Balkins.

To lay it out:

After the fall of Yugaslavia, and the defeat by Nato at Kosovo, a rogue militery cell based in serbia decided to start a war by proxy, by selling captured or leftover weapons to the folks in Southwest Asia, who then paid the money to the rebels in south america. Whent he connection comes out, it's a race against time to capture or kill the Serbian rogue element before they ether vanish into the war torn balkins or commit some scortched earth tactics via chemical weapons, as one last act of spite.

CoD4 single player was a mediocre design with a great presentation. I don't care about the multiplayer. I really did like the presentation, but the game was chock full of flaws.

Treyarch? No thanks
IW? Oh please god yes!

Seriously, I wish Sony or MS would buy Infinity Ward from Activision, I drool over the thought of what those guys could do working solely on one exclusive platform.

@Trowble (XBL/PSN):

[en.wikipedia.org])

Words are your friend, and they can even mean things.

@StealthMaster86: it IS coming to Wii! Wouldn't mind it as long as its not a shitty port of the PS2 one..

@Tolgak: Sorry have to disagree with you there, I thought the AI was fairly okay and the vareity in the level design made it espically great. The sniping mission, the one where you were in the helicopter using night vision, the AI was hardly mind blowing but then its just not that kind of game, the single player was kind of a rollercoater ride

@Trowble (XBL/PSN):

Since kotaku ate my link, here:

"In warfare, a theater or theatre is defined as a specific geographic area of conduct of armed conflict, bordered by areas where no combat is taking place. In many ways the term is derived from the Colosseum of Rome. A theatre is defined by the need for separate planning to be occurring at the highest command echelon of the participating armed forces, including where separate Services are concerned."

yes I know I riped off some of CoD4's setup, but if we ask Tryarch to be too original we'll get W2 again.

Perhaps sub out the Balkins folk for the CIA, who had been shipping weapons in return for some sort of rendition style secret prison in SWA, only for the guys running the prison to go behind their back and resell the weapons/leak funds to their south american comrades.