Call of Duty hints at future setting

A video linked from the official Call of Duty site hints at a future setting for the series, showing off a fictional prototype weapon that won't be on the market for 10-15 years.

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Activision has started to tease the next Call of Duty, with word that an official announcement is coming May 1. But already, the company has been dropping clues, such as a new video that hints at a future setting with more sophisticated weaponry.

The Call of Duty site (via Polygon) forwards to a video from FPS Russia. It portrays a Russian weapons dealer named Dmitri Potapoff, showing off a "prototype quadrotor with machine gun." Throughout the video, Potapoff talks about how the weapon won't be widely available for another 10-15 years.

The remote controlled drone is shown firing on mannequins with its own embedded camera, and then self-destructing inside a car. The video ends with Potapoff saying, "my friends are telling me that this baby might just be in the next Call of Duty game, which would be the shit."

The obvious conclusion is that the next Call of Duty game will take place 10-15 years the future, or in the near future with access to more futuristic prototype technology. That would make sense if the sequel is the rumored follow-up to Black Ops, as it makes for an easy narrative hook to give players tools that are on the cutting edge.

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    April 24, 2012 11:00 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Call of Duty hints at future setting.

    A video linked from the official Call of Duty site hints at a future setting for the series, showing off a fictional prototype weapon that won't be on the market for 10-15 years.

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      April 24, 2012 11:23 AM

      Has anyone started looking at this as the start to a viral campaign? Just wondering. Clearly CoD is one of the only franchises with enough in the marketing budget to do something like that.

      Just as an FYI, the shirt that he's wearing in the video reads "Tacitus", which either references the Roman Historian, or... well... something else.

      Tacitus.com has a private WHOIS registration, but mentions the name Howard Coale, who's LinkedIn profile mentions being President and Chief Designer at Tacitus, which is described as...

      "Tacitus's focus is 3D design and "immersive world" technologies (video games) and applying them to the most complex data visualization and analysis problems that exist. To make it simple: Tacitus seeks to provide researchers who work with the Human Genome, as well as Wall Street fund managers, with the capability to use 3D worlds to "play" with multiple hypotheses – based on real-time downloads of complex datasets – for the purpose of creating cancer drugs, or developing scenarios for how the financial markets will behave."

      Hmmmm. Sounds like some sort of crazy VR stuff to me. Just throwing out the conspiracy theories early, lol.

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        April 24, 2012 11:25 AM

        That should probably read "Clearly CoD is one of the FEW franchises..."

        I think "we heart bees" started this early didn't it?

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      April 24, 2012 11:34 AM

      I think if it is in the video the tech is probably available now, not in 15 years.

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        April 24, 2012 11:54 AM

        The model on the table was probably real, but not functional. The rest of the footage of it flying around was probably CG, and all the bullet / explosion stuff done with conventional weaponry.

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      April 24, 2012 11:36 AM

      Asteroid mine terrorists!

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      April 24, 2012 1:26 PM

      GIT YO ASS TO MAHHHS

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      April 24, 2012 3:12 PM

      I'd personally hoped for an 80's Cold War game.

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      April 24, 2012 3:14 PM

      Battlefield 2142?

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      April 24, 2012 3:17 PM

      Crysis of Duty Modern Warfare

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