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“I believe this would have been in place of Ghosts”
Videos of a cancelled Call Of Duty game from the early 2000s have surfaced on Xwitter, with the name “NX1”. In the footage, you see classic CODisms like explosions and a first-person view of a character wearily making their way through a disaster. While the accounts sharing the videos are anonymous, a former Neversoft developer has stepped in to authenticate them and share a few details about the project, a “futuristic CoD game” that was in the works prior to the development of 2013’sCall of Duty: Ghosts.
Fuck it, NX1.pic.twitter.com/KDPh6pwHxn— Josh H. (@mangafigurines)January 27, 2024
Fuck it, NX1.pic.twitter.com/KDPh6pwHxn
Former Neversoft developer Brian Bright jumpsinto the thread, offering some more context around the leaked footage. He says that Neversoft experimented with “low g” and it was really “about the team learning the engine”, having come to NX1 fresh from theGuitar Herofranchise. “I believe this would have been in place of Ghosts, trying to remember”, he says. “We had 2-3 campaign missions, and a bunch of MP work done (I was mp lead on this) before cancellation”.
Another postshowed off the game’s multiplayer, where a player sprints around a sandy free-for-all map. It looks like it’s from an earlier stage of development than the campaign footage. Again, the interest lies in what’s said around it, not the gameplay itself. Bright hops in, calling the map “Sandstorm” and mentioning an “Escort” mode. According to Bright, Neversoft toyed around with a ground vehicle or “UGV”, along with an “elevator” that would raise it. Perhaps NX1 was a bit Battlefield-y in this respect.
Microsoft laid announced nearly two thousand layoffslast week, which extend to Call of Duty developers at Activision - according to one report over the weekend,30%of the Sledgehammer Games team have lost their jobs. There have also beendepartures at Infinity Ward, the studio that absorbed Neversoft in 2014. It’s possible the NX1 leakers are laid-off developers sharing work so as to stick it to the man a little, though I don’t have any proof of that.
In ourbest COD campaign rankings, we popped Ghosts pretty low down. If this was in a similar vein, I do wonder where it would’ve ended up - I mean, any COD willing to experiment gets a yes from me.
