Cancelled Call of Duty sci-fi game from Tony Hawk's studio Neversoft leaks online
Star your engines.
Footage from a cancelled futuristic Call of Duty sci-fi game in development by Tony Hawk's studio Neversoft has leaked online.
The footage was spotted by Call of Duty insider account CharlieIntel, and seemingly comes from a cancelled Xbox 360-era Call of Duty game known as Future Warfare (or "NX1" internally). The game was originally in development at Neversoft, which was ultimately merged into Infinity Ward in 2014.
Confirming the footage as legitimate, former Neversoft developer Brian Bright said this cancelled Call of Duty release would have launched in place of Ghosts. "Neversoft pivoted from Guitar Hero to make a futuristic COD game," Bright wrote on X. "I believe this would have been in place of Ghosts, trying to remember. We had two to three campaign missions, and a bunch of [multiplayer] work done (I was lead MP on this) before cancellation."
The footage itself was shared across several videos by YouTube account Riley54, which you can see via the embeds below. The first shows an overview of the missions menu, the gameplay difficulty levels and the start of a mission on the moon, aptly called "Moonbase Assault".
A second video then shows this particular mission in full, which all starts in rather dramatic fashion, with the space-based soldiers coming under fire. Many are killed in action, as the player character tries to make it to the airlock.
Then, the base the soldiers infiltrate starts to more or less steadily implode around the player, with many sucked out into the cold void of space as the mission continues. When the player is wearing a helmet, the UI shows the suit status.
The third clip shared reportedly shows the cancelled game's multiplayer. In this footage, the player is making their way through a desert town, itself not especially futuristic.
Eurogamer asked Call of Duty publisher Activision for further comment, however the company declined.
Elsewhere in Activision news, last week Microsoft announced it was laying off 1900 employees from across its video game teams. These layoffs followed the company's $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year.
According to sources, Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games has lost 30 percent of its staff as a result.