Call of Duty: Roman Wars: The Game That Could Have Been, But Never Was
A few years ago there was an interesting spin being worked on by Vicarious Visions for the Call of Duty franchise. While fans (and haters) are currently gearing up for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare 4 Remastered, the folks over at GamesRadar have managed to scratch up footage of a Roman empire inspired take on the popular franchise.
The game was simply called Call of Duty: Roman Wars and according to the report, Activision was actively looking to rock the boat with a franchise that was on the verge of becoming stale. Courting ideas from a number of different developers they looked at developer Vicarious Visions (Skylanders, Guitar Hero) imagining of Call of Duty during the Roman Wars which would have centred around Julius Caesar and his Tenth Legion.
Featuring both first and third-person gameplay the idea was to put players in numerous roles over the course of the game from officers to archers to grunts in a style reminiscent of films popular at the time like 300 and Gladiator.
Only a single level was created and it was based on the Battle of Alesia. In the level players were able to face-off in sword and shield style combat or instead choose to try a ranged approach by launching arrows from a nearby tower. Other methods of raining hellfire down upon the enemy were catapults and rideable elephants. Yeah, that’s right, ELEPHANTS. No matter the era, apparently CoD still needs something to be the equivalent of a tank. Most of what we’re able to see in the video is in a third-person perspective but there is also a first-person fighting section that takes place in a coliseum.
Apparently, if the project had gotten the green light from Activision, we would have seen Call of Duty: Roman Wars hit the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2013. Undoubtedly there would have been plans to give it the ‘NOW IN HD, GIVE US YOUR MONEY’ treatment for the current generation of consoles as well. As it stands this take on the CoD franchise was just too much of a departure from the norm for Activision to latch on to and they instead decided to go with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
What’s your take on this, readers? Would you have welcomed this take on the franchise or is it just too far removed from what we know of as Call of Duty? Sound off in the comments below or hit us up on Facebook and Twitter!