The incredible story of Roman Wars: The lost Call of Duty game

[Heaven Angel]

Eight years ago, you almost got to play a Call Of Duty set in ancient Rome. A game featuring battle elephants trampling soldiers, a playable Julius Caesar and first-person sword combat. Activision liked the idea, the Call of Duty: Roman Wars demo impressed, and it got as far as the desk of CEO Bobby Kotick before a mixture of studio stubbornness and fears of over-saturating the brand consigned this lost game, ironically, to history.

Around 2008, Activision began actively courting pitches for a new COD instalment, planning to expand the series based on its increasing success at the time. One of those ideas was a very different take called Roman Wars, that would have followed a soldier in Julius Caesar’s Tenth Legion, technically the spec ops of its day.

 

“I really thought an ancient warfare game would do well, re-skinned with the Call of Duty engine,” says Polemus. “Basically we were following Julius Caesar’s Tenth Legion – his special forces during those times - and we were doing a one level prototype based on the Battle of Alesia. So we built the one mission based on that. We had everything from riding horses, to riding an elephant, to working with catapults. All done in the Unreal Engine for rapid prototyping”.

The demo started with a short horse riding section and a speech from Julius Caesar, with the player controlling a character called Titus Pullo. “Basically your objective in that mission was to take out the archers”, says Polemus, but explains that there were actually three ways to achieve this to show off various mechanics. “You go to the catapults, you release the catapults to take out some of the archers, you could climb up the siege towers or you could drive on the war elephants, which everybody freaking loved the most!”

Polemus describes the elephant as the game’s tank. “You drive it [and] if there’s any enemies it can trample them for you. Beside that you get a better perspective and you have some protection because it had its own little booth-seat that protected you and you could duck under”.

The second part of the prototype involved a smaller demonstration to showcase a different setting and the first-person view. “We showed a small a prototype of another battle that was going to happen in the Coliseum, sort of Gladiator style” Polemus clarifies. “It looked beautiful and it was just a quick preview of another mission, just to show the direction we were going to, and the art style”.

The full plan for the game would involve a variety of perspectives and characters, says Polemus. “You were going to play a lead centurion, you were going to play a grunt and you were going to play all the way up to Julius Caesar himself; so you were going to be a commander”. The plot loosely followed ‘Commentarii de Bello Gallico’, otherwise known as Commentaries around the Gallic wars, Julius Caesar’s own account of the battles (Roman War’s main character Titus Pullo is actually named in these accounts as a historical figure).

Ironically, while Roman Wars never came to be, it could have had competition if it had gone ahead. “It would’ve started aligning with the Xbox One depending on the roll out and how long the production would have been,” points out Polemus. “And, strangely enough, a launch title for the Xbox One was Ryse – the Roman war game, which is crazy!” That was a ‘told you so’ moment for Polemus. “When we saw that we were just like ‘See! We knew!’” At the time though, Activision wasn’t convinced. “You had Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, you had all the future stuff - especially with Halo and all those more futuristic-style shooters - they weren’t sure if it was going to resonate as strongly, but then a launch title actually was a freaking ancient Roman warfare game. I think if Call of Duty did that, and they did it with the mechanics we were working with and that engine? That launch title would have been a lot bigger and a lot more well received”.

 

Activision liked the idea but got iffy on giving it the Call of Duty brand, ironically because it was concerned about oversaturating the market. That, for the eagle-eyed among you who noticed them, is why those Ubisoft flags are flying in the video: The gameplay scene in the video was taken from a build that was “repurposed and pitched to Ubisoft, as just Roman Wars,” after Activision turned it down.

Interested users can read full article here.

Would you have played a Roman Call of Duty?

[playstationdude]

"Fear of Oversaturating the brand

"

Seriously?

[KnackChap]

actually activision liked the idea and the developers wanted to use the cod brand with it. no wonder activision developed cold feet esp if it involves their biggest IP & the biggest selling game year after year