Call of Duty Almost Went to Rome

When you hear “Call of Duty”, what comes to mind? Grizzled, American soldiers fighting in over-the-top battles around the globe? The latest black-ops games where you’re a special forces agent in increasingly futuristic settings? Perhaps you think back on their WW2 days when you were fighting the Nazi’s in the European theater. I’ll tell you what you DON’T think of: Melee combat, swords, and shields, or Rome.

However, according to an interview with GamesRadar (which is absolutely worth a read), that may have quite nearly been the case, when eight years ago they made an ultimately unsuccessful prototype of a Call of Duty game set in Roman times, where you’d play Julius Caesar leading his own ‘special forces’, the Tenth Legion, around the pre-Jesus world in his quest to expand to Roman Empire.



Speaking with GamesRadar by alias, a former developer had this to say:

"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. I really thought an ancient warfare game would do well, re-skinned with the Call of Duty engine. 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 reason it failed, the alias explained, was because the higher-ups simply weren’t as sold on the concept, and were worried about, and I quote, “over-saturating the market”. Ironic to say the least, given that’s kind of what wound up happening anyway. In fact, this would have been a great step away from saturation, and hell, it might have given them the precedent and experience to make even more unique Call of Duty games that could give them the competitive edge they need over Battlefield 1 now. But, hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and if it turned out anything like Ryse than they may have dodged a bullet.

Still, history is nothing if not a series of “what ifs”...