Is Call of Duty becoming Titanfall?

Call of Duty fan or not, you’ve gotta admit that last night’s trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 looked rad.  It took the notoriously conservative series off in a new direction and frankly, I think it looks great.  Now we’ve got 4 player co-op for the first time in the series, a wicked cool futuristic setting, and a new design that looks to feature more open-ended combat arenas and put less of a focus on narrow, linear hallways.

Even the series’ incredibly popular multiplayer got an overhaul, and from looking at the trailer it seemed that they took a lot of inspiration from Titanfall.

Not that this is a bad thing.  As far as I’m concerned, Titanfall is the pinnacle of FPS multiplayer.  I love the movement options, versatility, and overall feel of Titanfall, and that’s exactly where Black Ops III appears to be aping it the most.

The very first thing that caught my eye was the wallrunning that appeared in the trailer.  While I haven’t played it myself yet (and if I do play it on the show floor I’ll let you know), the wallrunning seemed to function very similarly to how it does in Titanfall.  A quick jump to the wall and off you go, although it did seem to differ a little in that bringing up the iron sights caused you to slow down instead of stopping you entirely.

Movement seems to be the name of the game in Black Ops III.  Much like Titanfall.  And everything seems a lot more vertical with double jumps.  Momentum is all important, and wallrunning keeps momentum going as you fly through the map.  Again, much like Titanfall.

Black Ops III has one of the key features of Titanfall down with it’s movement system, but what about the other key feature?  So far it doesn’t look like Black Ops III has it’s own form of titans, but from the trailer it looks like BO3 does have vehicles you can use and control as you’d like.  This is a new concept for the series, especially in the form of the giant 4-legged robot we saw in the trailer.

It looks like Call of Duty is taking inspiration from one of it’s big competitors, which is both good and bad.  It’s great because, as I said, I’m a huge Titanfall fan and taking inspiration from such a great game will invariably result in a better product.  But at the same time, I hope that Call of Duty doesn’t lose it’s own identity.  It has a lot of fans for a reason, and losing what makes CoD unique and becoming more like another game robs us all of variety.

Yet I still can’t help but be excited.  This might be exactly the kind of change the series needs for the new generation, and I find myself excited looking forward to a Call of Duty game for the first time in years.