The follow-up to the #1 next-generation game, Call of Duty 3 delivers the intensity of being closer than ever to the fury of combat during the Normandy Breakout, the historic campaign that made the liberation of Paris possible and brought the Allies a step closer to Berlin. Through a seamless narrative that delivers the rush of unrelenting battle and breathtaking action, players assume the roles of four ordinary Allied soldiers—American, British, Canadian and Polish—and are thrust onto an authentic, living battlefield for an unprecedented variety of combat, with advanced high-definition graphics, detailed character animations and explosive on-screen action, delivering the most immersive and cinematically intense war experience ever.

KEY FEATURES:

• The Power of Next-Gen – Built from the ground-up for next-gen consoles, Call of Duty 3 brings the battle to life with advanced graphics, a new physics engine, a procedural environment and detailed ensemble animations that deliver the most cinematic war experience ever.

• Battle Actions – An all-new close-quarters battle mechanic allows players to fight hand-to-hand, improvise explosive devices, disarm traps and execute a host of other battlefield situations that require cunning and rapid reflexes to survive.

• Branching Mission Paths – Next-generation level design provides multiple attack routes that let players decide how to confront the enemy – flank an opponent, or hit him head-on. Each unique mission path requires special tactics, from sniping and demolition to all-out head-on clashes.

• Nowhere to Hide – Environmental physics allow players to destroy enemy soft cover hideouts, forcing foes out in the open. But be wary, opponents can eliminate your protective cover as well.

• Team-based Multiplayer with Vehicles – Combined arms and team-based combat provides unprecedented depth and variety by allowing up to 24-players to battle it out online with the option of single or split-screen Internet play. Gamers have the choice to play as infantry or commandeer multiple-occupancy vehicles, including tanks, jeeps, and motorcycles with side-cars, leading to unique mobile combat roles for all-out, multiplayer mayhem. Call of Duty 3 also offers soldier classes, each with class specific abilities, and a ranking system for truly diversified squad combat.

GCM: Thank you for your time! Please get us started by introducing yourself and telling us about the team responsible for Call of Duty 3.

JL: Sure, my name is Jeremy Luyties and I am the lead game designer for Call of Duty 3 and I work with the team at Treyarch which consists of more than 100 fellow soldiers all the way back to the day of Wolfenstein to United Offensive and then onto the Call of Duty franchise, as well as some of the Spider-Man folks. We’ve all kind of joined forces.

GCM: What was your primary motivation or goals when designing this sequel. Did you want to cover some story elements left out of the original or just tackle a new aspect of WWII?

JL: We saw what happened with Call of Duty 2 and we realized the fans are very eager to see more, and we wanted to try and satisfy that. There are always tons of different stories to tell during the WWII era as well as we realized we had touched on some potential of the technology that we didn’t before and we really wanted to show and push that now. As you will see, the visuals speak for themselves, and we thought it was time for the public to see that.

GCM: When it came time to pick the campaign and you chose the Normandy Breakout, were their other options or was this an obvious choice?

JL: There are always a couple ideas that you bounce around the team. Making the game is very much a team process so we’ll take a core idea like the Normandy Breakout and we’ll pass it along five to seven people, get feedback, ideas, have different people research it, and that will allow us to make a great game.

We also wanted the challenge of telling a story that was chronological that involved bouncing back and forth between many nations at the same time. We feel we accomplished a lot with the story before and wanted to take it even further and we knew the fans would be expecting that as well. So telling the chronological story of the four nations; you’ll play as Americans for a few missions then you’ll switch off to British then come back to American then you’ll go to Canadians, Polish, back and forth throughout the whole game.

GCM: So it’s all concurrent events

JL: Exactly. You’ll play through all the chronological events as they happen, so you won’t play one campaign and be done – you’ll play through bits and pieces of each campaign as they happen.

GCM: Call of Duty 2 is still considered to be one of the best Xbox 360 games out there, yet you chose to build Call of Duty 3 on an entirely new engine. What can this engine do that Call of Duty 2 couldn’t

JL: Graphically, we are pushing things further than we ever thought we could get. With deformable grass, bushes and trees moving, with more things on the screen, levels that are 2-3 times longer than before. We’ve introduced more things into the renderer and more stuff into the multiplayer.

GCM: Explain a bit about the new close-quarters battle system. How seamlessly is this integrated with normal gameplay and can you keep it from feeling like a mini-game?

JL: That’s the perfect question to ask because you don’t know when it’s going to happen and it's something we wanted to introduce into the world to keep people on their toes. There will be moments when you play through and certain ones will always happen and there’ll be moments when you don’t know if one will happen. It’s not something that can happen every battle, but there will be moments through the game where if you play a particular way you will bump into it.

GCM: Has the gameplay in Call of Duty 3 changed any to reflect the growing popularity of tactical squad-based games (Brothers in Arms, Rainbow Six)?

JL: Good question. Actually, no. We feel the formula that’s been there before has been a very successful one - that you are fighting with your soldiers. So for us it’s about creating a world around you so that you see tons and tons of soldiers, tanks, and enemies so you feel like you are part of a battlefield, not that you are moving forward with two or three guys. You’re moving with a full battalion of troops. If you look over a hillside you’ll see tanks and troops moving forward, so our focus was on the overall “war experience”.

GCM: Does the AI acknowledge this or will they focus on the human player?

JL: The AI will always pay particular attention to the player because that’s the number one game experience we want to happen, although they do pay attention to each other as well, so that way they never look odd.

GCM: So you can lose yourself in the confusion of the battle?

JL: Completely. If you see that a couple of enemies have focused on your friendlies you can use that as an opportunity to flank their position.

GCM: I don’t think anybody can complain that Veteran mode on Call of Duty 2 was “too easy”, but what improvements to enemy AI can we expect and how will Call of Duty 3 compare in difficulty to Call of Duty 2?

JL: As with all things we had to try and take it up a level just for the fans and the hardcore veterans. There are the three modes you can choose to play at, but we’ve definitely taken a step forward with the AI. You’ll notice subtleties now like hand gestures so if two AI’s are standing by a wall one will make a hand gesture and the other will communicate with him and move to get into position. You’ll definitely see a lot of new things with AI. ,p> If you want a challenge, our Veteran mode within the office has been known as “almost impossible”. Our Hard mode is like last year’s Veteran mode and Veteran is one step up from that.

GCM: How much research goes into a game like Call of Duty 3, where gameplay is based on historic missions and events?

JL: Call of Duty is very much known for its authenticity from our laser scanning technology where we scan in life-size real uniforms from WWII and put them on the models. Every single battle is based on a real battle in history if not including elements, location, and heroic opportunities that happened in that battle. We really push for authenticity at every level.

All of our missions start off as 1-3 sentence excerpts from real chronological battles then our teams go out and research everything we can about that battle to bring location, theme, and whatever happened during that battle into the game.

GCM: Environmental physics (destructible cover) sounds promising. How scripted is this, or in other words, how much freedom do you have in choosing what to blow up and will this be used to open up alternative routes through levels (i.e. blowing up a wall creating a new route to flank an enemy position)?

JL: Due to technological purposes we can’t have the whole world fall apart, but if a guy is hiding behind a particular wall and you throw a grenade it will blow out a part of the wall, so you’ll find moments in every level like a wooden fence you can shoot apart to get access to new areas. Since our game is so cinematic there is a lot going on so the subtleties might be tough to see, but you can definitely notice them if you are looking for them.

GCM: Battle Chatter really sold the “war experience” in Call of Duty 2. What improvements to this element of gameplay can we expect and how much speech was recorded for Call of Duty 3?

JL: Basically, we’ve taken that system and upgraded it even more, added more nuances, more subtleties, more different things they can say, and we’ve included it in multiplayer so it happens automatically. You’ll be running around in multiplayer and get shot by a sniper and the friendlies within a certain range can hear you yell, “SNIPER” as you get shot. Or if you get blown up by a tank you might call out, “SHERMAN TANK BY THE WALL” as you are dying.

GCM: With death potentially just a few critical shots away (especially on Veteran mode), how liberal is the checkpoint and save system?

JL: Our levels are longer than Call of Duty 2 so you are definitely going to feel them, but we have them at every core moment within the level, so once you accomplish a core objective, and there could be 7-13 of these big moments, a checkpoint will kick in.

GCM: Each new Call of Duty game offers a new insight into battle training. What can we expect for the “boot camp” level this year?

JL: You’ll start off in a training camp where you’ll get your basic training, learn to throw grenades, shoot, character interaction, with positive and negative confirmation. We’ll introduce the Call of Duty Crate – you’ll be able to find one Call of Duty Crate on every level; it’s a crate with some symbols on it that you can use melee to knock the top off and get some smoke grenades. So, we’ll basically cover everything you need to know before getting into battle, but the training level is actually part of the first level.

GCM: What nationality goes through the training?

JL: The Americans.

GCM: About how long is the single-player campaign in time and quantity of missions?

JL: 14 missions, each 2-3 times longer than Call of Duty 2. This is the war that doesn’t stop and just keeps coming at you. There are no loading screens. It’s all cinematic stuff happening in-between. So typically you can expect about 60-90 minutes per level on Normal difficulty, so they are quite epic.

GCM: What (if any) significant differences are there between the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii either in content, technology, or gameplay?

JL: The Wii and the PS3 offer the controller advantage, the PS3 and the 360 offer technology advantages and we’ve looked at the strengths of each system and tried to highlight that and push to get the most out of each system. The controller stuff is particularly exciting because we get to have you interact with the world in an entirely different way, as well as with all of our battle actions and melee fight sequences.

GCM: Are you going to be a bit more “inventive” with the Achievement Point rewards on the 360 this year? Any favorites?

JL: Oh yeah, we’re breaking away from the “Complete Level”. In Call of Duty 3 we have the ability to throw back grenades – that’s an achievement. We’ve got achievements like “get through a level only doing melee”. The achievements are a lot more creative and innovative and all cater towards getting the player to exploit and play the different types of features and elements in the game. We’ve got driving so we’ve got “find the big extreme air jump” in the game. There are three levels you can drive around in but you’ll have to look around for the jump.

GCM: I’m sure millions of gamers are thanking you, but has including the PS2 and Xbox in your launch plans held you back in technology with what you could have done had you focused strictly on true next-gen systems?

JL: The main focus was next-gen then we basically pared it down to whatever we could get on the PS2 and it’s definitely allowed us to maintain a good framerate, good look of the levels, and about the same level of intensity. There might be some levels where there aren’t as many guys on the screen or as many particles, or the polys that go into a character. But if you play the PS2 it will be a very similar experience to the PS3 and the 360. We’re very excited about maintaining a consistent gameplay experience across all platforms. We know how important those guys are.

GCM: Just when you think you can’t find new source material for a WWII game you guys manage to find some unexplored campaign. Will the Call of Duty franchise ever explore more modern war scenarios or has modern warfare become too high-tech and hands-off to make a compelling game?

JL: We’re not allowed to talk about the future of Call of Duty, but I can definitely guarantee that the momentum the franchise has gained is not going to be lost, and everybody involved with the franchise is going to do everything they can to keep pushing the build, going further, and trying new things that haven’t been tried before.

GCM: Thank you again for your time! Do you have any last impressions or thoughts for our readers?

JL: One thing I always like to touch upon is that no great game is made without a great team and that the soul and fire and passion of this game will be felt by the players when they play it. People have poured their blood, heart and tears and sacrificed a lot and that’s a credit to the quality you guys will get to play. It is definitely a team effort and nothing is done without everybody being a part of it, understanding it, having ownership and accountability, and feeling good about it. And that is what we have in this project.

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