Footage of a cancelled, “futuristic” Call Of Duty by former Guitar Hero developers has leaked

Videos of a cancelled Call Of Duty game from the early 2000s have surfaced on Xwitter, with the name “NX1”. In the footage, you see classic CODisms like explosions and a first-person view of a character wearily making their way through a disaster. While the accounts sharing the videos are anonymous, a former Neversoft developer has stepped in to authenticate them and share a few details about the project, a “futuristic CoD game” that was in the works prior to the development of 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts.

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The first video shows off the “Moonbase Assault” level, where as you’d expect, a moonbase is being assaulted. The action is COD in a nutshell: waking up, some astronaut shouting “Let’s get you inside!”, followed by a lot of shuddering and explosions. The footage certainly seems high quality, suggesting a level that was a fair way through development.

Former Neversoft developer Brian Bright jumps into the thread, offering some more context around the leaked footage. He says that Neversoft experimented with “low g” and it was really “about the team learning the engine”, having come to NX1 fresh from the Guitar Hero franchise. “I believe this would have been in place of Ghosts, trying to remember”, he says. “We had 2-3 campaign missions, and a bunch of MP work done (I was mp lead on this) before cancellation”.

Another post showed off the game’s multiplayer, where a player sprints around a sandy free-for-all map. It looks like it’s from an earlier stage of development than the campaign footage. Again, the interest lies in what’s said around it, not the gameplay itself. Bright hops in, calling the map “Sandstorm” and mentioning an “Escort” mode. According to Bright, Neversoft toyed around with a ground vehicle or “UGV”, along with an “elevator” that would raise it. Perhaps NX1 was a bit Battlefield-y in this respect.

Microsoft laid announced nearly two thousand layoffs last week, which extend to Call of Duty developers at Activision – according to one report over the weekend, 30% of the Sledgehammer Games team have lost their jobs. There have also been departures at Infinity Ward, the studio that absorbed Neversoft in 2014. It’s possible the NX1 leakers are laid-off developers sharing work so as to stick it to the man a little, though I don’t have any no proof of that.

In our best COD campaign rankings, we popped Ghosts pretty low down. If this was in a similar vein, I do wonder where it would’ve ended up – I mean, any COD willing to experiment gets a yes from me.