A Call of Duty game set in Italy during World War II was cancelled nine months into development in 2008, the gaming arm of The Verge has reported.
Call of Duty: Devil’s Brigade was a third-person Call of Duty spin-off led by veteran game developer, Jason VandenBerghe (Far Cry 3, Red Steel 2, James Bond: Agent Under Fire) that began development five months prior to the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The Verge reports that the development team was small compared to the teams that worked on the other games in the series, but things had looked hopeful: the game had a strong development team, financial support from Activision, the blessing of Call of Duty’s original developer, Infinity Ward.
Devil’s Brigade was to be a squad-based shooter where players would assume the role of American and Canadian soldiers fighting in Italy at the tail end of the war. The project was codenamed Codaa (Call of Duty Action Game).
The project was cancelled in the midst of the merger between Vivendi and Blizzard. The lead designer on Devil’s Brigade, Kyle Brink, said: “We were ready for our final green light just as the merger with Vivendi/Blizzard was announced. As is normal in a merger, you do everything you can to clean up your balance sheet. A studio that isn’t in full production on a title with major revenue attached to it, which is about to ask for tens of millions in development dollars, is a great candidate for closure at that point.”
Activision offered severance packages and support to those who now found themselves without a project to work on. Jason Vandenberghe is now a creative director at Ubisoft and other lead developers from the Devil’s Brigade team have moved to other Activision studios and SEGA.
oggob
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:09 AMI propose another reason for it’s cancellation…
COD4:MW – Released Nov 2007
*cue bucket loads of money*
COD:WAW – Released Nov 2008
*cue bucket loads of money*
Activision Exec : Why exactly do we need a squad based CoD? Cancel that shit and full steam ahead on more standard CoD games.
Bob
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:29 AM“The project was codenamed Codaa (Call of Duty Action Game).”
uhm, what?
El Kapitan
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:05 PMThe G is silent… and invisible.
Excelsior
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:33 AMit says it was a third person shooter, but the picture is obviously not third person?
gunni3
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:05 AMlol yeh, and it looks like the weapon is an AK47 and dpad shows night vision goggles, so not really WW2.. I could be wrong.
RandomAbuse
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:35 AMThe picture is not from the game. If you look closely in the bottom right hand corner, you can see it says CoD4.
Pariah
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:16 PMActually following links the article has, this was meant to be CoD4 before it was cancelled.
oggob
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:32 PMNo… someone has something screwed up somewhere…
Call of Duty: Devil’s Brigade is a cancelled FPS that was in development by Underground Development (aka Z-Axis) from 2007 to 2009
CoD4 was released in Nov 2007
Pariah
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:40 PMOdd.
Grimer
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 4:38 AMThe Development on this game must ave started towards the end of development on CoD4, i’d say they just took the bones of the code behind the game and then designed everything around that and never got around to adding the weapons or finalising the UI, using things already in the code as place holders.
thejiveman
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:08 AMIt Could have a first person option for people who prefer it. As a self hating COD player i may of been able to get on board with this one. Sounds intriguing and theres nothing better than game intrigue i believe. Is it possible to get a copy of this, i’d like to try it out.
name
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:26 AMIf only the entire series was cancelled..
attila
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:22 PMYeah, because its a game series enjoyed by millions of people – wouldn’t it be great if it were cancelled.
Johnny Sweetbread
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:20 PMI would’ve said give it a few more COD games and the same formula and they will be. But then I realised the games target the mindless, morbidly obese, drooling masses who are about as useful to society as a door knob on a wall. “Look at that new shiney!”
Truthist
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 5:33 PMJust like Pokemon!
Excelsior
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 2:52 PMA bit like World of Warcraft too.
blaja
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 3:06 PMIf only the entire Activision was cancelled.. *fixed*
blaja
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 3:04 PMOH SHIT!! Activision is going to get some hate mail now.
NickRad
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 3:05 PMSo an alpha build like this looks like a 2011 game :s
Realist
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 3:40 PMMore people play CoD than your rubbish, novelty indie games that so called ‘intelligent’ gamers play.
Get over yourselves. The CoD games are great and they sell in the tens of millions because people want to play them.
Robert Collumus
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:52 PMThe CoD games are the same repeative piles of crap over and over again, retarded children aged 17 and under purchase the games since they weren’t around when games offered some original content ala Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Quake and such..
Ty
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 1:08 AMThat’s like telling someone “Get over yourself” because they’re sick of hearing “Who Let the Dogs Out” on the radio. Obviously, the Baja men made tons of money so they must be geniuses due all acclaim.
Robert Collumus
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 8:56 PMIt was more like ‘It’s slightly original! Cancel it now!’