Footage of a canceled Call of Duty project has surfaced online, prompting discussion on what could’ve been Neversoft’s first CoD title. The video, showing the menu and missions, was confirmed as real by a lead developer on Infinity Ward’s later Call of Duty games.
Amid the bleakness of 2024 marred with layoffs and all sorts of shenanigans going down in the gaming world, we seem to have got a speck of light emanating from the olden days. A user on X (formerly Twitter) shared a video on Jan. 27 featuring NX1, a canceled Call of Duty game developed by the now-defunct Neversoft Entertainment. The video’s verity was confirmed by the former project director of Infinite Warfare Zombies and Extinction and leading developer of Neversoft’s Guitar Hero, Brian Bright.
The video showcases the game’s main menu and one mission, which takes place on the Moon, and it has striking similarities to Modern Warfare 2 and what would later become CoD: Ghosts. Bright elaborated on the video and shared information on the project and said that when Infinity Ward split to create Respawn Entertainment of Apex: Legends fame, Neversoft moved away from Guitar Hero to make a futuristic CoD. He added that NX1 was supposed to release in place of Ghosts and had a ton of work done on it, mostly multiplayer-related, before Activision scrapped the project.
Players replying to the original X thread seem to be in consensus over one thing: the gameplay showed looks mighty cool. Though it heavily resembles the CoD games of that time, it’s still an OG IW Engine CoD, which calls back to an era now long gone. CoD: Ghosts and subsequent entries in the franchise sent the series into a downward spiral of experimental titles, with one even attaining the most-disliked YouTube video in history, albeit undeservedly. To think there could’ve been something else in Ghosts‘ stead means CoD could’ve gone a whole other route, and no one knows where that would have led us.
I guess we’ll never know, as Neversoft was shut down a year after Ghosts came out.
