Call of Duty: Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward admits while when working on the original iteration of Call of Duty 4, it was developing a space sci-fi shooter to topple Halo. Before the team transitioned to the modern warfare approach, a WWII shooter was being developed by one team while the other worked on this Halo killer.
Following the release of Call of Duty 2, Infinity Ward was tasked with making the fourth entry in the franchise. Some team members took on a second project.
"We didn’t know if we were going to be able to do a modern game," Infinity Ward art director Joel Emslie told Game Informer. "It was a moment where we really wanted to take down Halo really bad, and we wanted to create a Halo killer. Part of the studio went off and was working on another game to do that."
While this would have been cool to see, the projects unfortunately weren't working out with that sort of staffing. "The whole Infinity Ward experience is what we make is the sum of the parts, like all the components work together," Emslie said. The team soon came back together to work on the first game in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise. It would be one of the most influential games in the history of the genre.
Not much ever made it out of the "Halo killer" fps, with one small exception. The Cryptid alien race that appeared as the adversary in the Call of Duty: Ghosts Extinction mode shares similarities with designs from the Infinity Ward sci-fi project.
The original Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was not as much a Halo killer as it was a contemporary to Halo 3. Both existed with features to appease different types of players. With the rise of Fortnite and the Battle Royale genre, the Call of Duty franchise is once again turning to Modern Warfare to attempt to win back attention with what is looking to be the most ambitious Call of Duty game in years.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare launches on October 25 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Game Informer