Call Of Duty: Warzone Could've Been Even Crazier
"Warzone" created an entirely new way to play within the "Call of Duty" franchise, but it was originally going to be even wilder than it is now. In an interview with The Washington Post, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" creative director Patrick Kelly explained how "Warzone" came to be. Originally called "Magma," the battle royale mode players now know as "Warzone" was meant to feature an even greater number of players in a chaotic fight to the death.
Together with Infinity Ward Studio Head Dave Stohl, Kelly decided that in order to determine how large the maps would be in "Warzone," they first had to decide how many players would be featured per match. Always wanting to do things bigger and better than ever before, Kelly and Stohl determined that they should double the number of players their competitors "Fortnite" and "PUBG" featured. That meant that 200 soldiers would populate Kelly and Stohl's world.
Unfortunately, that number wasn't possible with the hardware the developers had access to at the time, and the team had to decrease the number of players to 150. Kelly said that he wanted to maintain the "graphical fidelity and realism" seen in the rest of the game, but "at the end of the day ... there's only so small a footprint you can get this content down to. And you get into this question of like, how many frickin' gigabytes is this thing going to be?" Ultimately, making sure the game ran smoothly was more important than crowding it with extra combatants.
Kelly also explained that his team wanted to take a different approach to battle royale strategy by upping the stakes in each match. This constant heightening gave "Warzone" players a sense that their life meant something, that camping out until the end of a match wasn't an option.
It's difficult to imagine what Kelly and Stohl's original ideas for "Warzone" might look like if they remained in the game. While gamers would certainly relish the added challenge of more and more opponents, the chaos of a 200 person battle seems like it would be difficult to manage. Fans got a taste of just how wild a 200 person battle could be when Activision temporarily allowed 50 more players per round.
At the end of the day, players can thank Kelly, Stohl, and the rest of the development team for dreaming big and crafting the game's Verdansk map carefully.