Once upon a time, the world of epic shooters rested on three pillars:Medal of Honor,Battlefield, andCall of Duty.
These games grew up, keeping up with a rapidly changing world where big World War 2 battles led to covert operations and counterterrorism.
Today, there is onlyCall of Duty, but it would be generous to pretend it could have solidified this grip on the scene without its competitors imploding. As the years pile on, is there any hope for a shooter that can compete withActivision’s crown jewel?
Games Imitate Art
In their early days, the big-name shooters by EA, Ubisoft, and Activision were not shy about following films and literature.
Steven Spielberg was fresh off of directingSaving Private Ryan, and to this dayalmost every single World War 2 game tries to emulate the experience of landing on Omaha Beach as depicted in the film.
Tom Clancy had books likeThe Sum of All FearsorClear and Present Dangerhelp define what threats existed to the new world: terrorists, drug cartels, and arms dealers that could harness the Cold War arsenals to bring destruction regardless of how countries handled it.
Call of Dutyentered the scene last, essentially an Activision reimagining ofMedal of Honor: Allied Assault, which is, for the most part, an adaptation ofSaving Private Ryan.
Activision leaned hard on recreating popular imagery, like its almost shot-by-shot remake of theEnemy At The Gatesriver crossing in Stalingrad, which included the film’s gross historical inaccuracies.
You might wonder how a late entry with few original elements dethroned its established competitors.
A Tale of Fatigue
Epic single-playerWorld War 2 shootersdefined the early 2000s, but as every developer and their cousin jumped on the bandwagon, things started feeling stale.
EA broughtmodern warfareto mainstream gaming withBattlefield 2in 2005, but it was eclipsed by the bombastic release ofCall of Duty 4: Modern Warfaretwo years later.
Too many people argue thatModern Warfareis the paradigm shift in the franchise and modern shooters, and they are very wrong.
The core ofModern Warfaregameplay is the special forces infiltration business as perfected byTom Clancy’s Ghost Reconin 2001. Still,outside of a war crime or two, this is the same oldCall of Dutyformula: soldiers of different nations fight together and save the world, yippee!
Society had become weary of Hollywood heroes after half a decade of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that became increasingly controversial.
10 Games That Drastically Reinvented Their Franchise
These ten titles all come with a pedigree, but they dared to be different, and transformed their franchises in the process.
Battlefield did a bad boy series withBattlefield: Bad Companyin 2008, butCall of Dutytook the bag home following a similar formula asModern Warfare 2(2009).This, right here, is where the mainstream epic shooter died.
This is a sequel toCall of Duty 4, but both games feel worlds apart.Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2was a bombastic thriller where bad people do bad things,and you’re simply along for the ride. Sometimes it’s for the greater good, other times it’s purely for revenge.
Beyond the bombastic campaign themes,this was the firstCall of Dutygame in which the multiplayer side eclipsed the campaign, leading to an irreversible shift in priorities for the franchise, and the genre itself.
The slow gameplay with large maps made way forQuakewith nukes and Predator drones.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2killed theCall of Dutyof old, pandering to the stereotypical 2010s teenager, spending hours learning every expletive under the sun in seven languages. It was a good time, but was it worth it?
Medal of Honor Suffers A Hero’s Death
In 2010,theMedal of Honorfranchisewas reborn, and it decided to fight the ‘bad boy’ trend with a bold twist. This was a traditional game of heroes going to war, but it was set in a war that was still ongoing.
The war in Afghanistan had dragged on for almost a decade. Osama Bin Laden was still at large, andit was well possible for someone to play theMedal of Honorand then fight in that same war it portrayed.
The realistic depiction of the Taliban (including foreign components like Chechen fighters), the schism between the US special forces and the bureaucrat brass back home, and the accurate depiction of missions madeMedal of Honorhit home.
Medal of Honorearned multiple rebukes from defense ministers and even earned a ban in US military base exchanges.
Two years later,Medal of Honor: Warfighterdepicted the 2004 Madrid bombings, the Maersk Alabamahijacking by pirates(too slow, Tom Hanks), and the controversial relationship between Pakistani intelligence and terrorist groups in Afghanistan. This got the game banned in Pakistan.
When I first played the modernMedal of Honortitles, I regularly found myself thinking, “woah, they actually went there.“That’s a feeling that stays with you in a game.
While the 2010 reboot was a commercial success, it failed to unseat or even disruptCall of Duty.Warfighterfared even worse due to its awkward levels and botched execution of an otherwise strong story.
Both games were unapologetic in approaching heavy themes in ways we need now more than ever.I would easily tradeCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 2and every Call of Duty that came after it for a remake or remaster of the last twoMedal of Honortitles.
Battlefield: Is Bigger Always Better?
In 2011,Battlefield 3made a major dent in the sales ofCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and was easily the better game.
The campaignhit the right balance of epic heroism and chest-thumping rogue business, whilethe multiplayer had classic combined armsBattlefieldmixed in with closer-quarters fights that were fast but measured.
Battlefield 4(2013) failed to capitalize on the momentum thanks to a miserable campaign centered around a Chinese civil war with a spy subplot with dialogue straight out of anAmong Usround. Sounds like nonsense? Well, it is.
Undeterred by the failure ofBattlefield 4, EA launchedBattlefield Hardline, one of the boldest entries in the genre.The prompt went something like, “What if you playedGrand Theft Autofrom the cops' perspective with more explosions than a Michael Bay film,” and it was awesome.
EA’s New Battlefield Aims To Revive the Glory Days with a Modern Setting
EA has finally unveiled their plans for the next Battlefield title, which will stick to the fundamentals of the series.
The multiplayer came with fresh cops and robbers modes, and it shot the game to the top of sales charts. It’s hard to judge objectively whether the campaign was good or not, as afterBattlefield 4anything would have looked fine.
A sequel toBattlefield Hardlinecould have opened the path to dethroningCall of Duty, butthe political climate in the United States made a sequel to a police game unappealing.
Seeinghow much noisetotally-not-SWAT-copyReady or Notmade in 2021, it is easy to see why a major publisher wouldn’t want to go through the trouble.
Battlefield Hardlinedeveloper Visceral Games died with the game, andwhat happened between 2016 and 2024 in theBattlefieldworld can be explained briefly: multiplayer slop, lots of it.
You could make a case forBattlefield 1being fun to play and vaguely original (despite being vastly inferior toVerdun, released a year earlier), butBattlefield VandBattlefield 2042rank somewhere between forgettable and terrible.
While EA fell behind, Ubisoft stuck gold. The company releasedTom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siegein 2015 and molded it into a highly marketable hero shooter that feels more likeOverwatchorFortnitethan a Tom Clancy title.
The real Ubisoft win for the classic shooter genre came withGhost Recon Wildlands(2017),a no-nonsense story-driven shooter with a massive open world, a scary drug cartel, and the best cutscenes in any shooter in the last decade.
The game managed to beatThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildin its release month.
Alas, all that capital earned with the gameplay would go to waste in 2019. Your unit botches a helicopter assault against an island swarming with insufferable tech bros and fratboy veterans. That’sGhost Recon Breakpointfor you. It bombed.
A Sleeping Giant Awakens
Did you notice how we discussedCall of Duty’s competitors at length but very little about the game itself? You can thank Activision for that.
Since the release ofCall of Duty: Black Ops 2in 2012, there has been exactly one decent original title:Call of Duty: Black Ops 6(2024). No, remakes and rehashes ofModern Warfaredo not count.
10 Best Call Of Duty Campaigns, Ranked
A good story sets the tone, and Call of Duty’s tone is bombastic!
Between 2012 and 2024, EA and Ubisoft had 12 years for themselves when Activision was making mediocre titles or remasteringCall of Duty: Modern Warfareenough times to make Naughty Dog proud.
That window of opportunity, when Treyarch and Infinity Ward forgot how to design games, is closed.To strike back, Activision’s competitors need to deliver their very best or die trying.
Follow The Dark Horse
For about a decade, almost every year in gaming has had the same flow: EA and Ubisoft either release nothing or drop a mediocre title, whileCall of Dutydoes the same, but wins by inertia.
The failure to fight back with the necessary scale and intensity has pushed both companies to an awkward corner where they risk losing to the dark horse: indie shooters.
One too many underwhelming releases have led veteranBattlefield,Medal of Honor,Ghost Recon,Rainbow Six, and evenCall of Dutyveterans to abandon all hope for big-shot releases.
If, in 2010, you would regularly hear phrases like “I don’t play Call of Duty, I prefer Battlefield,” these days, it’s becoming increasingly common for players to say they just prefer “smaller shooters.”
Despite having no cooperation or affiliation, the mythical smaller shooter has become a monolith that offers refuge to those worn out by AAA development practices perceived as either uninspired or outright lazy.
A lot of the shooters in this emerging category lean hard on realism and slower gameplay, but you also have cases likeDelta Force, which functionally follows a blend of classicBattlefieldandCall of Dutygameplay, starting to threaten Activision’s hold on the multiplayer side of things.
Rather than throw the towel and let the small kids and Activision duke it out, big developers need to see this as a major opportunity to hit back.If a small studio like OWI or VOID Interactive can put out something that draws players away despite having limited resources, imagine what could be done with the blank cheque EA and Ubisoft can give their development teams.
This is a unique era where, through the incompetence of the big shots, they ended up with a variety of validated concepts with established player bases and a clear blueprint of what works and what doesn’t in a modern shooter.
EA and Ubisoft Have One Last Opportunity
Ubisoft appears to have taken the hint. The French company is working on a newGhost Recongame, codenamedProject Over.This will be a first-person game set in Southeast Asia, inspired by hardcore shootersSquadandReady or Not. The themes will also be much darker than the usualGhost Recontitle, hopefully incorporating lessons learned fromMedal of Honor.
There are concerns that corporate interests may water down the topics addressed before the release, but word on the streets is that this title will not pull punches if the devs have their way.
The two games cited as inspirations for the newGhost Reconhave a combined 24-hour peak of around 35,000 players on Steam. For reference,Call of DutyandRainbow Six Siegehit around 80,000 each by the same metrics. AGhost Recongame that incorporates the best of indie shooters with a huge budget could break into the top of the charts.
Meanwhile,EA is cooking up aBattlefieldtitle that will play out in the modern era, likeBattlefield 2, 3, and 4. It is currently going through extensive player testing to avoid anotherBattlefield 2042-sized disaster.
Unlike Ubisoft, EA has been a lot quieter about the specifics of the new game, but it is easy to see the size of the ambitions.For the first time, there are not one but four mainline studios sharing the work in the nextBattlefield.
The franchise’s creators at DICE will handle the multiplayer side of things, while Motive’s team that worked on the commercially disappointing but extremely solidDead Spaceremake is in charge of the single-player part of the game.
Criterion Games is said to be working on both multiplayer and single-player gameplay, and Ripple Effect seems to be in charge of seasonal multiplayer content.
NeitherProject Overnor the nextBattlefieldis expected to be released before 2026. If these upcoming FPS titles fail to capture the existing audience and tempt the nostalgics back, it may mean the end of the epic shooter as we know it.
Big studios have more corporate oversight than sense, and it is clear as day thatno investor will want to take part in this feud with Activision if it means sacrificing their bottom line. A flop after investing this much is exactly what they fear. However, taking this risky shot is a million times better than dying a certain slow death through reluctance.
We need a big-name name shooter who is unafraid to tackle complex topics, has enough grit to feel like there’s a war around, and with a technical execution that is not tragic. If that cannot exist, maybe we are better off replayingAll Ghillied Upwell into 2030.
