Sledgehammer: "The most innovative, biggest offering of Call of Duty"

Gamescom played host to the big multiplayer reveal of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and our neighbourhood CoD expert Nick Holmberg caught up with Sledgehammer Games' founders Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey to find out more.

Naturally the talk started out with the most significant change made to CoD in many years - the exo-skeleton.

"The exo-skeleton is one of the first things we came up with when we were working on the game," says Schofield. "That was almost three years ago. So the exo-skeleton changes the way you play Call of Duty. First you probably saw the boost jump. All of a sudden now we're playing with verticality. We've got ways of attacking from above, which changes the way that we build the levels. Because we now have to think in a different way. So that in itself is a big, big game changer. And that goes across campaign, multiplayer and co-op."

"We have exo perks, exo abilities and exo launcher that changes the way you play," says Condrey. "Abilities are a great way to augment your exo. You can almost think of them like an attachment to your exo that augments how you play. And everything from cloak, hover, and shield to stim and mobile trophy system. There's a bunch of ways you can customise your playstyle and on top of that you've got the launcher. The launcher is a consolidation of tacticals and lethals and new equipment that really allow you to use fan favourites like frags and semtex and some new things like the threat grenade to really have a balanced experience. We found that it was important, you're moving so fast with the boost, and boost jump and dodge that you can no longer throw a grenade fast enough. So the launcher allows you to push that thing out into the world and really go after a guy that might be boosting out of your way."

Subjects like the new "Pick 13" and customised score streaks were covered as well as co-op score streaks and map-based score streaks. That and the infamous dual goggles load-out of Glen Schofield's invention. The wealth of weapons and upgrades as well as the loot system was also covered.

We also asked whether making a game that appeals to both pros and "normal" gamers.

"We listen to all the fans and we take that feedback in," says Condrey. "So a lot of the great overlap. Fans love Capture the Flag. E-sports love Capture the Flag. Fans love Hardpoint, so does e-sports. So it's not like we are trying to cater specifically to e-sports, but supporting all fans. And e-sports as a group of fans we want to also lilsten to their needs and there are some things we've heard loud and clear like expanded broadcaster mode and ranked playlists, and objective based games. A number of areas where we thought 'hey look, if that makes both the player and the spectator experience better we want to offer that to all of our fans."

"It's not mutually exclusive. Balancing the game for competitors means that we're balancing it for all fans. We don't want overpowered weapons. We don't want combinations of Pick 13 create a class to be overpowered. And frankly the e-sports community are the first to figure those kind of combinations out for us. So we think that helps the player experience for everyone."

The multiplayer reveal gave us a ton of details (more than what is usually the case with the first drop of mp details), but there's more to come according to the Sledgehammer duo:

"There are probably ten more things that we haven't even talked about yet," says Condrey. "So to Glen's point with three years, focus on innovation, just to come out today here at Gamescom to say 'look, this is the most innovative, biggest offering of Call of Duty with the exo transforming how you play. Let's just show it and see how people react and we've been really happy with how it's gone."