Call of Duty: Ghosts Interview

Last time we saw Call of Duty: Ghosts the emphasis was firmly on next-gen tech. At E3 Activision and Infinity Ward were giving more away about gameplay. We talked with senior prodcuer Yale Miller about dogs, story and multiplayer.

First things first, we asked Miller about how the team had responded to the fan reaction surrounding the inclusion of a dog, Riley, in the single player campaign of Ghosts: "Obviously we thought the dog would be cool... we played it, we liked it, we think it's awesome, but to have the fan reaction that we have has kind of blown our minds."

"It's a great new dynamic, and I think we're all fans. And just the fact of working with the real guys, the SEAL team guys, working with real SEAL team service dogs, kind of understanding what they can do. We were "oh my God, they can do this, and they can do this." And so from a game design and idea perspective it was like: "wow, you can give them commands?" "Yeah, they've got a little vibrating collar that tells them to go left and right, they've got an earpiece, they've got a camera that pops up and swings back and forth so they never get stuck on anything so they can keep going." So just using them in combat, whether it's finding enemies, detecting people, because obviously their sense of hearing and smell, everyone knows about the bomb detection side, right? Or sniffing for drugs? Everything they can do is just pretty crazy. Just how athletic they are. "Wow, a dog can breach?! Like, what?!" "Oh yeah, we just do it, we just pop the window and then... [the dog bursts through a window and chaos ensues]"

We discussed the narrative set to feature in Ghosts, and the characters that the players will meet, but for many the most important thing is multiplayer. We asked how Infinity Ward were going to develop that side of the game and what they were doing to keep themselves at the top of the food chain.

Miller explained: "We just make it better, and the goal there is obviously we wanna keep what's core about Call of Duty: really, really solid, smooth gameplay, low latency controls so it feels really good when you play, but then also doing things with new animation systems and contextual lean and knee slide and a bunch of different things that are just going to change and add more to it. Just how the player is going to move through the world."

Call of Duty: Ghosts will be launching on Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii U and next-gen consoles at the end of the year, with the first salvo of releases landing on November 5.