What is Call of Duty: Future Warfare? Scrapped game replaced by Ghosts leaked
ActivisionIn late January 2024, some leaks started to surface of a scrapped Call of Duty game from over a decade ago, which was to be the franchise’s first foray into a futuristic setting. So what exactly is Call of Duty: Future Warfare, otherwise known as NX1?
There have been many nixed plans for Call of Duty games or features over the years, as will always be the case for such a major annual franchise.
However, when these get leaked, they usually come out in real-time, and players anticipate the games before they do eventually get canned.
Something slightly different happened with COD: Future Warfare, which has seen a bunch of gameplay, missions lists, and more leaked over 10 years after it was intended to be published.
Here’s what we know about the game.
Who was developing COD: Future Warfare?
Future Warfare, or NX1, was — in an interesting twist — being developed by Neversoft, the studio behind Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
This came after many Infinity Ward employees left to form Respawn Entertainment — the development team behind the Titanfall games and Apex Legends.
When was NX1/Future Warfare meant to come out?
According to leaks, Future Warfare was meant to come out in 2013 but was eventually ditched in favor of Ghosts.
While jetpacks weren’t featured in leaked gameplay, it is clearly a futuristic game that may well have been the blueprint for the advanced movement titles that followed: Advanced Warfare, Black Ops 3, and Infinite Warfare.
Leaked Future Warfare missions list
One leaker showed a list of the Missions from the Future Warfare campaign. They were:
- Border
- Visiting Hours
- Into the Fire
- Winter Anvil
- Descent
- Hit Hard at Home
- Moonbase Assault
- Operation Deadbolt
Leaked Future Warfare/NX1 multiplayer maps
Of course, multiplayer is the biggest component of a Call of Duty game, and the leaked maps were certainly of interest.
The maps were:
- Whiteout
- Legacy Afghan
- Legacy Crash
- Legacy Outpost
- Legacy Overgrown
- Legacy Terminal
- Apartment
- Bin Laden’s Compound
- Gladiator Assault
- Merc Overgrown Map
- Merc Mode Map
- BENK
- JKU
- JPL Dock
The list also features a Blank Test MP Level and ‘Milota’s Test Map’.
Why was COD Future Warfare canceled?
It’s unclear why exactly this game was canceled, and we may never have a concrete reason, though it has certainly sparked some interest from the Call of Duty playerbase.
If this game had come out in place of Ghosts, the trajectory for the COD franchise could have completely changed, depending on the success of NX1.
Whether this is ever revisited remains to be seen, but it certainly seems to be a thing of the past now, especially with Neversoft merging into Infinity Ward and now being defunct.