Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare Might Be A Procedurally-Generated Escherian Nightmare

Activision tend to announce each year's Call of Duty in late April or early May, so we should be expecting the teaser trailer for the announcement for the teaser trailer for the ARG for the announcement any day now. The big surprise of 2016's game may have been slightly ruined, as folks including that Kotaku mob saw a mysterious entry for Call of Duty: Infinite War pop up in the PlayStation Store today. It's Infinity Ward's turn for CoD again, so yeah, maybe that's it. But that's only a name, not very exciting. Only RPS can tell you what it actually factually definitely truly is. Exclusive details follow.

It is, in a word, infinite. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare takes criticisms of the series's 'corridor' campaign level design and embraces them, runs with them, produces beautiful endless babies with them. Infinite Warfare has one single procedurally-generated level, one single corridor, an impossible space which twists and turns and loops back on itself in new and terrifying ways.

Fight your way to a door, wait for your AI buddy to open it, and... you're back where you were, only the floor is now a wall? Or you're in another country. Another war. Another century. You're the villain you shot ten minutes ago, fighting against your own movements repeated back to you. You're six inches tall, desperately seeking cover amongst tin cans and wishing you hadn't crushed them underfoot six hours ago. Thirty minutes is spent looping the exact same stretch. You're running along the microscopic grooves of your own knife blade, able to see yourself holding it. You're following yourself, having to dodge your own bullets to hit enemies beyond.

As time wears on, as the possibilities are exhausted, the procedural algorithm seems to break down. You're trapped in a hall of mirrors reflecting different realities. Glitched-out chunks of a New York alley in 1986 become a jumping puzzle. The ice caps melt and stretches are flooded. The earth is baked. Cities crumble to dust. The stars loom larger in the sky. They descend. They collide. Creation rips itself apart. You face the very final boss: the heat death of the universe.

Subsequent universes will be sold in a DLC season pass, which seems a bit cheeky consider the name 'Infinite Warfare'.