Call Of Duty: The beginning and standardization of the First Person Shooter

It is a bit complicated today to look back and notice those titles that forged the trends of the industry today, there are games that have so marked the way in which video games are made that it is impossible not to put them in history. Call Of Duty is one of those games that always appear when we talk about history, developed by Infinity Ward was the beginning of one of the most recognized (and profitable) franchises, transforming the shooter genre from its foundations and marking the mechanics to be used during the next decades. And its influence is so great that even though it came out in 2003, even today in 2021 we see sequels of the mechanics and controls of the first installment. The standardization of first-person shooters begins with an order, A Call Of Duty.

A title of the magnitude of Call Of Duty one might think that it came reforming almost all the features of a shooter but there are several precedents for many of the mechanics of the title of Infinity Ward, perhaps the best known and the closest to its theme of military shooter is the eternal saga of Medal Of Honor which also takes place in the second world war and also explores many of the controls that then Call Of Duty would adapt, improve upon and then exploit to their full potential, the two games are not too dissimilar even today, so why is it that Infinity Ward's title has worldwide success while Medal Of Honor has lagged behind to be an industry bystander?

One of the most significant details when comparing these two IPs is that Call Of Duty comes as a project involving developers and creatives who left EA along with Medal Of Honor to shape their vision of shooters with a new start-up company, Infinity Ward was the industry's new pretty boy in a genre that was booming with titles like Half-Life and Doom behind it, also the laptop revolution gave stability to this new studio so that it was later bought and integrated to Actvision and thus could count on the necessary capital to bring out a new IP, one that went even further by representing the second world war and its characters, thus Call Of Duty was born.

At first glance it did not differ much from its predecessor but in Infinity Ward they were clear that if they were going to make a military shooter they had to go for everything, represent the war conflict realistically with several NPCs roaming and moving emulating war tactics was a titanic task in the 2000s, but the talent in the house was much more, not only implemented a much more realistic artificial intelligence for our opponents but applied the same parameters for our own allies, They were no longer rag dolls waiting to be shot by the enemy, they were soldiers, able to provide support and be crucial in the battle, among many of the things they programmed was the function of being able to independently frank our enemies, offer cover fire and give us packs to regenerate health, a real tip if you wanted to recreate the war properly.

Another feature in which the developer wanted to insist was the controls, more comfortable and following the trend that put titles like Half-Life, adopting their typical commands for PC, in terms of gameplay Call Of Duty made an immortal contribution to the game now having a sight apart from our aiming to stabilize our character and the player can more easily locate areas and enemies, its difficulty is one of its most varied features because it can adapt to any player and be both a friendly shooter for new players who are just starting to enter the genre to be a challenging simulator in which the enemies are tough, have good strategies, an intelligence to deal with you and more firepower.

I think that without a doubt what made this title stand out from its competition was something completely counter intuitive if we compare this title with the whole saga that came later, its story was one of the most interesting points from the beginning, dealing with a war conflict like the second world war from different perspectives on the same side, On one side we had the Americans going through a series of missions leading up to D-Day, in another camp we have the British desperately trying to defend themselves from the German advance, and finally we have the Soviets advancing towards Berlin and dealing with many of the leftovers of Hitler's army.

The multiplayer is one of the keys to each of the current installments of Call Of Duty, in this first installment gives us a multiplayer similar to many of the time, balanced and with many weapons to choose from, although its potential was yet to be reached is a good additive to what much later would become a unique sign of the franchise.

This first installment had tremendous repercussions on the entire FPS genre, it started a multi-million dollar franchise that even today finds ways to reach the market with eye-catching proposals, today it has even motivated many other developers to follow this type of formula in which the multiplayer forms a fundamental part along with the graphics, Perhaps the best known and the most successful of all, aside from Call of Duty, has been Battlefield, which follows exactly the same steps of its competitor to offer an alternative experience to Infinity Ward's mother title.

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