Sledgehammer Not Working on CoD Remaster; Studio Head Expects Female Lead in Future Call of Duty

Chris Harding February 6, 2015 7:25 AM EST

Sledgehammer Games are still reeling from the success of last years refreshing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, so you’d expect they’d all be taking a break from their desks for a while, maybe enjoying the 3.5 hours of average sunshine you can expect at this time of year.

Unfortunately for the ladies and gents at Sledgehammer, that’s not quite the case. They’re hard at work crafting the DLC that fans have come to expect as well as bringing together some new ideas for their next Call of Duty which is already in pre-production, as stated by studio head Michael Condrey.

The fan-friendly chief recently took some time away from his busy schedule to speak in an interview where he revealed a few interesting tidbits.

When asked if Sledgehammer were working on a remastered collection of previous Call of Duty games, Condrey crushed the dreams of many.

There are tons of games that I’ve played in my career that I would love to play again, remastered and next-generation experience right, from God of War to Ratchet & Clank, so I get the appeal and I, you know, my heart is closest to Call of Duty and I love going back and playing CoD 4 and Modern [Warfare] 2, and so I can tell you we’re not working on any remastered edition at Sledgehammer. I think there’s opportunity for Call of Duty, but that said I don’t know if anybody is working on it, we’re not working on it.

That’s not to say that nobody is working on a remastered collection of sorts. It’s always possible that Activision has another of its studios working on it, so don’t give up all hope just yet.

When asked what the future holds for Sledgehammer and their iterations of Call of Duty, Condrey revealed that whilst the team are currently focusing their efforts on download content, there are already ideas for their next installment.

We’re coming out of Advanced Warfare very proud of what that game is and what it means to fans, but we’re also listening closely to what fans want and ideas about how to continue that going forward, so yeah, everything is on the table. The team is focused on the DLC, but we’ve talked about new ways to play, whether that’s branching story-lines or third [person] mode or crazy changes to the multiplayer, we have the luxury of already being in pre-production of our next game so all ideas are good ideas at this point.

And finally, the studio head was asked if the Call of Duty franchise would ever have a strong female lead character in future games, Condrey had the following to say.

Absolutely. After speaking with military advisors, strong female characters, strong female military presences are gonna be in the future, and we’re seeing it today, so absolutely, you would expect to see that one day in Call of Duty.

Female characters have already begun creeping into the franchise, but we’ve yet to see a Call of Duty game where players would be dropped into the combat boots of a female soldier during the single-player campaign. Personally, I wouldn’t mind it, more diversity is always a good thing and with the macho-nature of Call of Duty, it’d be interesting to see what could be done with some well written female characters.