10 Things We Learned At The Call Of Duty XP Sledgehammer Panel

Between Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered's multiplayer unveiling, a closer look at "Zombies in Spaceland," and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 having its championship tournament over the weekend, Sledgehammer, the third lead developer of the series, could keep a low profile as they worked on their next game. Instead, they decided to chronicle their history during their panel, "Sledgehammer: The Seven Year Journey." Here are 10 things we learned about the company, their games, and Kevin Spacey during the panel.

Making Modern Warfare 3 was called to a vote
When the team was approached by Activision about helping Infinity Ward create the final game in the Modern Warfare trilogy, studio co-founders Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey called the project to a vote. The team voted overwhelmingly in favor of helping develop the game.

The Co-founders had a moment of doubt when they first left Visceral
"I remember the first day, sitting in my old car, parked out side of the gym which was the office," said Schofield. “I was thinking, 'what did we do?'”

Advanced Warfare had an unwritten rule of believeabiltiy
Although much of the technology in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has a far-off feel to it, Sledgehammer wanted to make sure every piece of technology had some sort of current working theory attached to it. We visited [the NASA] JPL, MIT, The human genome project. Whatever we wanted [in the game] we wanted it to fit with reality,” said Schofield.

The motion capture for Advanced Warfare was done on the same set as Avatar 2
Sledgehammer was a little starstruck to learn they were filming on the same set as a the sequel to a film which inspired much of their own technology.

To show off their next-gen tech, Sledgehammer created a demo called "The Fourth Wall"
The demo shows a team of what looks to be special forces infiltrating a room before one of them turns to the camera and calls attention to all the new facial technology in the game's engine, including the ability to dilate pupils on the fly.

10 Things We Learned At The Call Of Duty XP Sledgehammer Panel
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