When God of War and Twisted Metal director David Jaffe saw the Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 trailer, the set pieces intrigued him for the first time in a while.
“I love the genre, but I feel it has been allowed to go a little — well, actually, quite a lot — stale when it comes to moment to moment mechanics,” he said, noting RPG mechanics have shifted the focus from how similar enemy encounters are. “I’m hoping to see that iterated on in the future.”
So, could Jaffe be the one to iterate on the genre? Earlier this year, he walked away from developer Eat Sleep Play to create a new title in the “casual space.” Has he thought about tackling a shooter of his own, and what would he do differently?
“I have thought about it,” Jaffe said. “I’m not telling you.”
In the three months since the release of Twisted Metal, Jaffe has supported the car combat title (an arrangement that ends this month) and stewed on what his next project will be. The process began with a whiteboard filled with 30 ideas and is now down to two.
“There is a gun in [one of the games],” Jaffe said. “And you hold it. And all the things that I can sit here and passionately discuss and preach to you are absolutely things that I’m thinking about doing if it turns out the game we’re thinking about doing gets made next involves a gun and a person holding a gun.”
The next step for Jaffe is following up with publishers and potential teammates to hone in on a final idea. Until that’s done, we won’t know what the project will be — or where it will show up.
“I remain incredibly enthusiastic about the browser space in terms of its ease of access, the number of people who can experience the game,” Jaffe said citing Unreal and Flash advancements. “But it doesn’t mean that’s where we’re going to end up.”
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