Highlights

  • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare deserves more attention for its unique near-future combat and character customization.
  • A reboot of Advanced Warfare could provide a fresh narrative with different characters and motivations, distancing from past controversies.
  • Despite past casting controversies, a potential sequel or reboot of Advanced Warfare is still a viable and intriguing project.

While Call of Duty has been dominated by its large sub-franchises like Modern Warfare and Black Ops in recent years, there are many one-off entries to the IP that are deserving of more attention. One of these titles is 2014's Advanced Warfare, which marked Sledgehammer Games' first major foray into the world of CoD, with the game featuring a fascinating take on near-future combat.

The concept of a sequel to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has been thrown around a lot since the game's release, and there are a lot of recent indicators that this could be a real possibility for the near future. Despite this glimmer of hope, the single-player narrative of Advanced Warfare has not aged well due to the presence of Kevin Spacey as Jonathon Irons, one of the most integral characters in the game's campaign. Of course, another entry to Advanced Warfare could still be a fantastic project, but it may be better off distancing itself from the main events of the first game.

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Advanced Warfare Should Get the Same Reboot Treatment as Modern Warfare

The story of Advanced Warfare saw Kevin Spacey's Jonathon Irons as the CEO of the Atlas Corporation, a private military group that has risen to a dominant level of power and global influence. Using advanced technology to rewrite the possibilities of warfare and combat survivability, Atlas is considered as the most powerful military contractor on Earth, with Irons reaping the political rewards of his position as CEO.

At the time of release, the casting of Kevin Spacey as Irons was considered a serious coup for Call of Duty, arguably being the most high-profile actor to be cast in a CoD entry. Since Kevin Spacey's sexual misconduct allegations popped up he was effectively blacklisted from the industry, which made a potential re-appearance by the actor in an Advanced Warfare sequel extremely unlikely.

It seems clear that Sledgehammer Games is interested in a sequel, however, with references to Advanced Warfare recently appearing in Warzone and rumors speculating that Sledgehammer was focusing on Advanced Warfare 2 before being told to create Modern Warfare 3 instead. The controversy behind Advanced Warfare's antagonist does not have to bury this idea, and a reboot could be the best way forward for another entry to the sub-franchise.

Advanced Warfare Can Perfectly Re-Design Itself with a Reboot

Like the recently rebooted Modern Warfare trilogy, a fresh take on Advanced Warfare could feature many of the same characters and factions as the original game, but with different likenesses, motivations, and narrative purposes. This would allow a new actor to portray Jonathon Irons at the very least, distancing a potential reboot from any controversy while making its narrative unpredictable to even the most dedicated Advanced Warfare fans.

With it being likely that Call of Duty will soon move away from its recent focus on Modern Warfare and Black Ops, it seems that many fans want to re-experience the high-octane movement and ability systems of Advanced Warfare. While it is true that the original game is by proxy marred by some controversy, a reboot of the sub-franchise instead of a direct sequel could easily breathe new life into an IP that still has a lot of potential in the stories that it can tell.