--- title: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Trailer Tells the Story of Its Story description: In the new trailer, Sledgehammer Games' creative director explains that the game's future setting is firmly grounded in the present. canonical: https://time.com/2891069/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-trailer/ author: Matt Peckham article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-17T19:10:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:02:33.487Z article:section: Business og:title: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Trailer Tells the Story of Its Story og:description: In the new trailer, Sledgehammer Games' creative director explains that the game's future setting is firmly grounded in the present. og:url: https://time.com/2891069/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-trailer/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Trailer Tells the Story of Its Story twitter:description: In the new trailer, Sledgehammer Games' creative director explains that the game's future setting is firmly grounded in the present. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # New Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Trailer Tells the Story of Its Story by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Jun 17, 2014 7:10 PM CUT by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Jun 17, 2014 7:10 PM CUT It’s short and splashy and won’t tell you any more about Kevin Spacey’s heavily hyped role in _Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare_, but Sledgehammer creative director Bret Robbins does clarify a few details about the futuristic arsenal you’ll be wielding in the game. That’s actually kind of important to understand for the following reason. When I spoke with Sledgehammer co-founders Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey at E3 last week, they were keen to point out that _Advanced Warfare_ isn’t a science fiction game. I told them that in fact it was, and that they’d stumbled into a debate that’s been raging for years over whether science fiction equals speculative fiction, say novels like Margaret Atwood’s _Oryx and Crake_ or Cormac McCarthy’s _The Road_, or the file drawer that Kurt Vonnegut [quipped](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/156279-i-have-been-a-soreheaded-occupant-of-a-file-drawer "undefined") “so many serious critics regularly mistake … for a urinal.” Advanced Warfare takes place 40 years in the future and employs tech extrapolated from existing and near-future military concepts. That makes it the epitome of science fiction in my book. I’m not sure what to make of _Advanced Warfare_‘s story at this point. Sledgehammer wasn’t talking at E3, and I didn’t really want to know. I know I haven’t enjoyed a _Call of Duty_ story-wise for…well, maybe ever. But I did get the sense while watching the stealth demo at the show (you haven’t seen it, but when you do, you’ll understand), that the interactive narrative — the one you’ll create on the fly as you creep through the world in your tricked out exoskeletal suit — was much more than just the multiplayer tutorial these campaigns too often become. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2891069/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-trailer/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2891069/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-trailer/"},"headline":"New Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Trailer Tells the Story of Its Story","datePublished":"2014-06-17T19:10:59.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:02:33.487Z","description":"In the new trailer, Sledgehammer Games' creative director explains that the game's future setting is firmly grounded in the present.","url":"https://time.com/2891069/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-trailer/","keywords":["Tech","Video Games","Trailers","call of duty"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Peckham","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/matt-peckham/"}],"articleSection":"Business","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2891069/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-trailer/","name":"New Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Trailer Tells the Story of Its Story"}}]}] ```