Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Dev 'Not Worried' About Titanfall 'Ripoff' Claims

“Ripoff.” You’ve seen it said of gazillions of books, films, songs and video games. You’ve probably said it yourself about something at one point or another.

So what about Activision’s upcoming Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare? Is it just a Titanfall clone?

Don’t laugh: some people think so. Enough people that outlets like GameSpot and Game Informer made space, crazily, to write about it.

And check out what Advanced Warfare developer (and studio Sledgehammer cofounder) Michael Condrey just said about the matter on Twitter.

(It’s a wonder Condrey bothered to respond at all.)

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is a military-minded first-person shooter about exoskeletal augmented soldiers set in the near future. Titanfall is a first-person shooter set somewhere outside our solar system on the bleeding perimeter of space exploration. Titanfall has you running around in multiplayer arenas occasionally piloting robots of the sort FASA popularized decades ago. Advanced Warfare has you running around in both solo or multiplayer modes wearing a form-fitting contraption a bit like the thingamajig Matt Damon claps around his body in Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium.

Here’s Advanced Warfare‘s multiplayer trailer again. It looks like any other multiplayer first-person shooter trailer: a little nuttier, a little more vertical, sure, but we’re talking FPS principles here. If futuristic run-and-gunning’s a crime, string all the copycat perps up — but you’re going to need a pretty long rope.

Put a squirt gun to my head, and I’d admit I do see several crude similarities between some of Advanced Warfare‘s gameplay principles and those pioneered by a certain other game. Military-inspired combat body suits? Predator-style camouflage? Strength augmentation and the ability to make crazy-high jumps? Titanfall schmitenfall, that sounds like Crytek’s Crysis to me.

Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com.