Activision officially released Call of Duty Warzone on March 10th, four years ago, bringing a new free-to-play, cross-platform battle royale title that brought together over 150 players. The title included a lot of fan-favorite maps, one of which is Rebirth Island, which recently got included in Call of Duty (COD) Warzone Mobile, along with another fan-favorite map, Verdansk.
Fans now rate Verdansk rather highly but things could have been quite different if initial plans had gone ahead. Verdansk is based on the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, but when work began on Warzone, Donetsk wasn’t the first city considered for inspiration.
Donetsk Was Not Call of Duty’s Franchise Director’s First Choice of City for Warzone
COD Franchise Director Patrick Kelly and one of the former Studio Heads of Infinity Ward, Dave Stohl, spoke to the Washington Post about the formation of Warzone from the initial pitch to the final development. Kelly and Stohl were co-studio heads when they pitched the idea for Project Magma, which would later be named Warzone after development.
Kelly recalled having pitched a massive map, which concerned others. A battle royale mode was already in the works at the same time for Treyarch’s COD Black Ops 4, but Kelly stressed the worry across the board was not about Project Magma stepping on Treyarch’s project but the effort needed to get Kelly’s pitch into reality.
Even before a city was finalized, Kelly revealed the overall idea was to “build a big space” and to build “something real.” Kelly mentioned having “looked a lot at Donetsk, Ukraine” among other cities, while also revealing his initial choice.
Originally I wanted to build Kabul.
Kabul appealed to Kelly for the city’s prominence in global events, but more than that, it was the “benefit in terms of game-making logistics.” Kelly went on to say why the initial plans for the city had to be backtracked.
Initial Map Development was Getting Out of Control Before Finalizing Verdansk
He continued to reveal that the overall idea was to build “structures and buildings that were going to be the same texture sets, the same material sets” to help players remember the map well. The idea, however, backfired as the team figured out that players would never be exactly on the map if every location looked the same.
Kelly recalled how the team “just kept building” and almost ended up with a city that was miles across. Kelly and Stohl both wanted to double down in terms of standards set by the more prominent and popular battle royale titles, PUBG and Fortnite but also found it logical to rein down the size of the city to a sensible size.
In the end, Blackout turned out to be the biggest map in Call of Duty Warzone, followed by Al Mazra, Caldera, Verdansk, Fortunes Keep, Ashika Island, and Rebirth Island being the smallest map in the game. Among these, Verdansk, Fortunes Keep and Rebirth Island are some of the most replayed maps in the game.
Would you have preferred a massive city based on Kabul or are you happy with Verdansk and other maps? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
