When Call of Duty: Ghosts launched in 2013, it was the first game to release on a new generation of consoles — the PS4 and Xbox One. Packed with the new game was a third game mode known as Extinction — an alien-themed co-op experience. It was dubbed Infinity Ward’s answer to the Treyarch’s popular Zombies mode. Unfortunately, Call of Duty: Ghosts was the last we saw of Extinction, but according to developers that could have been different.
Why Extinction 2 wasn’t included in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Lee Ross, who was associate project director at Infinity Ward for Infinite Warfare Zombies, took to Twitter to talk about his iteration of zombies having the “BEST Super EE” the franchise has ever seen. This came in response to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s mixed reception to its recent super easter egg update.
In a thread with former colleague Brian Bright (project director at Infinity Ward), Ross confirmed a 2.0 version of the mode was in the prototype stage. He said:
“Extinction 2 would have been AMAZING! That prototype we built had so much promise!”
Bright confirmed this and also said the proposed second iteration of Extinction would include base building similar to a real-time strategy (RTS). The developer said a deciding factor why Extinction 2.0 never saw the light of day was because of the game it was supposed to be included in. Infinity Ward was “nervous” about taking Call of Duty into space with Infinite Warfare, according to Bright, and didn’t want aliens to be involved.
Yep the video is cool. Base building baby! A little RTS mechanics in the mix
— Brian Bright (@BrianBright) April 25, 2022
Despite many fans curious about what Extinction could have looked like in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, it would have meant popular maps such as Zombies in Spaceland would not have come to fruition. For many, Zombies in Infinite Warfare was a hit in a game where the reveal trailer was at one stage the second-most disliked video on YouTube.
To be fair, if we made Extinction 2 there would not have been IW Zombies. The studio was nervous about taking COD to space and didnt want “aliens” in it, even though the cryptids were not aliens.
— Brian Bright (@BrianBright) April 25, 2022
In other news, PlayStation has reportedly formed a “newly created Preservation team” which could be in charge of preserving PlayStation classics. Meanwhile, the New Game Plus mode arrives in Dying Light 2 this week.
