Video Footage Shows Unreleased Game Call of Duty: Roman Wars

Footage has emerged showing a very early version of Call of Duty: Roman Wars. It is a demo for a game created in 2008 by Vicarious Visions that was pitched at Activision. The publisher decided not to proceed with the game.

The unreleased Call of Duty game has been discovered by Games Radar. The website obtained images and spoke to a developer who was working on the project. Roman Wars is said to be a concept created after Activision asked various studios to pitch for a new game in the Call of Duty series.

Vicarious Visions is the studio responsible for Roman Wars. The studio was bought by Activision in 2005 and has mainly worked on Skylander games since 2010. Call of Duty: Roman Wars should have been an action game that features both third person and first person gameplay. The video shows a Gears of War-esque camera angle, looking over the shoulder of a Roman soldier.

Roman Wars is set around Julius Caesar’s Tenth Legion, described by the game’s creators as “the Spec Ops of that era.” The studio made one demo level to pitch the game to publisher Activision. The game takes place in third-person view for the most part, but a gladiator fight takes place in the first person.

The plan was to develop Roman Wars on the Xbox 360, but there should also be versions for the PS3 and PC. The goal was to release the game around 2013. It could also have become a launch title for the Xbox One and PS4.

According to Games Radar, the game got to the point where the CEO of Activision looked at it himself. In the end, the publisher decided not to proceed with the game. There would be doubts about associating the Call of Duty name with such a game. Later, the demo was also pitched to Ubisoft under the name ‘Roman Wars’, without Call of Duty addition. However, the game never came out.