Activision's Andy Hendrickson took the stage during PlayStation Meeting 2016 in NYC to hype up how PS4 Pro would enhance Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Modern Warfare Remastered, and Black Ops 3.
Tech talk involved "greater memory bandwidth and enhanced GPU" to deliver richer textures and 4K graphics at the series' standard 60fps, but the new single-player campaign footage of Infinite Warfare did the real talking. Taken from a mission called Operation: Dark Quarry, it's set on an asteroid-based mining facility that's floating precariously close to the sun. And in classic COD fashion, this search-and-rescue op quickly descends into chaos.
In some quick cuts, we see our protagonist Nick Reyes and his crew sprinting towards the mining facility over pits of molten rock, seemingly melted by the 900-degree heat of the too-close-for-comfort sun. Staying in the shade is key to survival, as being caught by the sun's rays will cook you alive within moments, whether or not you're wearing your suit. Once inside, the mission transitions to cautiously tiptoeing through the now-abandoned facility, hoping to locate survivors and encountering a few corpses along the way.
Things take a turn for the creepy when your squad comes up to some worker drone droids, which start twitching as your approach. Suddenly, one grabs your teammate Nora Salter, forcing you to blast it into smithereens. It's a sign of more bad things to come, as an army of the drones 'awaken' all over the station and seem hellbent on pulverizing you and your crew. This turns into a shootout against the robots as they charge at you like big metal bulls in outdoor and indoor environments, with or without low gravity. To make matters worse, one of the facility's survivors you encounter panics and threatens to shoot if you come any closer. Cut to a series of explosions, a familiar shot of our CO handing us a gun, and the Infinite Warfare key art.
The footage was certainly exciting, but without a 4K display, you'd be forgiven for not noticing any difference in visual fidelity in the PS4 Pro footage of COD. But the promise of the extra graphical power is enticing all on its own. You'll be able to play this mission to its resolution when the game is released November 4, 2016.
