Earlier this week, GamesRadar revealed that Activision was working on an historical spin-off of the company’s premier war-themed shooter, Call of Duty. The game, dubbed Call of Duty: Roman Wars, would have taken the player back to ancient Rome to take the role of a soldier in Julius Caesar’s Tenth Legion.
“A game featuring battle elephants trampling soldiers, a playable Julius Caesar and first-person sword combat,” GameRadar’s Leon Hurley wrote. “Activision liked the idea, the Call of Duty: Roman Wars demo impressed, and it got as far as the desk of CEO Bobby Kotick before a mixture of studio stubbornness and fears of over-saturating the brand consigned this lost game, ironically, to history.”
Following the story, though, Activision has spoken out regarding CoD: Roman Wars, revealing the idea was the work of a former employee and was not commissioned by the developer.
“The game concept was proposed by a former employee while working at the studio,” an Activision spokesperson said, in a statement to IGN, “but was not seriously considered nor requested to move to prototype.”
The spokesperson added that only a single level was created for the proposed game, but, despite also being pitched to Ubisoft as simply Roman Wars (as seen in the video below), didn’t make it past the concept stage.
