The studio tried to present Activision Blizzard with a mix of Uncharted and the Call of Duty franchise.

Sledgehammer Games was founded in 2009 by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey. The duo had previously worked on Dead Space at Visceral Games, and Schofield released The Callisto Protocol at Striking Distance Studios last December. Their first game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, was released in 2011 after a legal battle with Infinity Ward, the developer of the previous two games, who didn’t like what the studio had in mind (as a result, two co-founders, Jason West, and Vince Zampella, left Infinity Ward to form Respawn Entertainment, now part of Electronic Arts).

The original concept of Sledgehammer in 2009 was not precisely an FPS! In an interview, Bret Robbins, the studio’s former creative director, told MinnMax that they had a vision for an Uncharted-style Call of Duty with a third-person view. Although we’ve heard in the past that they were planning a Vietnamese installment (Fog of War), this Uncharted idea is new. The team assembled a demo for in-studio use but eventually abandoned the idea.

Robbins said the prototype was fun and cool, and while the concept didn’t come to fruition, he thinks it would be a good idea for someone to go back and make it happen. The idea would have offered a darker, more brutal war experience, making for a less horror-focused than Dead Space but still creepy Call of Duty game. He didn’t say why Activision Blizzard didn’t accept the concept but eventually decided to shelve it, so Sledgehammer helped Infinity Ward with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

In 2014, they were allowed to create a part of the series independently. That was Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Source: PSL