Having the game set in Korea can provide players with an opportunity to experience a country that they may be unfamiliar with.
How do you balance that spectacle of a Call of Duty game while remaining respectful for its location?
In all these games we represent different parts of the world that I would say a good portion of the players wouldn’t necessarily be familiar with.
We got to go a little bit further this time because of how much time we get to spend in Korea.
It would be over in this section of the store.’ It’s been a pretty cool experience.
Having the game set in Korea can provide players with an opportunity to experience a country that they may be unfamiliar with. How do you balance that spectacle of a Call of Duty game while remaining respectful for its location?
Negus – This was a really big one for us. In all these games we represent different parts of the world that I would say a good portion of the players wouldn’t necessarily be familiar with. We went to Mexico. We went to the Middle East. We have allies in different regions around the world. And we’ve always taken it really seriously and felt a lot of responsibility to make sure that not only are we casting people the right way, but also that when we draw these characters that we get to really infuse them with a grounded grit – and this game was no different.
We got to go a little bit further this time because of how much time we get to spend in Korea. We have a bigger cast this time as well, which means we cast several new people and get to see different dimensions of what it’s like to be a person living in this society – and again one that people may not be as familiar with. Language is a huge thing for us too as we’re trying to stay as consistent and grounded and realistic as possible – two Korean soldiers would be communicating in Korean because of course they would. This is another place where we would lean on our cast, lean on our dialect coach to really inform like, ‘Hey, what would they say here? What would be real about this? What could they talk about that would fill this out and make it feel more real?’ So, we look at it as an opportunity to immerse players in the Korean setting.
Norris – We care greatly about representing it as best we can and there are many people on the team with Korean backgrounds who have helped to provide input based on their own experiences. We created an internal Korean culture channel, and everyone is in there and we get to ask these questions and say, ‘Okay, is this the right way to do this? This sign that we’ve put in the game, what does it actually translate to? We walk into this Korean convenience store at the start of the game, you see it in the trailer, and these guys are goofing off, but we want that to feel like an authentic experience. We’ve carefully gone through all the detail of that with our team and said, ‘Okay, does this look right?’ I remember one comment recently where someone was saying, ‘Hey, this fish product wouldn’t be here. It would be over in this section of the store.’ It’s been a pretty cool experience.
