Earlier in the month, Call Of Duty kicked off a crossover with AMC’s The Walking Dead, as original leading character Rick Grimes joined the game as a playable operator. With an operator skin for fan-favourite swordswoman Michonne Grimes still on the way, NME caught up with the people responsible for the crossover.
Speaking to NME, Clayton Neuman, head of franchise at AMC, said that from “very early conversations,” it was agreed that Rick and Michonne were the best picks to represent The Walking Dead.
“Since Rick’s last episode in season 9, there’s been this sort of fan fervour about what happened to him,” shared Neuman. “When Michonne left the show, there was an equal fervour. These two characters are really front and centre in the minds of our fans.”
“They’re such strong characters,” agreed Jon Riva, content art director at developer Sledgehammer Games. For Riva, part of his role in the crossover was bringing Rick and Michonne to life in Call Of Duty while making sure they were still “represented” as The Walking Dead characters.
“It has to be both, and we met in the middle,” he explained. “So for Rick, there’s key features of the character we wanted to include – like the leather jacket, and the Colt [pistol]. We also wanted the the sheriff hat –and luckily we got it on the alternate skin of him – but for the base skin, we felt that Rick without the hat became more recognisable.”
Once Michonne’s operator skin releases in Modern Warfare 3‘s second season, there are no more The Walking Dead crossovers planned. However, both Riva and Neuman have characters they’d personally like to see in Call Of Duty. Riva says crossbow-wielding hero Daryl Dixon would be his pick “for sure,” while Neuman suggests two pairs – Daryl and fellow survivor Carol Peletier, or The Walking Dead: Dead City main characters Maggie Greene and Negan Smith.
Elsewhere, a crossover with Amazon’s superhero satire The Boys arrived in Call Of Duty last month.