Before Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare forever changed the first-person shooter landscape and the Call of Duty franchise, the world of FPS games was dominated by classic World War I and World War II-era shooters. Of course, we still get historic shooters, but it's developer Hoothanes and publisher 4Divinity's upcoming WWII-era shooter, The Defiant, that has FPS feeling those OG COD and even Medal of Honor vibes.
The Defiant is an upcoming single-player first-person shooter set during WWII, but not from an angle we've commonly seen before. You'll play as Chinese soldiers fighting in China's War of Resistance against Japan, in this cinematic narrative-driven story. It'll be coming to PC and consoles, and according to more than a few players checking out a recently debuted gameplay trailer, this is "What Call of Duty used to be like."
For now, we don't have a ton of details on the game's story, with the description from a different gameplay video posted on developer Hoothane's channel adding that The Defiant will deliver "battlefield immersion, tactical gunplay, gritty realism, and character-driven storytelling." The comments on that video, like the ones shared under the trailer above hosted on IGN's channel, all similarly call out how much the game presents as an FPS for fans of the OG COD and Medal of Honor games.
Of course, whether it actually achieves at bringing players back to those kinds of gameplay experiences, with all of the improvements to graphical and gameplay fidelity afforded by modern hardware, is a different question. But it is encouraging for fans of that era of shooters to see something new, seemingly made for them.
Games like Hell Let Loose and upcoming titles like Brass Rain may do a solid job at offering a multiplayer setting for historical shooters, but if The Defiant can deliver on its storytelling and gameplay, it might revitalize excitement around FPS that want to give players something more than a game that's trying to pull them in for hundreds of hours over the course of many years with live service content. Hopefully, we'll have a clearer release window for its arrival on PC and consoles soon.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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