Vanguard’s Engine used by real war photojournalists to capture WW2 battles

Liam Mackay
Call of Duty Vanguard plane hangar

To showcase Call of Duty: Vanguard’s realism, Activision invited real war photojournalists Alex Potter and Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini inside Vanguard’s engine to capture WW2 photos as if they were really there.

Photo Mode has been commonplace in video games over the past few years, allowing players to snap beautiful images of their favorite games.

Activision has taken this a step further by allowing actual war photojournalists, Alex Potter and Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini, inside Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Game Engine to take photos as if “they were embedded within the war missions themselves.”

vanguard map red star

In support of Call of Duty Endowment, Activision invited war journalists Alex Potter and Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini, who have reported on battles in places such as the Middle East, to go inside CoD: Vanguard’s Game Engine to capture photos of WW2 battles.

Vanguard runs on Modern Warfare (2019)’s engine, which has a strong focus on realism. In a press release via Business Wire, Activision Blizzard’s Chief Marketing Officer, Fernando Machado, said, “We tested its realism by sending in Alex Potter and Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini with special camera-like portals into the game engine itself, which took them back in time as if they were a photographer in that period, showing how real Vanguard will truly look and feel to gamers everywhere.”

In the trailer released for the photoshoot, we can see Alex Potter and Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini move around Activision’s motion capture studio, taking photos as if they were in the WW2 battles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_-ed085Eo8

In the short film, Alex Potter explained that it “felt like they were situations that I would normally capture” and Sebastian Tomada said that “I was impressed how kinetic the game was because everything is actually happening and moving around you. This is what war looks like.”

Limited edition prints of the images that the war journalists captured will be sold at BleeckerTrading.com, with all proceeds going towards Call of Duty Endowment, Activision’s charity that helps to place veterans into “meaningful jobs.”


For more Vanguard news, you can check out when Cold War and Warzone Season 6 is set to end, and when Vanguard Season 1 might begin.

Image Credit: Activision