Price cut
The unused ending has been restored by a “yoyo1love”, a YouTuber who likes to mess about in the game’s files. It’s been uploaded by another user, Vlad Loktionov. The cut sequence looks to have been intended as a post-credits scene.
As you can see, Captain Price is briefly visited by a shadowy figure in the background. He then tumbles over and drops his lit cigar which rolls weakly away from him, a loss of comforting tobacco possibly charged with symbolism and also possibly charged with nothing. A photo appears afterwards showing the four major characters of the series, with a big “rest in peace” vibe, which suggests Price has also just died.
Anyway, compare all this tothe original endingin which Captain Price painfully but satisfyingly lights his cigar and chills out, watching a corpse swing in front of him (normal Captain Price pastime).
I’m poking fun. But I do find it interesting to see relics of gaming yesteryear surfacing and spawning conspiracy theories among fans, even as late as 13 years from the game’s release. Lots of stuff ends up on the chopping room floor in video game development. It’s hard to know why things get cut without having been in the studio when the decision was made. We could speculate this was a planned teaser for a follow-up Call of Duty game, but that the mysterious ending was canned for whatever reason. (Infinity Ward’s next CoD ended up beingCall of Duty: Ghosts, which told its own separate story, independent of previous characters). But only the team involved will likely know what was intended here. For now, I’ll leave the Call of Dutiful out there to come to their own conclusions.
