Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare shows off high-tech combat in new E3 2014 footage

Microsoft opened its first press briefing of this year's E3 with a flagship game: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare . We already saw a few flashes of near-future conflicts with a whole lot of Kevin Spacey on top in last month's reveal trailer , but this is the first time we've seen some gameplay footage featuring high-tech gadgets, modular weapons, and exoskeleton power suits.

The trailer opens with a drop pod full of heavily armored soldiers. After their pod bounces around a bit, it comes to rest in a war-torn South Korean city, presumably Seoul. The destroyed city looks beautiful, of course, but I'm more excited by the gadgets and tech on display and their implications for the ways gameplay will be changing. The soldiers are all packing long guns with recharging, refilling ammo counts, indicating an ammo source beyond lead and gunpowder.

Even more interesting, the player appears to change modes on the gun and shoot out blasts of shot, as if from a shotgun. Using different modes to fire different types of ammo from the same gun is a staple of the sci-fi genre, but we've never seen it in a game of this scope before.

Call of Duty is an annual franchise with an ever-unchanging release date, so this hardly seems necessary, but: Advanced Warfare will be launching on November 4 of this year.