Call Of Duty: World At War 2 Box Art Is Fake

This weekend the box art for Call of Duty: World at War 2 allegedly leaked and got some fans really excited. It looks like complete bull, though.

Here's the Xbox One box art that was supposedly posted on Amazon. I say "supposedly" because it doesn't appear to be there now:

The faint text in the middle says "Official Cover Art, Subject to Change." So it's the official box art but it's not the official box art? Well, I'm convinced.

To be fair, the image is sleek enough to be believable. It appears to have the official Call of Duty: World at War logo. Then there's the gorgeous background, depicting an evening sky lit up by stars. Sure, an evening sky has nothing to do with war but it looks great.

The background's not an original piece of artwork, though. One Reddit user points out it was pilfered from the portfolio of Seb Janiak, a French graphic artist. The creator of this box art just cropped the picture and rotated it. Here's a rough duplicate I made from Janiak's original image:

With the background in place, the box art's creator just had to find a suitable Call of Duty logo and slap "World at War 2" underneath it.

What makes the box art easier to believe is that World at War developer Treyarch is next in the rotation. They'll be releasing their next contribution to the Call of Duty series in Fall 2015. Why not make a sequel to World at War and bring the series back to World War 2?

As Reddit users pointed out, Treyarch's Black Ops was already a sort-of sequel to World at War. Black Ops showed us what happened to WaW's Russian protagonists Reznov and Dimitri after the war. What other loose ends remained?

On the other hand, World at War 2 doesn't need to be a direct sequel. It could just be another game set somewhere in World War 2. Infinity Ward and Treyarch thoroughly mined that era in the first few Call of Duty games but maybe it's time to return to that period. The new generation of technology could allow Treyarch to make a much more impressive depiction of the conflict.

Barring some leak, we won't find out what Treyarch's working on for a long time. Each Call of Duty is usually announced in the April or May of the year in which it's being released. That means we're at least nine months from finding out whether World at War 2 is as real as this box art claims.