Is it really that new though? There was the terrible "dog fight" section in Black Ops 3, which IW will certainly be better than, but it seems like that will be a solely campaign experience. It seems like another mini-game to bridge segments of infantry gamplay rather than a meaningful gameplay addition.

Unique campaign missions are cool, but they are always throwaway ideas that don't fit into the normal experience. It's like the snowmobile sections in MW2, they are neat side activities but they don't fit into the core gameplay in any other way than being a short activity between the normal gameplay segments. So the space battles look like 'hey we need to go from the surface to low orbit, let's put them space ships and give the player a little space combat minigame before we put them back into the normal infantry segments with an in-game cutscene.'

There is nothing wrong with that as a mission design, but the infantry experience and the space combat experience are completely separated segments that don't interact with each other.

As opposed to the cooler things that Black Ops 3 did which was the player picked exo suit abilities. That kind of gameplay stuff is great because it is something you get to engage with those mechanics at your disposal and you get to choose how you want to play. Those were interesting, those added to the experience, but the vehicle segments of the game were amazingly boring if you're not woo'd by the spectacle.

Halo Reach had a mission where you did space combat, and they actually had great controls, mildly interesting gameplay, and it was pretty fun. But that was just a minigame because it didn't tie into the normal experience. By comparison, vehicles in Halo CE are awesome because they are a seamless part of the sandbox, and you have complete control over where you go and how you use them. They are not just side activities that you are forced into to progress the mission.

For me, when it comes to "what new thing is call of duty doing", it's not the campaign spectacle draws me in, it's the gameplay sandbox. And lately Call of Duty has been basically giving you super powers as gameplay abilities instead of other areas where they could be exploring. I think they should focus on improving the enemy side of infantry combat, awesome special abilities are wasted on the most boring enemies to fight, they should do more to add variety to the opposition and that doesn't mean throwing in bullet sponges. Like that walker tank in Black Ops 3, they should have made mini versions of it that would fall after 1 or 2 hits of the rocket after knocking down their shields, so that they could have been used more frequently.

tl;dr: What is new in the gameplay?