Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is the newest installment in the Call of Duty franchise. It was released on October 25th, 2019.
So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about it!
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a first-person shooter video game
- It is developed by Infinity Ward
- It is published by Activision
- Serving as the sixteenth overall installment in the Call of Duty series
- As well as a reboot of the Modern Warfare sub-series
- It was released on October 25, 2019, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One
- The game is set to take place in a realistic and modern setting
- For the first time in the franchise’s history, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will support cross-platform multiplayer
- Activision has also confirmed that the franchise’s traditional season pass had been scrapped and loot boxes removed
- Enabling the company to distribute free post-launch content to all players
- Modern Warfare’s single-player campaign will focus on realism and feature tactically-based moral choices
- Whereupon the player is evaluated and assigned a score at the end of each level
- Players will have to quickly ascertain whether NPCs are a threat or not
- Such as a civilian woman who is believed to be reaching for a gun, but then simply grabs her baby from a crib
- This collateral damage score, referred to as a threat assessment, is based on how many civilians the player injures or kills and ranges from rank A to F
- Rewards are introduced to those who score higher
- Character dialogue will differ depending on the choices the player makes in the game
- Tactical decisions are also included
- Such as the player using a sniper rifle in a large environment to approach objectives in a non-linear order
- And choosing to shoot out lights in favor of using night-vision goggles during breaching and clearing
- The game’s multiplayer has been revised to allow for more tactical gameplay
- Including a focus on map exploration, door breaching, and a “Realism” mode that removes the HUD
- The mini-map has been removed in favor of a compass-style marker
- With visual cues to detect friendlies and opponents
- Multiplayer also features the return of Killstreaks (rewards based on kills), with more recent Call of Duty titles having used Scorestreaks (rewards based on score) instead
- The online modes allow for a larger range of players within a map than previous installments
- With a new mode called “Ground War” featuring over 100 players
- While conversely another new mode, “Gunfight”, tasks two teams of two players against each other in small matches lasting forty seconds per round
- The game includes an extensive weapons customization system
- Presenting most guns with a range of up to 60 attachments to choose from (five of which can be equipped at any one time)
- The introduction at the start of multiplayer matches has also been revamped
- While in previous titles players would remain motionless on the map as a timer would countdown to zero
- Players will instead be transported into the battle zone as part of various animations
- Modern Warfare will be the first game in the series since 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts not to feature a Zombies mode
- Instead featuring the cooperative “Spec Ops” mode previously present in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
- The Spec Ops mode shares its narrative with both the campaign and multiplayer
- The mode will include survival mode which was present in Modern Warfare 3
- But is exclusive to the PlayStation 4 release until October 2020
- Modern Warfare will be “heavy on troubling, realistic emotional moments”
- Being compared to the thematic elements of the controversial “No Russian” mission from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- The plot will feature a unified narrative across the campaign, co-op, and multiplayer modes
- The game was developed by Infinity Ward, following their 2016 entry Infinite Warfare
- And continuing in the “three year development cycle” tradition for the franchise
- Beenox, Raven Software and High Moon Studios provided additional development
- The game uses a brand-new engine for the series, allowing for the use of more detailed environments, advanced photogrammetry and rendering, better volumetric lighting, and the use of ray tracing
- On May 30, the game’s official trailer and release date were unveiled
- According to narrative director Taylor Kurosaki, Captain Price will be featured in a retconned narrative “where the events in the previous Modern Warfare timeline have not occurred”
- Studio art director Joel Emslie described the game’s narrative as “much more grown-up [and] mature”
- Designed to elicit a more intimate and emotional response from players through a depiction of conflict based on contemporary events (such as terror attacks in London and the Syrian Civil War) rather than the original trilogy’s reliance on bombastic set pieces
- Campaign gameplay director Jacob Minkoff expressed his desire for video games to go further in exploring otherwise traditionally taboo topics in the medium
- Noting that television series and films such as Homeland, American Sniper, and Sicario told “relatable, realistic, relevant, and provocative stories that really touch people”
- In avoiding telling such stories insensitively, consultants were brought in from multiple cultures
- For example, conflict related to the Middle East in the game is located in the fictional country Urzikstan rather than based on any specific real-life location
- Half of the game has been described as having morally complex choices
- And the narrative has resulted in making several playtesters cry
- Some controversial aspects of the game were removed prior to its release as the developers were unsure of how much potential emotional discomfort they wanted to effect
- This included a line in which a Russian soldier ponders handing over a captured girl to his commanding officer, implying pedophilia
- Following previews at E3 2019, the game was subject to some controversy in response to it tackling realistic and mature subject matter
- Such as presenting child soldiers and the ability to shoot civilians (including infants)
- Escapist Magazine’s Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw described the gameplay demonstration as “fifteen minutes of cold intense ruthless killing”
- IGN felt it was the most divisive game of the event
- Other critics also gave mixed opinions
- Recalling the past successes of video games as a medium to provide social commentary on war and conflict
- Such as Spec Ops: The Line, This War of Mine, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Emma Kent of Eurogamer criticized a level in which the player controls a child soldier
- Which she felt inappropriately merged sensitive subject matter and over-dramatized violence into a boss fight, creating “a Frankensteinian, dissonant mess”
- Kent described another level involving a stealth operation inside a building as having a “heavy-handed” emphasis on avoiding civilian collateral damage
- Although praised it as “a good exploration of the way terrorists are embedded within civilian communities”
- Cade Onder of GameZone similarly commented on the civilian collateral damage and child soldier level
- Opining that the former lacked tension because there was only one civilian present
- Thereby only granting the illusion of choice, and the latter turning “an otherwise very real and grounded moment […] into a very video game-y moment”
- Also comparing it to Spec Ops: The Line, Onder reflected on whether killing too many civilians would merely result in a game over
- Causing ludonarrative dissonance, and how the linearity of the game may prevent it from reaching its narrative ambitions
- The game’s multiplayer beta in September 2019 was withdrawn for reasons unknown from the PlayStation Store in Russia
- A prominent theory posits that this is because the Russian media, and by proxy the Russian government, had been critical of the game’s campaign’s reportedly favorable portrayal of the White Helmets, a volunteer organisation that operates in parts of opposition-controlled Syria
- In October 2019, Sony announced that Modern Warfare would not be sold on the PlayStation Store in Russia
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