Infinity Ward Makes Key Improvements To The Formula With Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4

After back-to-back Black Ops games both from developers Treyarch and Raven Software, studio Infinity Ward returns to the helm for this year's entry in the Call of Duty franchise. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward says it's entering a new chapter–both for the series that helped catapult Call of Duty into its status as a household name, and for the studio at large. For Modern Warfare 4, that new chapter helps redefine where the series is headed. In 2019, Infinity Ward rebooted the Modern Warfare series, which first kicked off in 2007. The reboot and its two sequels worked somewhat within the framework of the original three Modern Warfare games. In terms of its campaign and story, Modern Warfare 4 is the first title in the modern series to step off into wholly new territory.  Infinity Ward recently provided journalists a first look at Modern Warfare 4 during a preview event in Los Angeles, which gave us an idea of where the studio is taking Modern Warfare's story, and how it'll continue the tale of Captain Price and Task Force 141. We also learned that the game will include a new version of the DMZ extraction mode, and got the lowdown on what Infinity Ward is bringing to Modern Warfare 4's multiplayer offerings and went hands-on with a few of the title's new modes. Boots on the ground After three games in which players took on the roles of high-level operators, Modern Warfare 4 is heading back to Call of Duty's earlier roots, with a campaign that focuses on the experiences of more common soldiers. This next Call of Duty centers on a conflict taking place between North and South Korea, which looks poised to create ripples that could destabilize the entire world. As that conflict kicks off, with North Korea suddenly attacking South Korea, you'll play as members of a mixed squad made up of South Korean and US Marines.  "South Korea has a particularity that every single person there has to serve in the military when they're young, and so for us, that's an interesting perspective," said Infinity Ward co-studio head Jack O'Hara during a presentation at the event. "It's been a long time since we presented the grunt perspective–since 2007 or 2009, we've made games that are more about Spec Ops operators with the CIA handler in their ear, telling them there's a guy around the corner. It's fascinating for us to go back to that perspective of young guys, 18 to 25. They have no idea what's going on, they're receiving an incomplete picture from their orders, and they're just trying to survive to the next moment." That shift in perspective also allowed Infinity Ward to tap into the realistic, emotional side of what the soldiers experience, co-studio head Mark Grigsby told me in an interview. "We wanted to show a group of soldiers that have personality, for one; they're not buttoned up, and [as] polished [as what] you would just see in a very super-scripted movie or TV show," Grigsby said. "We wanted to have that raw feeling and conversations between all of them, where you can feel not just their roles in their military, but their actual personal behaviors and personalities." As with the other recent Modern Warfare games, Modern Warfare 4 is going for a "ripped from the headlines" feel in its story. O'Hara explained that that doesn't mean Infinity Ward is replicating real conflicts in video game form. Instead, it's trying to tell a story that feels realistic and genuine by drawing from, and extrapolating on, the real world. But since they didn't have access to experts and real information about North Korea's actual rulers, O'Hara said, Infinity Ward invented a fictional family to run the country. The plot kicks off as a new member of that family takes on the role of dictator. The "grunt" story of Marines fighting in Korea is only half of Modern Warfare 4's campaign, though. The game also continues the story of Captain Price, now on the run after the events of Modern Warfare 3. From the sounds of things, you can expect the campaign to jump back and forth between the globetrotting story of Price, as he pursues his nemesis, Makarov, and the events in Korea, until the two plotlines eventually intertwine. "We had this idea of the setting in Korea and this war in Korea, and showing that grunt perspective that's in there, but we also want [to always] bring our characters, Task Force 141, into it," O'Hara told me. "But it was also a case of, we followed the journey in this reboot of the last three games of Task Force 141, and we wanted to make sure it felt like an evolution in some ways, a conclusion for them, in terms of how they've evolved as characters, so it's important to have a state change there with them. … It's definitely been, you know, a labor to work through all those details and make sure that those two storylines intertwine in the right way." New multiplayer maps and modes While we didn't get a chance to play any of Modern Warfare 4's campaign, Infinity Ward did provide us a few hours t

After back-to-back Black Ops games both from developers Treyarch and Raven Software, studio Infinity Ward returns to the helm for this year's entry in the Call of Duty franchise. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward says it's entering a new chapter–both for the series that helped catapult Call of Duty into its…

After back-to-back Black Ops games both from developers Treyarch and Raven Software, studio Infinity Ward returns to the helm for this year's entry in the Call of Duty franchise. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward says it's entering a new chapter–both for the series that helped catapult Call of Duty into its status as a household name, and for the studio at large. For Modern Warfare 4, that new chapter helps redefine where the series is headed. In 2019, Infinity Ward rebooted…