Interview

Get the scoop on Modern Warfare’s campaign mode in this exclusive interview.
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Developer Infinity Ward has literally built its good name on World War II. The studio’s core team first crafted the superb Medal of Honor: Allied Assault at Tulsa-based development house 2015 before going on to found Infinity Ward and create Call of Duty, arguably the most popular WWII shooter franchise running. But after the group undertook a marathon development cycle to produce Call of Duty 2 in time for the Xbox 360’s late 2005 launch, Infinity Ward was ready for something newer: something present-day, to be specific. The company immediately went into production on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the most ambitious and narrative-driven shooter from Infinity Ward to date. We were lucky enough to hit the ground running with two of the game’s campaign missions to find out how the team is expanding Call of Duty’s scope with this latest game’s new design and technology.

As producer Mark Rubin mentions, the events of World War II have been set in stone for decades now; there’s only so much room for game creators to maneuver fictitiously within that established timeline. But Modern Warfare has gone modern-day, naturally, and Infinity Ward has thus been able to create a cohesive, original narrative that will see you traveling to far-flung locations around the globe, and bearing witness to military conflict and political intrigue that’s just a little bit larger than life. Call of Duty 4 is sticking to its heritage in some key areas that returning players will find familiar, though. As in previous games, you’ll take up multiple roles as members of multiple international special forces. In Modern Warfare, you’ll play a character in the US Marine Corps’ elite Force Recon unit, and on the British side, you’ll be in the Special Air Service, or SAS, with whom Call of Duty fans should already be quite familiar.

Modern Warfare’s campaign mode will take you to turbulent hot spots in Russia and the Middle East.

Don’t think of these two groups as representing two distinctive campaigns. The American and British special forces may operate in different geographical regions in the game, but they’ll be embroiled in and fighting against the same high-pressure plot against world security. Understandably, Infinity Ward is playing the game’s story close to the vest, but so far we know you’ll be fighting against a nefarious group led by a couple of shady characters called Al-Asad and Zakhaev, who are stirring up international unrest to further their own aims. We know that Al-Asad is masterminding a political coup somewhere in the Middle East–but that coup is primarily a diversion from Zakhaev’s real plan to topple the Russian government, possibly through nuclear means. The Americans will operate primarily in the Middle East, while the SAS will take up arms mostly in Russia. As we saw during our time with the game, you’ll switch between the two factions from mission to mission as the story dictates.

To present all this international intrigue, Infinity Ward is employing a number of narrative devices not seen in past Call of Duty games. The game will use a number of semi-interactive cutscenes to convey some key story points, wherein you’ll be able to look around and observe events but not necessarily interact with them. We saw one cutscene in which a government official was violently thrown into the backseat of a car–after receiving a rifle’s butt to the face–and then whisked through the streets, where bands of insurgents were firing their weapons into the air and executing prisoners at various points along the route. Did we mention you’re in the shoes of this unfortunate official and seeing these events (and taking these blows) from his perspective? Yeah, that made things a little more brutal and immediate. This scene culminated in our character being tied to a post as Zakhaev and Al-Asad deliberated over a pistol. That pistol was eventually pointed directly at our perspective, and the scene ended with the distinctive crack of a gunshot.

In addition to switching between the Marines and SAS as the plot necessitates, the campaign will sometimes divert from present-day events to tell more of Modern Warfare’s backstory. One mission will actually occur in flashback, taking place in the quarantined Chernobyl zone some 15 years before the game begins. We’re told that upon completing this mission, players will gain greater insight into Zakhaev’s far-reaching plans, his quest to obtain nuclear materials, and why he only has one arm in the present day. For those interested, a segment of this level can be seen deep within our video from Microsoft’s E3 press conference, though we didn’t get to see an updated version ourselves.

You need to see the game in motion, firsthand to really appreciate its visuals.

Enough about the big-picture stuff; we did actually play two of Modern Warfare’s missions from start to finish. The first was called “The Bog,” which we got to take a look at during our E3 stage demo of the game back in July. This mission tasked us, as Force Recon, with fighting our way through a Middle Eastern town in order to secure an embattled tank trapped in a bog (where else?). That involved a lot of house-to-house fighting, popping up from below windowsills, and easing around corners. The gameplay here felt like pure Call of Duty, except we got to replace the old M1911s and M1 Garands with M4A1s equipped with under-mounted grenade launchers, as well as big, mean SAW machine guns. We were frankly stunned at the speed and smoothness of the gameplay, given the game’s overwhelming visuals, but we’ll elaborate on that later.

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