When the new Call of Duty game was announced, the gaming community went crazy. And why wouldn’t they? The dearly beloved and best-selling franchise commands respect across the whole gaming community. The series is one of the reasons why the current gaming landscape is filled with first-person-shooters and battle royal games.
The game suffered from certain information leaks before the official reveal, but that didn’t cause much harm, at least from a fans point of view. The game also had a presence at the E3 2019 where a gameplay demo was shown.
What went down at E3?:
The gameplay showed a small group of Special Forces operatives perform a counter-attack on a suburban house. The attack was in response to a bombing in London orchestrated by a terrorist group. The squad performed a floor to floor search to strike the assailants who have taken refuge in the building.
The demo received positive reaction, but some pointed out that the game contained too much violence. Some media outlets and fans also termed the game as the most decisive game at E3.
Fans even showed concern that the game might be censored because of it’s a gritty and realistic take on violence.
The gameplay and how is it different from its predecessors:
The gameplay isn’t the one that the old titles in the series offered. The new gameplay requires the player to make judgment calls to engage enemies. It is tough as the game blurs the lines between what is right and what is wrong. It is tough to differentiate civilians from the assailants. The demo also hinted that the game is profoundly influenced by the horror genre and Hollywood-style tactical battles. Also, the gameplay sheds out almost all of the ‘all-out-gun-war’ approach present in its predecessors.
What’s new?
In the first time of the series’s history, this game will support cross-platform multiplayer. This update is a wish come true for many fans of the franchise.
Other additions and improvements/additions include:
1. The game runs on a new engine making the physics, graphics, and environment more grounded and realistic.
2. The locations are designed and rendered through photogrammetric process whereas, for the characters, full motion and performance captures have been used to bring a sense of reality to them.
3. The gaming mechanics also get a tweak to suit the gameplay and environment.
Is it a reboot?
Probably the biggest question that was looming around this release is if it was a reboot of the Call of Duty sub-series.
According to Joel Emslie, Studio Art Director of Infinity Ward, the answer is “no.”
While talking to GameSpot, he said,” I think when you look at the trilogy of Modern Warfare, it ended with nuclear war, and you kind of ended with an alternate reality.” According to Emslie, when he and the team came back to work on the project, they considered it as a sequel but had no way to go. “It was almost an unrelatable reality, an almost alternate reality. So the idea was to reimagine it like Nolan’s Batman or Casino Royale and kind of approach it that way, so you have a lot more creative freedom to do something. And also make it more relatable.” he explained. “So it continues like the, I guess like the spirit of the Modern Warfare universe,” Emslie also added.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is being developed by Infinity Ward and will be published by Activision.
The game comes out on October 25, 2019. It will be available for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
So there you go.