The response to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, particularly the campaign since early access began, has been less than stellar. Many have panned it for the lazy mission design, repetitive Open Combat missions, short run-time and throwaway plot. It should come as no surprise that development was rushed.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier spoke to sources who revealed that the bulk of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was developed in “less than a year and a half” and that “the abridged production schedule proved stressful for the development team.” Though pitched as an expansion to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022), it became a full sequel to fill the gap left by another Call of Duty title’s delay.
While Activision maintains that it was a premium release from the start, over a dozen current and former developers reveal that plans were ambiguous for some; others heard it was to be an expansion. It was a spin-off set in Mexico, but in Summer 2022, Activision told the team they would work on a direct sequel with Makarov as the villain and a global scale for its campaign.
This led to the campaign’s development in about 16 months. Sledgehammer was promised that it wouldn’t have another short development cycle after Call of Duty: Vanguard and felt betrayed after working nights and weekends to finish Modern Warfare 3. Stay tuned for more reports on the game’s development shortly.
