While the Call of Duty franchise might be keen on dipping its toes back into the extraction shooter pool with DMZ mode in Modern Warfare 4, developer Infinity Ward has noted that it has been paying attention to how the genre has evolved over the years. In an interview with XBOX Wire, multiplayer creative director Joe Cecot discussed the studio’s new attempt at offering a PvPvE experience, and what it might have learned from the success of other games like ARC Raiders.
Comparing it with the development of Call of Duty: Warzone, Cecot noted that the studio has always paid attention to its competition while it worked on its own take on the style of gameplay. With regards to the battle royale mode, he said that the studio wanted to try and predict where the genre would go, rather than simply making a battle royale game according to the then-current genre conventions and standards. Infinity Ward wants to do similarly with DMZ and extraction shooters.
“For DMZ, we’ve been paying attention to the genre,” said Cecot. “We try and play every different extraction shooter that comes out, or even games that are slightly similar, just to see what’s clicking with players, what feels good, what doesn’t feel good. I think one of the things in the original DMZ that we wanted, but we couldn’t get to, was meaningful player growth.”
Cecot said that the beta of DMZ helped the studio nail down Infinity Ward’s take on the extraction shooter. Discussing the typical progression systems of the genre, he brought up how it’s typically quite different from battle royales, since players only have to worry about a single match there. Extraction shooters, on the other hand, have slower and longer-term progression systems.
“And so that’s where I think DMZ differs so heavily from the beta: it strives to be a legitimate extraction shooter with persistent inventory, with a Forward Operating Base (FOB) that you’re upgrading, with stations that you can interact with and that help you build out your loadout, build your weapon,” he said. “That’s how I would lay out the DMZ of today versus what we did in the beta.”
As for learning from other successful entries in the genre, Cecot said that some of the key things that set DMZ apart from a title like, for example, ARC Raiders, would be things like Dynamic Ops and Side Ops, which offer players more dynamic choices in their story progressions. Along with this, the studio is also confident about its core combat sandbox and military theme.
“Our rich sandbox combined with our first-person military theme is something that’s going to really resonate with people,” Cecot said. “And I think our weapon feel and our movement are a step above most of the games. It’s that action that’s going to be something that’s very different than other extraction shooters.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s DMZ mode was recently showcased with a gameplay trailer, giving us an in-depth look at how intense, and even terrifying, a typical match could feel. The title is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2.
