Infinity Ward hasn’t showcased any extensive footage for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare yet. We know that it will be the first Call of Duty title to support cross-platform multiplayer, and even utilizes new engine to deliver 4K visuals with HDR. In an official Activision blog post, animation director Mark Grigsby revealed an interesting gameplay addition – reloading while aiming down sights.
“One other thing we added this year is the ADS [Aiming Down Sight] reload,” he wrote. “In the past, if you’re ADS, and you’re shooting and you reload, the weapon would go off to the side, and you’d have to retrain to get to your target. This time if you reload, it stays on the target, so you can stay in the battle.
“The reload to me is the pinnacle of the weapon; it makes you feel–after you’ve taken down five different dudes in a room–and you reload, you go, ‘Sh*t yeah, you’re done!'”
Interestingly, the reload animation will change depending on the number of bullets fired. Reloading while having an empty magazine will look different from a reload animation when the chamber still has some rounds remaining. “In the past, we would never physically show that transition of one mag to another, but this time around, everything’s physical, so if you have an extended mag, like a drum perhaps, or a long magazine, all of the movements within every reload are visceral, strong, aggressive, it gives another feeling of power and representing the Tier 1 operators that utilize these machines,” said Grigsby.
It will be interesting to see how this affects multiplayer – players can remain in ADS while reloading, thus hard-scoping corners for longer times. Then again, given the usually fast-paced nature of multiplayer in Call of Duty, it remains to be seen if maps will be designed to facilitate this. We’ll only know when multiplayer footage and details are released.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is out on October 25th for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.