While it took a much longer time than usual, we finally got the full multiplayer reveal for the upcoming installment in the annual shooter series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It featured some big stuff, including some big maps. That obviously left the imagination wide open for a battle royale mode, but developer Infinity Ward says they’re focusing on the old school with this installment, at least for now.
Speaking with IGN, Multiplayer Design Director Joe Cecot said that right now the company wants to focus on the traditional multiplayer feel over a battle royale mode. While he doesn’t rule out a mode later on, and says they have pushed the technical limits with map size, right now they want to make sure they nail down that classic COD feel before anything else.
“We really focused on Modern Warfare, authentic and gritty, realistic weapons, and it’s a different experience,” said Cecot. “It’s really just about pulling back to Modern Warfare and keeping that pure. Infinity Ward has big fans of battle royale. We’re excited for large player counts and things like that, but right now we’re really focused on core multiplayer.
“We have pushed our networking engineers to allow us to have more players. On the technical side, we’ve had to do a ton of work on the multiplayer side to make things more efficient so we could push the player counts higher and higher and higher.”
It’s interesting, especially since Blackout, a COD-infused take on the battle royale genre, was a big selling point of the previous installment, Black Ops 4. Not sure what, if anything, that says about that, but either way, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare launches on October 25th. A beta for the multiplayer will release in September.
