Activision and Infinity Ward pulled back the curtain on the next instalment of Call of Duty yesterday. Called simply Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the shooter is going to reimagine the subseries and act as soft reboot, while introducing several significant changes- from a new engine bringing new technology, to cross-platform play in multiplayer.
Something else that Call of Duty fans have become used to seeing that won’t be appearing in Modern Warfare is the iconic zombies mode. Pioneered and popularized by Treyarch’s Black Ops series, Infinity Ward made use of the Zombies mode in their previous Call of Duty title, Infinite Warfare, but they feel the tone they’re choosing to go for with Modern Warfare – which in their words, tries to “create an authentic, realistic feeling world”, as opposed to Treyarch’s “stylized, graphic novel, super-hero experience” – doesn’t have room for a Zombies mode.
“Because they focus on more of the stylized, graphic novel, super-hero experience, they can have the much more ‘out there’ different types of gameplay in their games,” Campaign Gameplay Director Jacob Minkoff told PlayStation Lifestyle. “But for us, we’re trying to create an authentic, realistic feeling world. We don’t have the flexibility to do something like put zombies in the game. That would compromise the feeling of playing in a world that feels realistic and authentic and relative to today’s conflicts and things we face.”
That said, there will be a co-op experience with a narrative of its own, similar to what Modern Warfare games have done in the past, and that narrative, according to Minkoff, will follow directly from the story told in the campaign.
“We’re not ready to talk about cooperative play yet, but what I will tell you is that the single-player storyline goes directly into the co-op storyline,” he said. “No stop. The events just continue. So those elements—gameplay, progression, story—they just continue throughout everything that we have on the disc or digital download.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is out on October 25 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Those purchasing the game on the PS4 will enjoy short periods of exclusive post-launch content, as has been the case with Call of Duty games on Sony’s console for a while now.