It’s fair to say that, across the three games in the reboot series so far, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s story has been far from a simple one. With the amount of action happening during each mission, combined with key plot points occurring outside of the core campaigns in places like Warzone’s Verdansk, it can be difficult to keep track.
Thankfully, we’re here to give you as succinct a summary as we can of the story so far ahead of Modern Warfare 4’s release. With Infinity Ward’s saga set to come to an end imminently, let’s recap how we got here. Warning: may contain a lot of chasing stolen missiles around the world.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)
2019’s Modern Warfare reboot tells the story of Task Force 141’s creation. That’s the elite team of operatives helmed by Call of Duty veteran Captain John Price (but not the same John Price who was in the original Modern Warfare, nor the John Price who was in the original two Call of Dutys. Look, we did say this was complicated).
But we’re already getting ahead of ourselves. At the beginning of Modern Warfare’s campaign, before 141 is established, Price and the British SAS are working with CIA Chief Kate Laswell to help recover highly valuable gas used in the creation of chemical weapons. The opening mission, in which you play as CIA agent Alex Keller, details the theft of the gas, as an unidentified team steals it en route to the fictional country of Urzikstan. The heist intensifies tension between Russia and the West.
The next day, that tension is further ratcheted. An Urzik-connected terrorist group called Al-Qatala attacks London’s Piccadilly Circus, bringing Kyle “Gaz’ Garrick into the picture. In order to hunt down the atrocity’s perpetrators, he teams up with Price to raid a London home and locate the whereabouts of Al-Qatala’s leader, Omar “The Wolf” Sulaman. It turns out that he can be found in Urzikstan’s Ramaza Hospital.
Alex, conveniently, is already in Urzikstan, after agreeing to team up with the state’s Liberation Force leader, Farah Karim. She wants to get rid of a Russian general, Roman Barkov, who has occupied her home country. Alex makes it his mission to help, and in turn, Farah will aid in recovering the stolen gas — something she doesn’t realise will be found far closer to home than she could imagine.
Alex and a crack Marine unit successfully capture “The Wolf” from his hospital hideout and hold him at the US embassy. Sulaman’s lieutenant, Jamal “The Butcher” Rahar, isn’t very happy about this, though, so he attacks the embassy in an effort to extract his boss. Despite the best efforts of Alex, Farah, and the newly arrived Price and Gaz, Rahar succeeds.
The team is back to square one. Farah has a plan, though – ambush Al-Qatala as they drive along the “Highway of Death” and take back their former captive. After a bit of long-range sniping, this risky mission goes totally awry. The Russian forces turn up, attacking both the terrorists and Farah’s Urzikstan Liberation Force. As if things couldn’t get any worse for her, Farah then finds out that it was her own brother and fellow freedom fighter, Hadir, who stole the chemicals during the campaign’s first mission. He deploys them in a massive explosion, killing both the Al-Qatala and Russian forces, and leaving Alex and Farah barely alive amongst the rubble and smoke.
But what would drive Hadir, who has so far been depicted only as Farah’s loyal ally, to do war crimes? Revenge, of course. 20 years prior, a Russian invasion left both Hadir and his sister without parents. In an act of desperation born out of hatred, Hadir now joins Al-Qatala and distances himself from Farah. This event brings the interests of all the protagonists’ respective factions into alignment, and so they execute a joint operation to infiltrate the terrorists’ base and find Hadir. Unfortunately, he and the stolen gas are nowhere to be found. Thankfully, the mission isn’t a total bust: the team locates and kills Sulaman, leaving the terrorist group without its leader.
The fallout is felt back in the US, though. With the chemicals’ whereabouts still unknown, to make things even more difficult than they already were, the Urzikstan Liberation Force is declared a terrorist threat by the CIA. Alex isn’t best pleased, to say the least, and opts to leave his nation behind and defect to Farah’s group.
Meanwhile, it’s all kicking off in Saint Petersburg. Following a terrorist attack in the Russian city, Gaz and Price are hot on the trail of Hadir, but, again, they don’t find him. Who they do capture instead is Sulaman’s former right-hand man, Rahar, who, after a questionable spot of torture, reveals that Hadir’s next target is Barkov. And so, Price and Gaz head to the Russian general’s home, save him, and apprehend Hadir in the process. Job done? Not quite.
Hadir reveals where Barkov’s chemical weapons operation can be found, but before Price has time to head there, the CIA arrives. Laswell takes Hadir into her custody, but gives the mission her blessing. And so the quartet of Price, Gaz, Farah, and Alex reunite with Barkov’s gas factory (not a euphemism for his butt) in their sights. During the fight, Alex seemingly sacrifices himself to trigger the explosives that will bring the factory to the ground, thus ending the Russian’s operation. However, a seasonal multiplayer update later completely retcons Alex’s heroic death by revealing he actually just lost a leg – more on this weird approach to storytelling later.
It’s Barkov’s turn to be not best pleased, but before he can complete a helicopter escape, Farah kills him. This “successful” mission leads to Laswell creating Task Force 141, with their first mission set to be hunting Victor Zakhaev, a Russian ultranationalist and a familiar name to anyone who played through the original Modern Warfare.
That may be the end of the reboot’s campaign, but more story was hidden beyond its credits. Sulaman may be dead, but Al-Qatala lived on in Special Ops mode. There wasn’t a whole lot to it, apart from taking out the remaining senior figures of the organisation one by one, but it did lead to the revelation that Zakaev had been profiting from trading arms to the group.
You’d think the intention of all that would be to set up the story that the sequel would go on to tell. But no. Zakaev was dealt with, quite bizarrely, in Call of Duty’s battle royale, Warzone. In a high-stakes game of cat and mouse taking place across the city of Verdansk, it’s eventually revealed that the arms dealer has delivered weapons to numerous bunkers throughout the map.
Alex re-enters the action, because he didn’t really die and just lost a limb in that massive, gas factory-obliterating explosion, and he’s joined by new recruit, Simon “Ghost” Riley. Upon discovering Zakhaev has been using tunnels under the city to stay hidden, Price calls in yet more help, who arrive in the form of more Warzone skins to fill battle passes with. Farah and Price’s Russian confidant, Nikolai, joins the fight, reclaims the tunnels, and learns of Zakhaev’s base inside a nuclear silo. Zakhaev goes full Bond villain and threatens to launch a nuclear weapon, only for Price to shoot him and chuck him into the void. So much for that sequel, then.
Another new member of Task Force 141, John “Soap” MacTavish, then calls Price, completing the reboot’s reassembling of the original trilogy’s core cast.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022)
Modern Warfare 2 kicks off in the Al Mazrah desert. Here, Task Force 141, on the orders of US General Shepherd, kills an Iranian General called Ghorbrani. A few months later, his second-in-command, Hassan Zyani, takes aim at the United States as a means of payback. Shepherd and Laswell catch wind of his plans, so Soap and Ghost are sent to capture Zyani before his plan comes to fruition.
The duo fail, but make a shocking discovery: an American ballistic missile is found at Zyani’s base. And so the unraveling of the mystery as to how US ordnance ended up in his possession begins — unless you played the original Modern Warfare 2, that is, and know that someone called General Shepherd isn’t to be trusted.
Not that 141 knows this yet. Their chase eventually leads to the Mexican Las Almas Cartel, who have been providing protection to Zyani. After teaming up with Mexican Special Forces’ operative Alejandro Vargas, Price and co. capture Zyani with help from Shadow Company, a mercenary group owned by Phillip Graves and commanded by Shepherd.
As is always the way when it comes to geopolitics, though, Zyani’s capture is not that simple. The team is left with no choice but to release their captive to prevent a war from erupting between the USA and Iran — a situation that the United States would never, ever allow to happen, of course.
The search for the origin of the mysterious American missile continues, the plot thickening thanks to the discovery of Russian GPS trackers in Las Almas-owned missiles. So many missiles!
Al-Qatala, the Urzi terrorist group from the first game, rears its head again, kidnapping Laswell. While Price and Gaz are once again helped by Farah to rescue her, Soap and Vargas stay in Mexico and take a captive of their own: “El Sin Nombre”, the leader of Las Almas. It turns out she’s Valeria Garza, a former accomplice of Vargas, who reveals that the missiles 141 are chasing can be found on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig.
A huge raid effort is launched, consisting of 141, Alejandro, and the very obviously shady Shadow Company (c’mon, it’s in the name) who, of course, betrays our heroes. Graves decides that everyone associated with Vargas must die, so he orders his guns for hire to commit mass murder on the streets of Mexico. 141 comes to the rescue, though, and Alejandro lives to fight another day.
It’s revealed that it was the US all along that gave missiles to its Middle Eastern allies, and it was Graves and Shepherd who spearheaded that operation. That plan hit a hitch in the road, though, when a Russian military group ambushed the convoy and stole three missiles for themselves. Shepherd covered up the whole mess to save face.
Price isn’t pleased, but focuses on the task at hand, pledging to bring Shepherd to rights once the Graves situation has been resolved. To do that, 141 storms the Shadow Company base, kills Graves, and finds out that Zyani is now in Chicago. The team beeline it to Illinois and end both Zyani’s life and plan, preventing a missile from reaching the Pentagon.
But what about the Russians who stole the missiles in the first place? Well, to quote former England football captain Wayne Rooney, “A new devil is arriving”. That would be Vladimir Makarov, the villain of the original Modern Warfare trilogy. Will he do “No Russian” all over again? Find out after we recap a bunch of storylines that happen in Modern Warfare 2’s Special Ops mode and Warzone.
Alex Keller returns in Spec Ops and asks for assistance, which is a pretty bold move considering he was AWOL for the whole of the main campaign. He’s still working on bringing down Al-Qatala for good, especially now Farah’s brother, Hadir, has become its leader. Price, Farah, and Alex eventually find Hadir, who urges them to use a nuclear missile to protect Urzikstan from the Russians. Of course, the team opts to destroy the missile and kill Hadir.
Over in Warzone, Graves’ Shadow Company lives on without its founder and is now in control of Al Mazrah. The Las Almas cartel also decides it wants a piece of the action, and so hostilities are reignited.
Elsewhere, the Dutch city of Vondel is taken over by the Peacekeepers, a new military organisation. It’s not long until it’s revealed that they are a front for the Konni Group, the Russian military unit behind the theft of Shepherd’s missiles.
A few months later, Graves arrives back on the scene – it turns out that he faked his own death, making this reboot series two for two on games featuring characters who die and then come back in seasonal updates. Appearing to have changed his tune, Graves now wants to team up with Farah’s Liberation Force and fight against the Konni Group as they move in on Al Mazrah. Things don’t go well for Shadow Company, though, who have traitors in their midst. Konni Group tears them apart from the inside and steals gas needed to create more devastating weapons, thus leading us all the way back to that little devil, Makarov.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023)
The hell Makarov resides in would be the Modern Warfare 3 campaign itself: a selection of rehashed multiplayer maps and slices of Warzone’s Verdansk that barely manage to hold together a story. Yet, here we are.
It all kicks off with Makarov being rescued from Warzone’s gulag map. He’s been serving a life sentence in the famous PvP arena after being captured by Soap and Price prior to the events of all three games.
Meanwhile, back in Urzikstan, Makarov’s Konni Group intercepts Grave’s Shadow Company and steals missiles meant for Farah’s liberation efforts.
With Makarov now loose, Price attempts to intercept him at an abandoned facility that’s home to what remains of Barkov’s chemical materials. The mission is a disaster – Price barely escapes with his life, and Konni gets its weapon fuel.
In a dollar store rendition of the original Modern Warfare 2’s landmark “No Russian” mission, Makarov stages a terrorist attack aboard a commercial airplane, designed to make it look like Farah’s Urzikstan Liberation Force were the perpetrators. Alex helps Farah thwart this plan, though, preventing any “evidence” of ULF involvement from being discovered in the plane’s wreckage.
Price tracks a shipment heading Konni’s way, but it turns out that there are no materials inside. Instead, he discovers – drumroll, please – General Shepherd! He’s back and looking worse than ever, having been kidnapped by Makarov. Price resists the urge to kill him, and instead learns about Makarov’s plans to destroy the Gora Dam. Back to Verdansk we go.
The city’s population is saved from catastrophic flooding, and 141 shoot down a helicopter they presume is transporting Makarov. Place your bets now as to whether he’s dead or not…
Price isn’t falling for it, so he continues the search back in London, where he finds out that Makarov’s next move is to blow up the Channel Tunnel, the underwater rail line that links the UK and France. 141 quickly heads into the tunnels, but their flood-obsessed nemesis ambushes them. Soap meets a bullet to the head in as clean a kill as his name deserved.
Makarov scampers off into the darkness as Price is left to defuse a bomb. He succeeds, but it can hardly be called a victory. Later, Soap’s ashes are released from the top of a Scottish cliff, marking the end of this awkward chapter. Well, almost the end. That poignant moment is capped off with a post-credits scene showing Price finally getting his payback for all of the trouble caused by Shepherd in Mexico. He sends a silenced gunshot into the disgraced general’s skull. One villain down, at least one more to go: Makarov is still out there, waiting to meet a similar fate.
And that’s where Price and Task Force 141 are ahead of Modern Warfare 4. There are some other loose threads, but I am not going to spend time digging into whatever it was Zakhaev was doing in the Zombies mode. As a wise lady once said, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
So, how do you think the new string of Modern Warfare stories is going to end? We know Makarov’s clock is ticking, but will Price sacrifice himself for king and country? And what role does Mads Mikkelsen’s “The Archer” play in this whole picture? We’ll find out very soon.
