Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s campaign is available now in early access, and is arguably the strongest the series has been since its 2019 revival. Those who have played it will be aware that a lot of its heroes and villains meet their end in one of the darkest COD entries to date. It makes it all feel like a bow being tied on this particular storyline. Activision has confirmed a new Call of Duty subfranchise outside of the traditional Modern Warfare and Black Ops rotation is in the works, further signalling that it may be the end of this particular road.
But is that Activision’s plan, or if MW4 turns out to be a smash success, will the developer be tempted to head back to Captain Price and gang well one more time? The final mission of the campaign, taking place during the middle of the game’s credits, appears to suggest it might be the end of the line for the saga and one of its most beloved characters. It begs the question: Is this the end of the rebooted Modern Warfare story?
“It’s a good question, and you’ll not love the answer,” Jeff Negus, narrative director at Infinity Ward, told IGN.
“I don’t know. What I do know is we tried to tell a definitive, conclusive story in that we were trying to set up, or rather pay off the setups, answer things that had been posed as questions, push characters into new territory that they’ve never been in before, raise the stakes, push the conflict.”
This new era of Modern Warfare started strongly with 2019’s acclaimed campaign that echoed much of what players enjoyed about the 2007 original. Despite the callbacks, the most exciting thing was that it felt like something fresh, with new characters blending in with familiar faces to tell a new story. The recently released MW4 pulls off a similar trick, weaving in a huge-scale Korean conflict with the more personal Price missions. But the path here was rocky, and not necessarily one that was meant to end here. In fact, it turns out there wasn’t really a fleshed-out idea of where the saga would go post-2019.
There wasn’t a long-term plan necessarily for the story specifically from 2019.
“No, there wasn’t a long-term plan”, Negus revealed. “Similar to a television show where you got a first season, it comes out, people like it, cool, there’s going to be another one. If you do it well, what you built can be built upon in a way where you can use it as a foundation and then push on top of that to build and go to new places.
“Four, that was of particular importance for us. Not many games get a four, let alone one that has these kinds of characters that have gone through the things they’ve gone through. And so while there wasn’t a long-term plan necessarily for the story specifically from 2019, we definitely are self-reflexive in a way where we’re looking back at the same time as being in the present in order to inform it and make it more impactful.”
Having the plot of a four-game series being developed over the course of much of the decade not entirely mapped out is understandable, but what may be surprising is that the team didn’t know where this story would be heading just three years ago after the release of Modern Warfare 3.
“It’s interesting because at the end of Modern Warfare 3, there were some definitive events that took place,” Negus explained. “And because of that, particularly for Price, once you take that action, you can’t come back from it. And although it doesn’t change his core motivations, and in that I don’t think it changes his character, it does adjust how he tries to achieve his goals; the means changed. And we weren’t beholden to it, but we wanted to use it as a way to continue the story in a meaningful way, not go, ‘Don’t worry about that thing that happened,’ but really lean into it and say, ‘Well, if he had done that, it would mean this. And if it meant this, how can we use that to push into new territory?’ And that’s where an alliance between Price and Valeria comes in.”
There’s a lot going on in Modern Warfare 4’s story, and it’s a credit to Negus and the team that it remains coherent throughout, despite having to juggle an extensive cast dotted around much of the globe. It’s a stark contrast to MW3’s limited, plot-light campaign, which introduced fan-favourite villain Makarov in what felt like a rushed manner.
The development time granted to Infinity Ward to construct it was truncated, especially when compared to the three years it had with MW4, and it shows in its quality, but also in its quantity. This is a beefy campaign with a lot of story to tell. So much so that its opening missions almost feel like an epilogue to Modern Warfare 3, as it clears the table ahead of telling its new story. So, in an ideal world, was part of this story ever meant to be in that game from three years ago?
“Short answer, no,” Negus stated. “I think the reason that this story has so much in it is that we had the ambition to continue the legacy character storylines and a very strong impulse to return to form in that, assuming the role of a low-level soldier within a bigger war landscape. And so obviously those characters that we’ve been with don’t really fit that desire in terms of having that perspective. So it was a challenge, but ultimately an opportunity to get to redefine our returning characters and define, for the first time, a whole set of new, young, fresh faces that would give us a totally different perspective. And we combined them together, uniting them by a common theme continuing from 2019, setting up the ‘you draw the line wherever you need it’ that permeates both threads of the storyline and both perspectives.”
This approach is definitely proving a success, with Modern Warfare 4’s campaign receiving widespread praise from fans, and a thank you from the actor behind Captain Price in return to those enjoying it. Have you played it? Did you enjoy it? Let us know in the comments!
We’ve got an in-progress Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Walkthrough to help you through the campaign missions, and a guide to All Yellow Supply Crate Locations for the 10th mission, Stranded. Make sure you don’t miss out on a thing with our guide to All Collectible Note Locations, and all the Code Solutions you’ll need to open every keypad and container.
