Oh Good, More Modern Warfare is Coming

Call of Duty, as a franchise, has never really been my cup of tea. It probably has something to do with my love for the PC for FPS gaming of any kind. But that hasn’t stopped me from playing and loving the stuffing out of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the Xbox 360 or even from playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to completion. It also isn’t like I didn’t play its obvious predecessors; Medal of Honor was my FPS franchise of choice for a long time. Something just never clicked with me after the transition to Activision.

Which is why the fact that I admit that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a milestone for the genre is all the more impressive. It wasn’t that the game is (or was at the time of release) overly exceptional. It’s the fact that it pushed boundaries and challenged some very specific conventions that really made it stand out head and shoulders above the video games being published at Activision’s main competitors. Well, that and it was just well-crafted in general.

The campaign modes for both Modern Warfare titles jump around, switching protagonists, perspectives and objectives. This is an interesting conceit which allows for yet more interesting interactions like dying—permanently—at the outcome of certain missions. Before it became commonplace or almost expected, being shot down and killed in an FPS simply meant reloading the mission. Modern Warfare taught us that, no, sometimes people really do die in these conflicts. Sometimes, that person is you.

As if the title weren’t already a clue, Modern Warfare was also the first game to usher in what many might call the golden age of modern shooters. It certainly helps that it added many features that have become the standard for multiplayer shooters. Beyond that, it also seemed as if semi-realistic shooter games would never escape World War II era conflicts. It’s easy to see why, of course, as the battles there are old enough not to draw as much ire as something more recent might during the course of development and release. An easy-to-point-to example is the most recent incarnation of Medal of Honor’s trouble with the naming of multiplayer opponents.

Anyone who has been keeping tabs on the gaming press should probably know why I bring this up now. Modern Warfare 3 has been unintentionally announced by one of the largest leaks in recent years. This includes, but is not limited to, a majorly spoiler-laden post about the nature of the campaign’s storyline. Readers beware, of course, and the game isn’t exactly out yet so there’s no way to fact check anything. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t kernels of truth in there and, honestly, it seems pretty much on the level for a leak.

So, it’s with some trepidation that I find myself sighing at the plotting of the third installment’s campaign. All of the tricks and little narrative devices they used in the original and sequel seem to be getting entirely rehashed here. Again, it’s a bit early to be dismissive of the game based entirely on leaked information, but it’s hard not to be a little disappointed to hear that it’s essentially going to be more of the same but with different pawns. It was shocking to watch the last images seen by the digital person you inhabited the first few times; now it’s just overdone.

But maybe this is just a shift in focus to the multiplayer aspect of the game. Maybe this means that Infinity Ward, and by extension, Activision, know where the cash really is in the franchise and are going to just be giving the players more of what they want. Then I remember Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero and frown.