The rules have changed. So says a gruff voiceover at the start of the new Call of Duty teaser trailer. For the latest title in the long-running military shooter series, publisher Activision is returning to the Modern Warfare brand, not with a sequel to 2011’s Modern Warfare 3, but a reboot of the entire concept. Released in 2007, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare promised gritty, contemporary combat in recognisable environments with authentic weaponry. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is promising the same, but in 2019’s highly ambiguous geopolitical theatre.
Unlike last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Modern Warfare will feature a full single-player narrative campaign. The focus is a fictitious Middle Eastern country named Urzikstan, where a civil war has become the latest proxy conflict for a range of global actors.
However, developer Infinity Ward (which created the original Modern Warfare title) has said that missions will take place all over the world. Harking back to the more controversial storylines of the original Modern Warfare titles – which featured scenes of players going undercover and taking part in terrorist atrocities – there is one mission in which players interrupt a terrorist attack in London’s West End and have to chase down and kill the suspects.
It seems the development team is keen to emphasise this sense of authenticity, citing movies such as Hurt Locker and Sicario as inspiration. “We are making a game that is heavily inspired by the world that we live in today and the situations that we see in the world today,” Kurosaki told GameSpot. “We are inspired heavily by some of the events in Iraq, and in Syria, and with the Arab spring and even with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There are a lot of similar themes about colonialism and about superpowers exerting their influence in regions through proxy allies and about militias that rise up and terrorist groups.”
For half of the game, players control a British spec-ops team, under the leadership of familiar Call of Duty character Captain Price, engaging in covert tasks, such as raiding terrorist cells. For the other half, players will control Farah Karim, the female leader of a rebel group in Urzikstan, which narrative designer Taylor Kurosaki has said is modelled on YPJ, the militia group operating in Syria and Iraq.
Attempting to reflect the complexities of 2019 warfare is an interesting gambit, but it’s a gamble. Call of Duty is a mainstream video game franchise with a reputation for gung-ho violence, fetishising the weapons, aircraft and language of contemporary combat. This is a tough position from which to start discussing the moral complexities of war – both in terms of the fans (many of whom just want to grab a gun and go fight in the game’s famed multiplayer modes) and wider society. When Modern Warfare 3 featured a scene of a bomb exploding in a London street, there was an uproar with Labour MP Keith Vaz accusing the makers of exploiting the July 2005 bombings for profit.
It’s certainly a major about-turn for Activision, the publisher responsible for the series, which has – since Modern Warfare 3 – been moving the titles away from contemporary combat. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Infinite Warfare and Ghosts all used a futuristic sci-fi setting, while the Black Ops titles largely take place in a fictitious, conspiracy-led cold war universe. However, sales have been falling over the years as players have moved on to other titles, especially the open-world battle royale hit Fortnite, making Call of Duty’s brand of turbo-charged, highly condensed battles seem anachronistic.
It looks as if Modern Warfare will have a range of multiplayer modes – although a specific battle royale option hasn’t been confirmed. Activision has stated that the game will feature cross-platform play, allowing PC owners to take on console gamers in the same matches – an important feature that Fortnite popularised.
Grand claims are also being made about the game’s new graphics engine, which uses photogrammetry to scan and reproduce real-world objects and buildings in the game, bringing almost photo-realistic authenticity to the world. A new “spectral rendering” technology is also set to make night-vision sequences look more realistic. Footage from the trailer, and from two in-game sequences shown to journalists this month, show incredible detail in both the war-torn environments and in character modelling. It’s clear Activision is preparing its tentpole series for the next generation of consoles.
Whether or not Infinity Ward is really interested in analysing the moral and geographic complexities of contemporary conflict remains to be seen. The trailer is impressive and the narrative leads on the project previously worked on the critically acclaimed adventure The Last of Us, which bodes well: that game handled the tragedy and intimacy of violence with devastating skill. Infinity Ward has also shown a harrowing scene in which the player controls a young girl trying to survive in a blasted environment filled with soldiers who will kill her if she’s spotted, hinting this isn’t just going to be about well-armed fighters.
At the same time, the trailer – like many military shooters before this one – revels in the macho glamour of the spec-ops soldier. From the outset, we see a small unit of operatives creeping through a forest at night spouting action-movie lines such as, “You have execute authority”, “Bravo six, going dark” and “We get dirty, so the world stays clean.” Can this game really divorce itself from a series that has turned air strikes and drone swarms into exciting unlockable super-weapons?
Blockbuster video games walk a dangerous line with politics and violence and tend to opt out when truly pushed or examined. Publisher Ubisoft has been criticised for setting its action adventure shooter Far Cry 5 in a US state populated by religious fanatics and “alt-right” survivalists but then claiming that it has no political message. If the rules really have changed for Call of Duty, then presenting “both sides” of a conflict and then claiming it’s just a story won’t wash. When politicians see a scene of civilian-attired people being gunned down in a London house, they’ll be asking a lot of questions. Will Activision or Infinity Ward have the right answers, or indeed any answers at all?
