I have always seen Call of Duty as a story that’s being shaped around you, the character you portray is left up to your imagination, and it is almost as if the player has stepped inside the boots of a soldier, been thrown a weapon, and then dropped in the middle of a battlefield with all the intense military training and intuition; to capture this perfectly makes an immensely compelling first person shooter. I have also always felt that was where Infinity Ward’s games were somehow different to Treyarch’s, you’ll ask some people what their favourite Call of Duty was and half expectedly they’ll snap “Infinity Ward’s games are so much better!”, well, that may be the case, but being the inquisitive soul I am, I always want to know why, and then how, and then maybe a bit more why. But the answer to that is simple; I really think it’s their narrative, first person (making it personal) take on FPS shooters.
Now, with that said following the story Call of Duty 4 we left Modern Warfare with our two in-game protagonists at an unknown state of affairs, without giving too much of the plot away to the stragglers of the series, it was a typical but somewhat satisfying game ending and it screamed another sequel... plus one more.
It is hard to comprehend two years has passed since the last Modern Warfare, as around the same time last year we were in amongst the chaos of Call of Duty’s first modern adaptation, and sceptically watching the build up to Treyarch’s 2nd take on the series. It was February an official announcement of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 was received – although most of us already knew it was coming – and during the very busy week of the Game Developer’s Conference there was a teaser trailer, fulfilling the full criteria of the word teaser, it had teased us with a minute and a half green active sine wave, it was great. Okay, it wasn’t a simple as that, there were clips displaying through the noise faintly showing us what seemed to be a group of terrorists taking a lift inside an airport, and just before what looked to be a fire-fight taking place, it exploded into a sequence of flashing pictures of what seemed to be a war. But the way it was depicted made it almost impossible to see exactly what was going on.
Take a look for yourself
Modern Warfare 2 teaser trailer
This may be your average hype inducing teaser trailer, but there are the typical companies that provide their own ambiguous cryptic teaser trailers, Bungie being one of these, always making it so you have to dive into its ambiguous musings and work out your own evaluation of what it all means, and it generally doesn’t mean anything, at least not directly. And now Infinity Ward happens to be the other well known company for introducing these types of teaser trailers, and this one isn’t any different. There is one particular thing that does jump out at you though, what happened to the ‘Call of Duty’ name? The ending of the trailer spells out just Modern Warfare 2. This question has been brought up by a number of journalists, and It has been supposedly confirmed by an official employee at Infinity Ward that the sequel will be called Modern Warfare 2, well that may have answered one pending question, but I have to take this a step further, why remove Call of Duty from the name in the first place? The name that has come to be, over the past five years, has built a reputation of well known status, surpassing that of Medal of Honour, and arguably the majority of FPS’s out there, and it has now gone? The only reason Infinity Ward would do that is if they wanted to disassociate themselves – at least only temporarily – from the Call of Duty brand, and if they somehow wanted to change direction.
Looking into this a tad deeper, how could it change direction? What direction would Infinity Ward want to go down? Surely they don’t want to make any major risks with a well established and successful foundation. Well, the way I see it, Infinity Ward won’t be making any brash decisions in re-inventing the FPS genre, the game mechanics as I see them will be the ones we already know. The analogy of jumping into a soldier’s boots, and being thrown a weapon, that will all stay the same. I also see the automatic re-boost of health, on par trailing squad mates, and perk/unlock system found in the multiplayer being quite complacent still. The big change will most likely come from the setting and role you’ll find yourself in, and as a result of that, you’ll find quite a contrast in tactics.
My speculative sees Modern Warfare 2 shifting from the fair paced squad participant in the middle of a warzone, and instead being more directed at the tactical and covert nature of FPS’s, similar to the ones we saw in Call of Duty Modern Warfare originally, but now being the main centre piece of the game. So instead of being directed to an objective in the middle of a battle, you’ll be directed to an objective in a non-critical state, you’ll have the choice to take out your enemies within a facility silently or go in guns blazing. Some of the missions may even have you take on special operations in the middle of a warzone, so there will be mini fire-fights going on around you, but you’re infiltrating enemy lines taking out a leader, a security system, a bomb, it could be anything; but the point is immersing the player in a situation where the character’s detached from the rest of the war, and in its place a slightly more personal quarrel. It’s worth mentioning that you’ll be in a squad like the previous games, but for most of the missions I can predict you’ll be a squad of Special Forces; that is opposed to switching between soldiers and the SAS in Modern Warfare.
I think the best way to describe the mission play-out I’m imagining is if you look at one of the first missions from Call of Duty 4 called ‘Crew Expendable’ (you know, the one on the boat) where you’re led through a cargo ship taking out a number of crew members, although it was still a very action oriented mission, it was still a form of infiltration and it had that element of surprise, which I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of. I don’t think Infinity Ward want to lose the amount of shooting either in this game, as the audience do enjoy the intensity of having shoot-out, after shoot-out, but to only see it from another angle instead could make all the difference.
There have been more than a few video analysis of the Modern Warfare 2 teaser trailer, and if you look on the main website itself Infinity Ward even give you the ability to pause the video and zoom into specific locations allowing you to do just that, I think they called the option ‘analyze’; so that tells you something alone. That may be for fans to specifically pick out certain vehicles, characters and settings that might be found in the next title, but I think if you just watch the trailer for yourself carefully – especially the start – you’ll sense at least a similar interpretation to the one I’m speculating.
I can only dream of more missions like ‘All Ghillied Up’, ‘Crew Expendable’, and ‘Mile High Club’, the scenarios where you find yourself as a soldier did brake the game’s pacing a little, but that being said, arguably the more covert missions of the game also happened to be the most compelling. If Infinity Ward can find a way of making Modern Warfare 2 diverse, as well as taking the game down my envisioned route, then I will also see Modern Warfare 2 still being played two years from now.
