Torn asunder in March 2010, a lot of people thought that Infinity Ward wouldn’t survive the mass staff departures started by the firing of founders Jason West and Vince Zampella. There’s no doubt that a vast gap was left in Infinity Ward’s talent by the departures, but the company has soldiered on through that rough period and enlisted the help of Sledgehammer Games to build the next title in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series.
In order to save some time at E3 in a few weeks, Activision were kind enough to hold a Pre-E3 event that allowed UK games media to check out their games line-up ahead of time – and so I was lucky enough to get some eyes-on (but hands-off) time with Modern Warfare 3.
What the gathered journalists were shown has been largely described already in Kotaku’s comprehensive and damaging leak of details on Modern Warfare 3, but seeing it in motion is another thing entirely, and left me more excited for the game than text on a page ever could.
Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling was on stage to explain a little about Modern Warfare 3 before the live demo began, and reassured us all that while all we’d see right now was single player, the now tradition suite of modes associated with Modern Warfare – Single Player, Co-Op Spec Ops and Multiplayer – will all be present in the final game.
We were shown two single player missions, both of which have been shown and teased in trailers – New York City and London. The New York level has US Marines fighting off Russian forces through the familiar-looking streets of New York and through the financial centre of Wall Street, while the London level takes players to the London docklands and then down into the underground.
The US level opens with the player character marine scrambling from a wrecked vehicle, the ruined streets of New York revealed to you as you clamber out of the flipped APU in the first person perspective.
From the moment the gun is raised, everything looks familiar. The ruined American streets are a direct and natural continuation from the suburban combat seen in Modern Warfare 2, and everything looks to control and move just as it does in the previous games in the series. It wasn’t broken – so Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer haven’t seen fit to fix it.
The engine still maintains that silky-smooth 60 frames a second that has given the gameplay a slight advantage over other shooters on the market, but the teams appear to have spent a fair amount of their development time trying to squeeze that little bit extra out of the engine, and as a result Modern Warfare did look pretty **** slick on that big screen.
Bowling explains the crowd that the story is focused on cinematic action that will make players feel like they’re controlling a blockbuster action movie, and also explains that scale is a big part of this. Those ideas could be seen coming to fruition in the live demo, with the battle through Wall Street culminating in a dramatic helicopter battle above the New York skyline, with the player manning a machine gun on the chopper, trying to bring the other down.
After he’s landed enough hits, control is wrested from the Activision man controlling the demo as the chopper you’re fighting begins to go down. But it’s heading right for you – the pilot swears as he tries to pull you out of the way – but he can’t, and the two choppers have a glancing impact.
The enemy chopper goes down in a ball of flame, crashing into the side of a nearby building. Warning sirens blare and lights flash as your chopper begins to spin out – you’re hanging on for dear life facing a plummet back to the streets – and then the chopper levels out. End Demo.
Those kinds of major cinematic moments are what define the Call of Duty single player experience, Bowling says, and Modern Warfare 3 is all about upping the ante on those. Later, we see an SAS squad commandeer a vehicle and speed into the London Underground after a tube train that has been hijacked by terrorists.
The visual improvements aren’t just in size and scale, but also seem to have seeped into other areas. While I noticed no real terrain damage ala Battlefield there was an awful lot more on screen in these dense urban environments than in much of Modern Warfare 2. A favourite moment of mine came when the fight in New York entered the stock exchange, the building abandoned but many of the screens still on, displaying stocks and shares.
As the screens shattered and smashed under fire, I was reminded of the TV station section of the original Modern Warfare – just with twice as much stuff going on. It looked great. Detail on weaponry seems higher, too, though it’s always hard to tell on a rolling demo where the game can’t be paused and looked at more closely.
It’s not all shooting and ducking behind cover, though. The action is mixed up a few times with special weapons – a Reaper drone used in one part of the demo, giving you the black and white aerial view as you lay down death from above, while a hand-held grenade launcher is used to take out vehicles in another segment.
While multiplayer was mentioned in passing, it will be interesting to see if Infinity Ward can offer up anything truly different or new in that section of the game, as while more of the same sounds good to me for story the multiplayer needs to continue to evolve significantly if it is to remain at the top of the pile.
It’s clear that the grand plan Infinity Ward had for the story of the Modern Warfare series hasn’t been affected by the gap in resources and influence left by the changes at the studio. They don’t seem to be confused, or lost – they knew where they were going with this series before all that happened.
Those that remain and newcomers to the series Sledgehammer Games seem to have really stepped up to the plate to offer the ‘ultimate’ Modern Warfare experience – the only question is where they’ll go from here and what they’ll do with the multiplayer. As if it wasn’t already, this demo assured me that this is one to watch.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will launch on PS3, 360 and PC on November 8th, 2011.
Trailer:
[video=youtube;coiTJbr9m04]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=coiTJbr9m04[/video]
Source:
Activision Minds the Gap in Modern Warfare 3 | The Gaming Vault
