Third time's the charm for Modern Warfare.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has just been officially announced and revealed for the third-ish time in the history of the world. There is a soft reboot of the Modern Warfare story for the Call of Duty franchise and should not be confused with the original release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered in 2016.

This Modern Warfare is slated to be released on October 25, 2019 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The PC release will once again be sold through the Battle.net client.

Apparently "the stakes have never been higher" as you assume the role of a "lethal Tier One operator." It's a Call of Duty game, so you probably get the idea of what's going on with the plot here. What's that? A plot? Yeah, the single player campaign has returned. With the return of the campaign comes the return of Captain Price.

Players will fight through various setpieces located in "iconic European cities and volatile expanses of the Middle East." Players will again engage in a variety of encounters of the close quarter, stealth, and long-range varieties. You'll apparently put "tactical decision making to the ultimate test."

For instance, a mission may allow you to take out the lights in a dark environment. You flip on your night vision to give your team a tactical advantage against your mostly blind foes. However, you could go ahead and not bother with taking out the lights and instead just go in guns a blazing if you'd rather do that. If there are some tactical decisions that go beyond this rather limited scope, it may prove to be an interesting addition to the formulaic Call of Duty experience.

One of the biggest changes for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is the fact that this is built on an entirely new engine. It's reportedly built from scratch and not just some heavily modified Quake engine that we've had for years. There are even some very nice improvements included for those who play on PC such as DirectX Raytracing (DXR).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare features a new engine delivering an immersive and photo-realistic experience. The new technology utilizes the latest advancements in visual engineering, including a physically-based material system allowing for state of the art photogrammetry, a new hybrid tile based streaming system, new PBR decal rendering system, world volumetric lighting, 4K HDR, DirectX Raytracing (PC) and more as well as a new GPU geometry pipeline. Spectral rendering delivers thermal heat radiation and infrared identification for both thermal and night-vision in-game imaging. The technical investment provides a cutting edge animation and blend shape system, while the new suite of audio tools supports full Dolby ATMOS, on supported platforms, along with the latest in audio simulation effects.
This new engine will be the one used by the other Call of Duty studios, Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software, in the years ahead. It was reportedly in development as long as five years ago.

Another big addition is the inclusion of crossplay between platforms. Specifically, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will allow crossplay between PC and consoles. However, it's not yet clear just how much crossover there will be. Will it be PC and Xbox, PC and PS4, or PC and both of those consoles? There is also no specifics mentioned about crossplay between PS4 and XB1.

This also leads into the fact that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will not have a traditional Season Pass. This, along with the crossplay push, is being done in an effort to "unite the community." The team at Infinity Ward wants to deliver "more free maps and content as well as post-launch events to all players." However, even with this desire from Infinity Ward, they are still bound by contractual obligations between Sony and Activision. New content will still be released first on the PlayStation 4, as the reveal trailer on the PlayStation YouTube channel states. The trailer below is from the Call of Duty channel.



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The stakes have never been higher as players take on the role of lethal Tier One operators in a heart-racing saga that will affect the global balance of power. Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® engulfs fans in an incredibly raw, gritty, provocative narrative that brings unrivaled intensity and shines a light on the changing nature of modern war. Developed by the studio that started it all, Infinity Ward delivers an epic reimagining of the iconic Modern Warfare series from the ground up.

In the visceral and dramatic single-player story campaign, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare pushes boundaries and breaks rules the way only Modern Warfare can. Players will engage in breathtaking covert operations alongside a diverse cast of international special forces throughout iconic European cities and volatile expanses of the Middle East.

And the story doesn’t end there.

In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, players will be thrust into an immersive narrative spanning the entire game. Players can experience the ultimate online playground with classic multiplayer or squad-up and play cooperatively in a collection of elite operations, accessible to all skill levels.