The next Call of Duty is Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward's first game in 4 years

It's that time of year again. The sun is out, air conditioners are on, and the next Call of Duty is public knowledge. Activision announced that this year's game is, as we suspected, Modern Warfare 4. This is the first Infinity Ward-led Call of Duty in four years—a fact that matters to longtime fans who prefer the studio's approach to military shooters.

In a room full of press at the Infinity Ward offices last week, studio heads Mark Grigsby and Jack O'Hara introduced Modern Warfare 4's primary settings: North and South Korea. The campaign follows a squad of South Korean marines (plus one embedded American) in a "zero to hero" story in the wake of a North Korean invasion of Seoul. Grigsby and O'Hara were influenced by their love of Korean rap (featured prominently in trailers), and more broadly the spread of Korean culture, citing the popularity of Korean cinema and music in the West.

"Our cultures are melding and there's a lot of references there for all of us," O'Hara said. "But the curious thing about North Korea and South Korea is they have been deadlocked since the Korean War."

The next slide showed a map of the North/South Korean border illustrating the dozens of artillery batteries pointed at the city of Seoul at all times. This is the next iteration of Infinity Ward's "ripped from the headlines" approach to campaigns. That has often proven a double-edged sword for Infinity Ward, whose fast-and-loose depictions of reality once led it to recast blame for an American war crime. Perhaps in an attempt to temper Modern Warfare's edgy reputation, O'Hara expanded further on the mantra:

"We want to make sure that we live in this pocket that we call 'ripped from the headlines' when it comes to our universe. What that means is, when you see our game, you should feel like it could be in the headlines, not necessarily that it came from the headlines, but it could be."

It also wouldn't be Modern Warfare without Captain Price, who reenters the story on the run after executing a general at the end of Modern Warfare 3. I wouldn't blame you for forgetting or never seeing that major plot development, as Modern Warfare 3 was widely considered a low point for the series.

During the campaign presentation, some talking points seemed indirectly aimed at the unpopular 2023 sequel Infinity Ward did not make (it was actually developed primarily by Sledgehammer Games), as well as Black Ops 7's co-op campaign that was criticized for playing more like a series of Zombies arenas than a traditional Call of Duty adventure. O'Hara walked us through the premise of each of its dozen-plus campaign missions (including several spoilers), as if to communicate that Modern Warfare 4 will have a normal, linear story mode.

I also played around 90 minutes of Modern Warfare 4 multiplayer, which you can read about in full. Long story short: Infinity Ward is picking up where it left off in 2022. Ominimovement is gone. Wall-jumps are out. The audio is unbelievable, animation is top-notch, and they've sped up mantling and sliding to make twitchy players happy (boo). It's fun, but not at all surprising.

The third big mode of Modern Warfare 4 is a proper sequel to DMZ, Call of Duty's extraction mode that debuted in Modern Warfare 2 (2022). Activision is staying tight-lipped on details for now, but describes the mode as a "living combat sandbox" with "changing weather, dynamic military objectives, and hostile forces moving throughout the zone."

Modern Warfare 4 is out on October 23. That's a perfectly normal week to release Call of Duty, though this year it has the added significance of being a full month before the release of Grand Theft Auto 6.

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