Activision announced this afternoon its “future plans” for the Call of Duty franchise, in which it confirmed several of the rumors that had been circulating for weeks, including the sequel to Warzone.In an article published on the official Call of Duty blog, the company assured that this year’s game will be a sequel to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the reboot of the series released in 2019, and which is working “a new Warzone experience”. Both products are being developed from scratch by the Infinity Ward studio using a new graphics engine. The company promises a “large-scale evolution of battle royale, with a new play space and a new sandbox-like game mode.” Although no further details were offered, several channels dedicated to Call of Duty were able to chat with the director of Modern Warfare 2 and the general supervisor of the franchise, who confirmed that the new Warzone will be exclusive to next-generation consoles, which means that it will not be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is the latest installment in the series | Image: Activision
The developers reportedly highlighted the “significant innovations” they have planned for this new installment of the battle royale, with which they seek to repeat the impact and novelties they introduced with Warzone in March 2020.Patrick Kelly, the supervisor of the saga in Infinity Ward, said that the goal is to give players “freedom and control” over their style of play and “that no two games are the same”, so they want the users themselves to “define what a victory means” — something that is being interpreted as the possibility of abandoning a game while preserving the experience or improvements obtained. Kelly also promised that the changes they plan are on a deep level, and not simply the classic weapons and setting upgrade we’re used to. In addition, he stressed that they anticipate fewer problems in the future at the time of the integration of Warzone with the new installments of the series thanks to the fact that, from now on, all the studios will use the same engine for their games. According to information that has been circulating for some months, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is going to be the darkest installment of the franchise so far, proposing a level of realism and extreme rawness, with enemies who will ask for mercy, suffer hallucinations or convulsions before dying. The story of the game would focus on the fight against drug trafficking and would be set in South America. The team would have been inspired by films such as Traffic or Sicario, and would also include a morale system similar to that of Red Dead Redemption 2, which would affect some moments of the narrative. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is expected to hit consoles and PC in our spring and the Warzone sequel will debut in 2023.
