It's the fall of 2022, and everyone is reacting to the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 open beta. Infinity Ward's reboot sequel made a lot of movement changes that seemed subtle, but angered a lot of folks. The idea was to make Call of Duty more deliberate and consistent by slowing down the action: unintended movement techniques were stifled, silenced weapons were hidden from minimap pings, and red nametags were gone.
I liked it. Most people didn't have a strong opinion about it. But Call of Duty's most active players resoundingly rejected it. Infinity Ward would eventually reverse some of these changes before launch, and the next year's Modern Warfare 3 (developed by a different team) scored points by moving in the opposite direction.
Speaking to PC Gamer in Los Angeles last week, Infinity Ward devs reflected on the gameplay changes that have come to define Modern Warfare 2's reputation.
"In Modern Warfare 2, we made some changes that were maybe healthier for the game and the way it played, but created friction and removed fun for some players," said multiplayer creative director Joe Cecot.
"What we had pushed on was to make the game feel more tactical," added multiplayer design lead Jack Reynolds, "but I think it came at the cost of some of the feel and some of the fun."
It's those learnings that informed Modern Warfare 4's revamped movement. Infinity Ward isn't bringing over wall bouncing or omnimovement from the last two Black Ops games, but it is embracing fluidity in sprinting, sliding, climbing, and mantling. Traditional mechanics, like red dot spotting on the minimap, are back. It's about refinement, not reinvention.
"What we tried to do when building [Modern Warfare 4] is take these points of friction that make the game feel off or sluggish and improve on them—rebuild them from the ground up so that you get that fluidity and that feel back, while also maintaining the kind of grit, the groundedness, and the tactical play that we are known for," said Reynolds.
Some of those changes, according to Cecot, were the result of Modern Warfare 3.
"I think that some of the changes that Modern Warfare 3 made actually felt good, and so we took a step back, looked at where we had gone from MW2019 to MW2 and said we really want to make mantle feel good, not just faster. So we rewrote the mantle system and made sure that, one: Now it maintains your momentum, two: You can now strafe in it, and three: You can now mantle right into slide. We pushed hard toward making it feel like an extension of movement—like you never lost control."
I tried Modern Warfare 4's rebuilt movement for myself, and while a handful of matches wasn't enough to fully judge the results, I did notice an emphasis on momentum. Getting around is effortless and cool. But my crowd was undeniably casual—the true test will be that inevitable open beta later this year, when the actual movement sickos enter the ring.
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