Call of Duty: Modern Warfare releases this October with cross-play

Coming to PC through Battle.net

This year, Infinity Ward is back with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), and our pals Captain Price and Soap are along for the globetrotting ride. “We get dirty, and the world stays clean. That’s the mission.”

“Players will join a varied cast of international special forces and freedom fighters in gripping and heart-pounding missions through iconic European cities and volatile expanses of the Middle East,” said co-studio head Dave Stohl. Apart from the single-player story campaign, Modern Warfare will have “classic multiplayer” and a “co-op collection of elite operations,” the latter of which particularly has my interest.

Much more surprisingly, the new Call of Duty has cross-play support for PC and console players (I hope this becomes a full-fledged trend) and there isn’t a typical season pass “so that we can deliver more free maps and content as well as post-launch events to all players,” according to creative director Patrick Kelly. That all sounds promising on paper, but the devil is so often in the details.

Also noteworthy: Infinity Ward is using a new engine for Modern Warfare which, yeah, it shows. What a difference. The night-vision sequences look bonkers thanks in part to spectral rendering.

As part of today’s pre-E3 game reveal, the studio said it’s striving to pull off a more realistic, grounded experience than before. “We are creating an emotionally charged experience that’s inspired by the headlines in the world today, where the rules are grey and battle lines are blurred,” Stohl added.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will release for PC, PS4, and Xbox One on October 25, 2019, and pre-orders are open as of today for the standard and enhanced editions. (Heads up that Sony says “new playable content, when available, will launch on PS4 seven days prior to launch on other platforms.”) You can catch the first screenshots for this so-called soft reboot – it’s not a remake! – in the gallery.

I’m not much of a CoD guy these days, but I’m more intrigued than normal.