The Next Call of Duty is Indeed a "Reimagining" of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Last week, the name Call of Duty: Modern Warfare leaked. And it's true: Activision is cannibalizing its own SEO with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, doomed to baffle parents shopping for their kids around the holidays. But this isn't your annoying nephew's Call of Duty; this is a Call of Duty trying to re-grasp the maturity that the series was born from.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is being developed by Infinity Ward, with support from Raven Software and Beenox. The last Modern Warfare released in 2011, and the most recent Infinity Ward game was Infinite Warfare in 2016, which had a strong sci-fi edge. Modern Warfare is grounding the Warfare series again with real-world inspiration. Like "No Russian" before it, Modern Warfare is going to be undoubtedly provocative. At least, that's judging from two extended demos we saw of it just a couple weeks ago.

Modern Warfare is bringing back a campaign, after Treyarch's Black Ops 4 took a break last year. It's been in development for two and a half years. "This game is inspired by a lot of different scenarios, a lot of thematic situations that are applicable to the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the '80s, up through the Iraq War and even into Syria," narrative director Taylor Kurosaki tells USG in a phone interview after the press event.

In our interview, Kurosaki also details the return of Captain John Price, the reasons behind the provocative nature of Modern Warfare, and the array of both linear and non-linear objective levels in the campaign in our full interview. Though Infinity Ward declined to reveal information about this year's Call of Duty beyond its single-player campaign, a press release confirms Modern Warfare will also have traditional multiplayer and a new cooperative mode of some sort.

This year's Call of Duty is also eliminating the series' long-running trend of having a season pass. It will also have full cross-play between PC and console, thanks to its attempt to "unite the community."

Modern Warfare will be on a new purpose-built engine developed by a new Activision studio, and will feature many technical improvements such as persistent volumetric lighting across its world and photo-realistic visuals. For more details on the overhaul for the latest Call of Duty, we wrote about the tech-related changes coming to the shooter.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be out on October 25, 2019 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, where it will be exclusive to Battle.net.