According to Robert Bowling, Creative Strategist on Modern Warfare 3, the next installment will focus on gameplay customization rather than character customization as in Black Ops. Robert has stated that ”we don’t do any character customization; all our customization is focused on gameplay, loadouts, and weapon camos.” The decision was probably made because the face paint customization from Black Ops wasn’t very widely used, and for good reason – you couldn’t get to see the paint even if you killed someone at point blank because of the fast paced combat.
In addition, Theater Mode makes a come-back from Black Ops, but with certain enhancements. It is known that recording matches would take a lot of resources in the last game due to the immense amount of data recorded – Infinity Ward has stated their intent of optimizing the process so game performance is not impacted. In addition, it has already been announced that Elite subscribers get larger storage space (8 times more).
Modern Warfare 3 is coming out November 8th on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.