There’s an interesting new rumor about Call of Duty Modern Warfare III that is absolutely not what you think it is.
The new rumor is that Call of Duty Modern Warfare III’s first maps are coming from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. No, not Call of Duty Modern Warfare II from last year. We mean Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, the game developed by Infinity Ward in 2009, that was published in Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Windows, macOS, and later on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Now, casuals may not see the connection, but those Call of Duty players who followed the franchise for years will see where Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare III intersect.
As the most recent Call of Duty Modern Warfare III trailer has shown us, this new upcoming game will be all about the chase for Vladmir Makarov. Makarov is the head of Russia’s Ultranationalist party, and in the events of the original Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Soap MacTavish and company attempt to stop him from starting a world war between Russia and the rest of the world.
It goes without saying that there are a lot of unusual and unfortunate parallels with that original storyline that is now well over a decade old, and some real life events going on in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine today.
On a gameplay level, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has some of the most memorable, perhaps even beloved, maps in the entire franchise. Aside from a conventional story campaign, it also had multiplayer and a separate spec ops mode that we could see return today.
We should acknowledge here that one of the maps that has long made Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 infamous, not just in the franchise, but in video games in general, is the “No Russian” level. Again, given the odd convergence with real life events, it’s hard to predict what Sledgehammer Games intends to do today, if they plan to include that level, or recontextualize it, change it completely, or just omit it entirely. We know that this is a different timeline to the original Modern Warfare games of the 2000s. That provides Sledgehammer Games an opportunity to do something exciting, or shocking, with the original storylines in 2023. At least, we know there’s something they could do here.
And now, the complete cloak of secrecy that Call of Duty Modern Warfare III seems to have been under sure looks like it’s a deliberate choice, isn’t it?
Call of Duty Modern Warfare III will be releasing on November 10, 2023, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows via Steam and Battle.net.
