Call of Duty's 2019 game will tackle the War on Terror. Can that risk possibly pay off?

Death is all around me.

I’m slowly creeping up a set of stairs and I don’t know what I’ll find at the top. But I’m in the belly of what command said is a terror cell. Not everyone in the building wants my squad dead, but they all know our arrival is a precursor to blood being spilled.

I didn’t actually live this horrific scenario, thanks be. I watched it in a small theater at E3 along with a handful of others. The live demonstration of 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare showcased a sequence that felt more like the tense final act of Zero Dark Thirty than it did gaming’s most renowned blockbuster roller coaster. It’s upsetting to watch.

Those two things aren’t so different in developer Infinity Ward’s view, though. The gripping conclusion to 2012’s dramatized recap of the Osama bin Laden raid was pure spectacle, it just swapped big explosions for seat-edging tension. For narrative director Taylor Kurosaki, remember that Call of Duty’s take on blockbuster moments has traditionally contained multitudes.

“I’ve been a fan of Modern Warfare since it came out and one of the things I’ve always loved about it is the way that it showed you all these different perspectives,” he said during an interview at E3 2019.

He’s referring here to 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the game from which 2019’s release draws its inspiration. That earlier game introduced an industry-shifting new approach for online gaming, but it also brought forward a bunch of fresh ideas for first-person storytelling.

Instead of sticking the player in one soldier’s boots for the length of the campaign, COD4‘s story jumped between a range of different perspectives. In the process of doing so, it also recognized that plot-driven excitement isn’t just derived from the kind of run-and-gun action that first-person shooters typically lean on.

“It wasn’t the same thing over and over again. You had exotic gameplay,” Kurosaki said. “You had AC-130 levels. You had ‘All Ghillied Up’. You had different experiences. And so that demo [from E3 2019] is a different experience.”

It’s a disturbing sequence, even just to watch. The soldier you control creeps through a multi-story London flat with his squad as they move methodically from room to room, all seen through the green-tinted view of night vision goggles. Most rooms contain one or more enemies — sometimes a civilian or two, as well — and each close-range engagement is as swift as it is brutal. 

You’re watching these virtual people die horribly and suddenly, from mere feet away. The near-absolute silence is interrupted by a burst of noise and violence, and suddenly there’s a convincing virtual corpse at your feet with a horrified (and horrific) look frozen on their face. It feels more personal, more inescapable than the nameless hordes you mow down during Call of Duty’s bigger action moments.

“What does modern warfare look like today? In some ways, it looks like that demo.”

“In 2007, modern warfare meant tanks rolling across the desert,” Kurosaki said. “That was the Iraq war operation, Desert Storm. That was what the game was inspired by in some part. Well, we don’t have that anymore. So what does modern warfare look like today? In some ways, it looks like that demo.”

Infinity Ward is talking to military consultants, of course — that’s been a standard for the series for at least a decade, if not longer. But there’s a problem here. I can appreciate the creative intent behind a sequence like the one revealed in the E3 demo, but I get downright squeamish when I see marketing that emphatically touts a war game’s realism and authenticity — and that’s a drum 2019’s Modern Warfare has banged very loudly so far.

So I asked Kurosaki straight out: what do “realistic” and “authentic” actually mean in the context of this game? Their dictionary definitions don’t apply. War — and I mean real, actual war — isn’t fun. It’s death and loss and pain, and is definitely not something to be celebrated or romanticized.

“It’s not a simulation; it’s entertainment,” Kurosaki replied. “But the entertainment proposition that I believe Modern Warfare offers players is: what would it be like if I got to peek behind the curtain [as] a trained Tier One operator.”

He continued: “I think that’s what this game is saying to player: what would that be like? That’s what it’s always been, and [now] we can just do it in a more high-fidelity way.”

Fidelity is the thing, the key word here. Once you cut past all the marketing bullshit of an annual Call of Duty reveal, the continually upped ante on “realism” and “authenticity” is code for “the audiovisual presentation is better than ever.” But that’s not nearly as sexy or exciting a pitch for the mainstream as “this is a gritty take on modern warfare.”

In that context, Kurosaki’s response isn’t exactly satisfying. It’s also important to remember, though: Infinity Ward is a team of creators, people who are committed to telling a story. But there’s a larger business proposition to the franchise beast that is Call of Duty, and Activision, the publisher that funds its creation, wants to get paid.

So instead of boring and dry straight talk, we get broadly appealing soundbites driven by buzzwords. And at E3, which is essentially a marketing show, people like Kurosaki are put in the awkward position of having to talk to people like me about their creative aims and sensibilities while also toeing the line on a set of talking points.

“We only have so many at-bats as creators.”

I do believe that when all is said and done, the people at Infinity Ward just want to deliver a memorable experience, especially after talking to Kurosaki. They may or may not be successful — plenty of games in this series (and any other) have fallen short of such lofty aspirations. But 2019’s Modern Warfare, with its difficult-to-watch dive into a raid on a terrorist cell and overall focus on warfare in a post-War on Terror world, is a risky proposition. 

Kurosaki knows Infinity Ward is taking a big swing here. He also knows how important it is as a creator to embrace those kinds of opportunities.

“I’ve been in this industry for a really long time [and] I want to say something: we only have so many at-bats as creators. These games take a long time to make. You don’t get many chances to put something that actually says something into the world.

“Now, doing that and taking that on… sure, there’s risk involved in that, and it would be simpler to just [throw] a fastball down the middle. Totally. But then, what’s the point? You’re not pushing the medium forward. You’re not saying anything. So why expend one of your at-bats to just sit there and stare at the pitches sailing by?

“I agree that it takes a deft touch to tackle these subjects. But that has been the challenge that myself and this team have been up for since day one.”

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows on Oct. 25.

It bears mentioning that a few weeks after E3 concluded, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 developer Treyarch was the subject of a Kotaku report looking at what many described as an unpleasant workplace for the game’s quality assurance team. Infinity Ward is a separate studio with its own way of doing things, but we felt it was important to point back to the report being that they’re both part of the broader Activision family of studios working on Call of Duty games.