After the slightly off-the-wall Black Ops 4 — which featured a time travel-themed zombie mode and Fortnite-style battle royale — Call of Duty is making the jump back to reality for its next release. This week, developer Infinity Ward officially announced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a reboot of the long-running sub-series with an intense focus on gritty realism.
Notably, this is not Modern Warfare 4, which would have been the next numbered entry in the series. The game’s subtitle is simply Modern Warfare, and it serves as a reboot of sorts of 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It’s decidedly not a remake, with developer Infinity Ward–the studio responsible for all of the Modern Warfare games–describing it instead as a re-imagining. The new game is not set in the same universe as the existing trilogy–Infinity Ward says that world had left little room to raise the stakes further–but it does feature some familiar faces.
This year’s Call of Duty will include a single-player campaign. It seems as though the story will concern Russian interactions with the Middle East, while enemies will include an ultra-nationalist group helping to execute terrorist attacks in major cities such as London.
