The internet is once again alive with rumors that suggest a new game in the Call of Duty franchise will be announced soon. There has recently been a lot of buzz about a possible reveal at the Activision Blizzard first quarter conference which took place yesterday, but in the end almost no new information was given away, other than Activision saying we will be told more about a new Call of Duty game soon (probably referring to E3). But another story, which originated from the UK Official PlayStation Magazine, suggests that the new game will in fact be Modern Warfare 3 and the magazine even goes as far as giving it a release date of November 8 of this year.
As well as this the gaming site Kotaku have also reported that their own sources have unofficially confirmed that not only does Modern Warfare 3 exist but that it “pushes the bar on what people have come to expect from the series”. They report that they have insiders who tell them the game will continue on after the end of Modern Warfare 2 where the detonation of a nuclear missile throws the world into a hectic state of crisis and that the new story escalates to the level of a potential World War III, with multiple countries being brought into battles. There is no information on where exactly the majority of the game will be set, but Kotaku say it will include an urban setting similar to the U.S. missions in Modern Warfare 2. They suggest that some of the characters from Modern Warfare 2 such as Captains MacTavish and Price will return for the sequel, and that the game will have larger maps with bigger battles than the previous titles, and that it will also include destructible environments for the first time in the series.
It was well documented that early last year a dispute between Infinity
Ward and the Call of Duty publisher
Activision resulted in almost half of the original Infinity Ward staff
resigning after Jason West (game director) and Vince Zampella (CEO) were fired. After these problems were resolved the studio remained open but with a large proportion of new staff. Modern
Warfare 3 will be the first game in the series that has been developed by the
new Infinity Ward so it will be interesting to see how this affects the final
game.