Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reveal: Old name, new campaign, new brutality

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  A familiar face, but Captain John Price returns to Call of Duty in an entirely new timeline and plot. [credit: Infinity Ward / Activision ]

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif.-The rumors are all true. The next AAA military shooter from Activision and Infinity Ward, coming to PCs and consoles on October 25, will be titled Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Don't let the name fool you: some of its content is decidedly unfamiliar.

Despite reusing the old series name without a number attached, this game is neither a remake nor a remaster. CoD:MW hits reset on the series' timeline. Infinity Ward has rewound a few of its familiar characters and concepts, then placed them in an entirely new, "current-day" storyline. The development team is doing this in part to usher in a first for the series: an entire half of the campaign played from the perspective of an Arab soldier.

This woman character, hailing from an unnamed Middle Eastern country, was introduced to a select group of journalists earlier this month at Infinity Ward's Los Angeles-area headquarters, and her military allegiance was left unclear. At this "pre-E3" event, we watched "real-time gameplay" from two missions, and both emphasized a level of realistic rendering and brutality comparable to the visceral Last of Us series.

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