Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's campaign has drawn praise for its narrative, with many players interpreting its conclusion as the definitive end to the rebooted Modern Warfare storyline. This speculation has been fueled by the game's events and Activision's confirmation of a new Call of Duty subfranchise in development, separate from the traditional Modern Warfare and Black Ops series.
Jeff Negus, narrative director at Infinity Ward, acknowledged the question surrounding the saga's future. "It's a good question, and you'll not love the answer," Negus told IGN. "I don't know. What I do know is we tried to tell a definitive, conclusive story in that we were trying to set up, or rather pay off the setups, answer things that had been posed as questions, push characters into new territory that they've never been in before, raise the stakes, push the conflict."
The Modern Warfare era began in 2019 with a campaign that blended callbacks to the original with fresh characters and narrative directions. Modern Warfare 4 continues this approach, weaving a large-scale Korean conflict with more personal stories focusing on Captain Price. However, Negus revealed that a rigid long-term plan for the story was not in place from the outset.
"No, there wasn't a long-term plan", Negus stated. "Similar to a television show where you got a first season, it comes out, people like it, cool, there's going to be another one. If you do it well, what you built can be built upon in a way where you can use it as a foundation and then push on top of that to build and go to new places. Four, that was of particular importance for us. Not many games get a four, let alone one that has these kinds of characters that have gone through the things they've gone through. And so while there wasn't a long-term plan necessarily for the story specifically from 2019, we definitely are self-reflexive in a way where we're looking back at the same time as being in the present in order to inform it and make it more impactful."
While not having the full plot mapped out for a four-game series developed over a decade might be expected, it's noteworthy that the team was uncertain about the story's direction even three years ago after Modern Warfare 3's release. Negus explained that definitive events in MW3, particularly concerning Captain Price, altered the character's approach to achieving his goals. "And although it doesn't change his core motivations, and in that I don't think it changes his character, it does adjust how he tries to achieve his goals; the means changed. And we weren't beholden to it, but we wanted to use it as a way to continue the story in a meaningful way, not go, ‘Don't worry about that thing that happened,’ but really lean into it and say, ‘Well, if he had done that, it would mean this. And if it meant this, how can we use that to push into new territory?’ And that's where an alliance between Price and Valeria comes in."
Modern Warfare 4's campaign is noted for its coherence despite its expansive cast and global scope, contrasting with MW3's more condensed plot. Negus clarified that specific story elements from MW4 were not originally intended for MW3. "Short answer, no," he said. "I think the reason that this story has so much in it is that we had the ambition to continue the legacy character storylines and a very strong impulse to return to form in that, assuming the role of a low-level soldier within a bigger war landscape. And so obviously those characters that we've been with don't really fit that desire in terms of having that perspective. So it was a challenge, but ultimately an opportunity to get to redefine our returning characters and define, for the first time, a whole set of new, young, fresh faces that would give us a totally different perspective. And we combined them together, uniting them by a common theme continuing from 2019, setting up the ‘you draw the line wherever you need it’ that permeates both threads of the storyline and both perspectives."
The approach has resonated with players, leading to widespread praise for Modern Warfare 4's campaign and a thank you message from the actor portraying Captain Price to fans. The narrative director's comments suggest that while the current storyline aims for a sense of closure, the franchise's future remains open to interpretation and potential continuation.