Apparently on top of everything else ActiBlizzard has screwed up on the latest Call of Duty game alone this year, which at this point I’m not sure if it’s a game on its own rather than a hyped up expansion pack thing, the campaign isn’t being well-received and is said to be more like “Warzone with bots”, also with some comparing it to the campaign of Call of Duty WWII (not to be confused with the actual campaign of the actual World War II), claiming that one was the worst one yet until this one came around. Having a copy of CoDWWII I got in some bundle some time ago taking up a chunk of space on my gaming PC, I should actually check that out sometime and see how terrible it really is if so. However, in no way was I interested in this new Call of Duty, named Modern Warfare III and not to be confused with the previous Modern Warfare 3, to begin with, as my general interest fell off since Black Ops IIII (which is 4 in badly written Roman numerals) decided to just drop the campaign, the only thing I would even pick up these games for super cheap for.
According to what I’ve read at least, the pacing of the campaign gets broken by having giant sandbox missions placed throughout some more linear ones like tradition. From what I understand, they’ve managed to make what could be considered player agency and freedom look bad in comparison by placing those breaks into an attempt at a high-octane action movie, and those parts also not being very good in general. Some might think they’re trying to be Hitman, but it’s clearly more to try to drive more people to just play Warzone all the time because that’s where they think the money is, because Warzone copied Fortnite which copied PUBG which evolved from a DayZ mod which drew from a Minecraft mod based on the Hunger Games in the series of that name, and all of those names mean money. Any reason to make everything into a live service cash machine instead of making actually well-received games that people like, including making the developers of those previous full games work on Warzone instead, if not just outright firing everyone there for cost-cutting because they didn’t make the billions that Call of Duty stuff probably brings in.
As I’ve mentioned before, Call of Duty campaigns have generally been big dumb action movies going between loud action and quieter tension as pacing demands. With the rise of online multiplayer, the games became increasingly multiplayer-focused, including any monetization efforts post-sale being exclusive to that aspect, and it seemed like the inclusion of a single player campaign felt more like an obligation to fulfill, even if a number of those did actually end up pretty decent at least. Experimentation is also a welcome idea so that the two-dozenth-and-up big dumb action movie doesn’t end up boring. There was a time when the games got so far into the future they actually had some kind of space combat in there, in ships and on foot, before the general reboot happened and they went back to mostly modern or previous times after the next Black Ops.
Lately, at least looking at what I’ve seen of the modern games beyond the point I’m willing to play any, they’re going way more cinematic with conflicts being made more personal vendettas and less having to stop the world, or at least America, from getting nuked to oblivion. So it’s less big dumb action movie and more regular dumb political thriller with some action bits. Plus given the whole reboot of Modern Warfare itself, there’s a lot that’s pulled from the previous iteration including certain mission approaches and the core cast themselves, particularly the same villains being faced under different circumstances, so it’s more pulling on nostalgia, which I guess makes it a lot more like modern movies in general.
When watching someone play through the campaign of Modern Warfare II (the reboot one), I noticed at least a couple of times the pacing seemed weirdly slow. I think one was during what may have been a pastiche of the “All Ghillied Up” mission because it involved just trying to cover a ton of ground at some point to get to some remote building in the daytime, and another was during some darkened town manhunt kinda thing that involved trying to find enough weapons to take on the enemies and then escape, essentially one giant stealth mission that overstayed its welcome. Given that “All Ghillied Up” is effectively a stealth mission in its source game, it’s also a pretty scripted one: mainly stay low whenever possible, pick targets carefully, and don’t get run over. It does allow players who can manage to survive to go loud instead but it’s highly not recommended.
In the campaigns I’ve played from the series, I often feel like I’m more following directions from a film director, and straying too far from that direction tends to require a reshoot, or a checkpoint reload in game terms. There have been actual games about doing stunts by instruction of the director and stunt coordinator giving instructions as the scene progresses, and that’s been echoed here with whatever superior officers are present barking orders. Most notably, the whole “Ramirez, do everything” from the original Modern Warfare 2, a game where I actually got tired of the campaign and dropped it over halfway through, somehow also managing to slog through the No Russian mission that was just put in there for controversy’s sake.
Overall I think they’re attempting to recapture lightning in terms of missions people actually enjoyed, as well as the ones that are there so the news can talk about them, and that on top of trying to duplicate the success of Fortnite, including all the random-ass crossover skins and the whole battle royale thing that eclipsed the original idea of Fortnite. I wouldn’t be surprised if next they just drop the playable campaign idea altogether and instead have some cutscenes play before booting into multiplayer, which most people will end up skipping, to set the story for the next Warzone “season” that lasts about a couple weeks because I swear “seasons” in live service games just barely last that long at most, just to even more copy that approach.
Of course there’s also the other consideration that they’re potentially trying to half-ass the campaigns to have an excuse to drop them entirely again. Or they’re just poorly budgeted. As for the whole Microsoft buying that whole megacorp thing, if they do manage to have influence over ActiBlizzard, any potential benefits and improvements of the situation there will most likely take quite a while to show up. On the other hand, the problems running through that company could just make Microsoft worse, and they’re already trying that on their own what with the usual forcing Edge on people and cramming “AI” into places where it’s not necessary, among other usual business stuff. And this on top of a fairly lacking year of first-party Xbox brand releases where the big standouts have been a surprise release of a linear rhythm-based action game and possibly fixing the latest Halo multiplayer, unless you’re really into car games or Bethesda games. I’m at least more open to the latter but we’ll see how that holds up over time when just about every other highly anticipated game came out this year.