Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 – First Details on the Next Epic Call of Duty Campaign – XBOX Wire

Infinity Ward has just blown the doors off one of the biggest video game reveals of the year with the announcement of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 alongside its stunning reveal trailer that sets the stage for the next epic Call of Duty campaign launching later this year for XBOX Series X|S, XBOX on PC, Steam, Battle.net, PlayStation 5, and as an XBOX Play Anywhere title. Modern Warfare 4 will also be available at launch on Nintendo Switch 2 – more details on that, including pre-order details on Switch 2, are coming later this Summer. Learn more about pre-orders here on the official Call of Duty Blog.

Call of Duty has always wowed us with epic, globetrotting cinematic storytelling and each successive entry seems to raise the bar on what’s possible – but nothing has prepared us for what is in store as we’ll be thrown into a major conflict along the North and South Korea border, with a narrative that feels inspired from today’s headlines.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is picking up shortly after the dramatic events of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023) that saw Task Force 141 lose a fan-favorite ally, with Captain Price going rogue to continue his hunt for Vladimir Makarov. Now the battlelines have moved to Korea, Paris, New York City, and other locations across the globe — it looks like we’re going to be in for one hell of a fight.

To find out more what’s in store for the next epic single-player Call of Duty campaign, we caught up with Associate Design Director Alex Norris and Narrative Director Jeff Negus at a recent Call of Duty event to learn more about what goes into creating those large-scale, cinematic missions we’ve come to love, who are the new squad members featured in the trailer, and how sound and music tie the entire experience together.

The cinematic trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 introduces several new squad members. Who are they, and what roles do they play in the campaign’s story?

Jeff Negus, Narrative Director – The trailer introduces a bunch of new characters – we have one of the biggest casts we’ve assembled for this game, which is really exciting – and a bunch of them are brand new characters to the franchise. We got to bring them to life with new people casting new faces and a lot of them are representative of our grunt marine squad in South Korea.

Several of them are members that were conscripted and find themselves thrust into a battlefield – this is Park, Jay, Cho, and Moon. We also have some American Marines that are embedded with them, West and Dunn. And what we’re excited about with these characters is we get to kind of see the fish out of water Americans in Korea, and we also get this sort of culture shock collision between them and see how they all work together to get through it.

When introducing new characters into an established Call of Duty storyline, what goes into ensuring they have a chance to feel just as memorable as Soap, Price, and others within a Call of Duty campaign?

Alex Norris, Associate Design Director – I think a lot of that ties into gameplay and what you get to do with those characters. A lot of it is that we think this character is pretty awesome. They’ve got great dialogue, they’re fun, they’re enjoyable, but do I get to do anything with them on the sticks? We will try to put them next to you on the front lines.

So, whether they’re your commanding officer and they’re asking you to put everything on the line to take over an objective, or if it’s somebody that’s conscripted and just as unsure about being there as you the player, or the character that you’re acting as. We find unique ways to put them through hell.

Negus – In reimagining the Price, Soap, Ghost characters in the last three games, is what we’ve really tried to do is to make them three-dimensional, make them flawed in the right ways, and try to give them deeper stakes in terms of what they want and how they go about getting it. That same approach is applied to fully drawing these new characters. What’s really special for this process is to find exactly the right person to represent this role and then see what they bring to it. And then they influence how the character gets created and developed as well. So, we kind of go back and forth and it’s really collaborative.

How will Captain Price factor into the narrative for this newest Modern Warfare entry, and what do players need to know about his motives at the start of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4?

Negus – This is the latest game in the series, it’s new territory, a place that we’ve never really been before. We have the luxury of building on three games worth of canon. And what does that mean for characters like Price? Well, we’ve seen him do a lot of different things, involved in a lot of different types of conflict. And at the end of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, we see Price engage in actions that he can’t really come back from. We now see a different version of Price than we’ve seen before based on the choices that we’ve seen him make in the past. And we get to forge a new path for him, and see what happens when he’s now in different conflicts – how does this version of Price resolve that conflict?

This campaign appears to return to a more contemporary, real-world setting. How does this shape the tone and themes you want to convey in the narrative?

Norris – I would say we kind of look at the world around us as inspiration and it lets us tap into that for reference and experiences that are novel for us to draw from. And we look at a place such as South Korea and how there’s a large amount of American forces tied in there and what would actually happen if North Korea was to invade South Korea. What does that open up for us as far as what stories can we tell there.

Negus – I think when it comes to contemporary Call of Duty, and more specifically Modern Warfare, it has always been ripped from the headlines. We’ve always been really inspired by what things are going on around us. Then we fictionalize those elements, see them through the perspective of the characters, and do everything in service of what the player most is going to impactfully feel, what’s going on from moment to moment. So our approach to contemporary is just a great way to ask the player: ‘What if you were in this situation for real?’

What can placing the game in modern Korea create for mission design and storytelling that you otherwise couldn’t create? Do you have to be more careful with how you approach certain subjects when rooted in the real world?

Norris – When we think of large-scale battles, we want infantry, armor, and air support all working together to retake a city. That’s kind of what the new region opens up for us. It’s modern, there’s these conflicting areas where North Korea and South Korea have a past, and a present history of conflict, so it’s something that we can tie into to make it feel authentic. And it lets us play with this new cast and this new group and how would they act if they needed to storm a beach together?

Having the game set in Korea can provide players with an opportunity to experience a country that they may be unfamiliar with. How do you balance that spectacle of a Call of Duty game while remaining respectful for its location?

Negus – This was a really big one for us. In all these games we represent different parts of the world that I would say a good portion of the players wouldn’t necessarily be familiar with. We went to Mexico. We went to the Middle East. We have allies in different regions around the world. And we’ve always taken it really seriously and felt a lot of responsibility to make sure that not only are we casting people the right way, but also that when we draw these characters that we get to really infuse them with a grounded grit – and this game was no different.

We got to go a little bit further this time because of how much time we get to spend in Korea. We have a bigger cast this time as well, which means we cast several new people and get to see different dimensions of what it’s like to be a person living in this society – and again one that people may not be as familiar with. Language is a huge thing for us too as we’re trying to stay as consistent and grounded and realistic as possible – two Korean soldiers would be communicating in Korean because of course they would. This is another place where we would lean on our cast, lean on our dialect coach to really inform like, ‘Hey, what would they say here? What would be real about this? What could they talk about that would fill this out and make it feel more real?’ So, we look at it as an opportunity to immerse players in the Korean setting.

Norris – We care greatly about representing it as best we can and there are many people on the team with Korean backgrounds who have helped to provide input based on their own experiences. We created an internal Korean culture channel, and everyone is in there and we get to ask these questions and say, ‘Okay, is this the right way to do this? This sign that we’ve put in the game, what does it actually translate to? We walk into this Korean convenience store at the start of the game, you see it in the trailer, and these guys are goofing off, but we want that to feel like an authentic experience. We’ve carefully gone through all the detail of that with our team and said, ‘Okay, does this look right?’ I remember one comment recently where someone was saying, ‘Hey, this fish product wouldn’t be here. It would be over in this section of the store.’ It’s been a pretty cool experience.

From what we’ve seen so far, this campaign seems to lean into large-scale, cinematic missions. What inspired that direction?

Norris – The Infinity Ward style, I’d say, has always been, ‘Let’s go larger scale where we can have the awesome set piece moments. Where can we have the directed raid style approaches.’ That taps into our love for variety through gameplay experiences. We want every other mission to feel significantly different from the one before it, and the one after it. Even within that mission, what is the core identity? How do these two minutes stack up against the next two minutes, and the next two minutes, and the next two minutes?

Then you look at that bunch compared to two missions down the road and you say, ‘Okay, are we stepping on each other’s toes?’ Because we want to take this story that’s being wonderfully crafted by the narrative team and propel the player through it. We want them super engaged and feeling compelled to take on the next objective, to see what I get to do in the next mission.

Negus – I was just going to say in a lot of ways it’s a return to form for us. It’s getting to really lean back into what it is that put this on the map in the first place and how can we reinvent what that is. To make it fresh and new and combine it with other things that we’ve done in the last few games.

What goes into designing those signature, dramatic, over-the-top Call of Duty moments while keeping the experience grounded and believable?

Norris – That’s a good one. You want to have this amazing experience, but how long can that go on?

That kind of ties back into my comment about this two minutes and that two minutes. When we think about a big set piece, it’s like we try to design them in such a way that it’s going to hold your attention and it’s going to be thrilling.

When we talk about grounding it, I think about the shots in the trailer of car chases through Paris. It’s a real location, but you’re doing something a little out there – you’re having a car chase leaning out the windows and firing your way through the streets.

If you look at Modern Warfare II (2022), our artists took a corner of Amsterdam and famously rendered it almost one-to-one, and it is beautiful. We look at Paris and they’ve done the same thing, but across the entire city. So, we’re going for like miles of authentic, grounded experience and then we plop you in this wild card chase through it.

Negus – It all comes down to the perspective through which you see the spectacle. The voice of the character being one that gets to reflect on just how crazy certain things are, I think is what humanizes it and helps you have an entry point to going like, ‘Okay, this is not just run-of-the-mill. This is not just noise in an otherwise bombastic experience.’ It’s really being felt and experienced by this character, and you are that character. I think it all comes down to reflecting on it through the character voice.

How do you make squad dynamics feel authentic during missions, both narratively and while playing the game?

Negus – This is a fun one because when we were casting, one of the things that we did was we had a chemistry test, because it was so important to us to make sure that we had the right people. And having the right people in this case meant that they would be able to respond to each other organically and even extemporaneously in certain cases, where it’s like, yeah, we could have stuff written, but what would you guys just do?

Our approach, not just for this but for the last few games, has been to get facial motion capture, voice, and body all at the same time with as many actors as we can, play the scene and really feel it. And honestly, sometimes stray from the script if we find something better with them. It’s highly collaborative.

When it comes to representing those characters, one of the things that made them so right for the part is just how they show their personality through their character and how they talk to each other. There’s definitely a fair amount of expressing trained soldiers, what their job is and what’s their role. But then we also have individual personalities for each of these guys that come out, especially when they’re under the pressure of being thrown into the crucible of war, I think gets pretty fun and entertaining.

Norris – To speak a little more on the element of the squad – they’re attached to one of these amphibious combat vehicles. These kind of recon vehicles have a squad attached to them. And within that squad, each person has their own specific role. And so we kind of tap into that with we’ve got our vehicle commander, we’ve got the driver, we’ve got the scouts that are supposed to spill out the back and look ahead for everything else. And then we tie that in with our American character, Dunn, who’s kind of working with logistics on air support. So everybody has their role, everybody has a job, and they work together to kind of conquer everything in front of them.

Sound and music are such a key part of the cinematic gameplay experience in a Call of Duty game. Could you talk a bit about how the team dials that up to use audio to heighten tension, emotion, and immersion in the campaign?

Norris – I would just jump in to say when we’re working on these campaign levels and we’re making these experiences and we’re like, ‘Hey, it’s a chase level,’ you expect that the chase music is just a giant part of the entire experience. Our audio team makes us work for it. They want us to make sure that the level is as awesome as it can be up until the very end, until they say, ‘Okay, you made it stand on its own. It’s fantastic. We’re going to give it that extra push,’ because it can easily be something to lean on and you don’t do the extra effort to get it to where it’s supposed to go. And so they keep us honest. And so that’s something I love about working with that team.

Negus – I think too, just from a more strictly storytelling perspective, we’re really closely collaborative with the sound team, with the music team, trying to make sure everybody understands like, who are we in this situation? What do we want? Who are the people around us? And how are all the external forces sort of informing what the moment is? We often say if this moment plays without music, the sound team is going to be able to really bring this to the next level. Not just music, but sound design, obviously, too. It’s such an immersive element and such an important aspect to really putting players right in the shoes of the character that they’re playing.

Thank you to Associate Design Director Alex Norris and Narrative Director Jeff Negus for sharing these new details about the next Call of Duty campaign with us. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23, 2026, for XBOX Series X|S, XBOX on PC, Steam, Battle.net, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and is an XBOX Play Anywhere title. It’s available for pre-order today on the XBOX Store, Steam, and other digital retailers.

To learn more about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, check out the Official Call of Duty Blog.