Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is less than a day away, and the campaign has been receiving poor reviews from various outlets. According to a new report, that may be due in part to the campaign having been developed in far less time than a usual Call of Duty single-player story mode.
According to a Bloomberg report, Call of Duty campaigns are usually developed in about three years, but the story mode in Modern Warfare 3 was made in less than a year and a half. This created a lot of stress for the dev teams, and many hope this doesn’t reflect negatively on them now that Microsoft owns Activision Blizzard.
Because the game was made quickly, some devs had to work nights and weekends to ensure the game was ready for launch. This caused some of the devs to feel as if their voices weren’t heard after similar complaints were made during the making of Call of Duty: Vanguard.
Another thing that peeved the devs was how they were forced to run their work by Infinity Ward executives. This led the devs to sometimes wait longer than they felt they should to make changes, or in some cases, make unwanted changes based on what the executives wanted.
The Bloomberg report explains that a large reason why Modern Warfare III was rushed was because it was meant to replace another CoD game that was originally planned for this year. Modern Warfare III was originally meant to be DLC, but as development for it continued, it eventually turned into a full-blown game.
It’s also worth mentioning that an Activision spokesperson has denied the rumors of Modern Warfare III initially being a DLC. Still, an unnamed handful of CoD devs have backed the original claim. Most devs who worked on it were led to believe that it was an expansion until much later into development. The studio head of Sledgehammer, Aaron Halon, explained that confusion amongst the dev team started because it was “a new type of direct sequel.”
The story was originally a spinoff based in Mexico in the game’s early development. Then, last summer, Activision executives scrapped that idea and told the team that it would be a sequel to Modern Warfare 2, with Makarov being the main villain. That decision forced the dev team to create an entirely new campaign in roughly a year and a half.
Be sure to read our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III review, where S.E. Doster wrote: “Although its narrative setup is enjoyable, Modern Warfare 3 can’t get out of its own way, with nearly half of the missions being the underwhelming Open Combat style.”
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
