Modern Warfare 3 All Access: Bigger, Badder, more emotional

LOS ANGELES — It was supposed to be a regular mission. Get in, intercept the truck and its contents. Get out. Something went wrong, very wrong.  The suspects fled on to a train and as I chased them through London’s subway system, I watched everything around me started to crumble, and the train started to take out the subway’s support system — sending everything crashing down in massive fashion.

This is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s level Mind the Gap and it illustrates just what the teams at Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games are aiming for with the highly anticipated sequel –“it’s got to be bigger.” Blast sat down with the team working on the newly revealed game at this year’s E3 to talk about the game.

Modern Warfare 3 picks up almost directly after the events of the last game. Captain John “Soap” MacTavish, former SAS Captain John Price and Russian informant Nikolai are on the run after killing rogue Lieutenant General Shepard. Russia has continued its invasion of the United States, but has also expanded it’s efforts to the European territory, invading countries like England and France.

Infinity Ward promised that what we saw toward the end of Modern Warfare 2 is nothing compared to the “full scale warfare” that Modern Warfare 3 will feature. “This is no longer just about the United States and Russia, this is World War III, this is what we’ve been building up to.”

Activision, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer are hoping that seeing the United States in destruction, most notably on the New York City level shown during Microsoft’s E3 press conference is enough to create an emotional bond with players as they play through the game’s single player campaign — a feat for a series known for it’s multiplayer suite. “We’re taking it to an entirely new level,” says Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling in a recent interview. “We’re taking players into the heart of major cities all around the world, delivering urban combat in places like Manhattan and London. We’re also going throughout Europe, to Russia, parts of Africa, and the Himalayas – you will travel the world.”

Even with the new focus on telling a grander story, the development team’s true goals aren’t hard to see. Huge set pieces, like the London scene and the stunning New York scene  are common in the game, and though the development team won’t reveal any information on other locations in the game, they do promise that gamers will be surprised where they’re going when they find out.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 hits shelves for pretty much every platform you could imagine on November 8.