Call of Duty: Modern Warfare doesn't have Zombies mode
"We're trying to create an authentic, realistic feeling world."
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare doesn't have the long-running and popular Zombies mode, developer Infinity Ward has confirmed.
Speaking to PlayStation Lifestyle, campaign gameplay director Jacob Minkoff said Modern Warfare was skipping Zombies mode because of the realistic tone of the game, as opposed to the more stylised tone of Treyarch's Black Ops series.
"Because they focus on more of the stylised, graphic novel, super-hero experience, they can have the much more 'out there' different types of gameplay in their games," Minkoff said.
"But for us, we're trying to create an authentic, realistic feeling world. We don't have the flexibility to do something like put zombies in the game. That would compromise the feeling of playing in a world that feels realistic and authentic and relative to today's conflicts and things we face."
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a reboot of sorts for the series. It takes established characters and puts them in a modern day setting that's described as dark, gritty and brutal. (For more, check out Digital Foundry's report on the tech powering Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.)
Unlike Black Ops 4, Modern Warfare has a campaign. It's got traditional competitive Call of Duty multiplayer, too, and we're promised a unified progression. In previous Call of Duty games, the developers have been able to go for quite a different experience tonally between modes. Zombies, typically, is an over-the-top, pulpy player versus environment experience, with traditional multiplayer and campaign quite different.
Minkoff said Infinity Ward said Modern Warfare is "more similar across the different modes", and as a result is "completely continuous".
Replacing Zombies, then, is a co-op mode. The single-player storyline goes directly into the co-op storyline. "No stop," Minkoff said. "The events just continue." As does your progression.
Perhaps the news Modern Warfare doesn't have Zombies shouldn't come as much of a surprise. It's always been Treyarch's baby (the developer spawned the mode in 2008's Call of Duty: World at War), and while Infinity Ward has dabbled with it in the much-maligned Infinite Warfare, it's never really embraced Zombies.