On this episode of the Official XBOX Podcast, we’ve travelled to Infinity Ward to discuss the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4! We’re sitting down with the devs and diving into the details when it comes the campaign, multiplayer, and DMZ to one of the biggest games of the year.
TRANSCRIPT
SPEAKER 1: Games in this podcast range from E to M.
[ XBOX sound ]
LINA MADRID: Hey everyone, welcome to the official XBOX podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside XBOX.
I’m here today at Infinity Ward to cover all things Modern Warfare 4.
You excited for campaign?
Getting sweaty in multiplayer?
How about the new DMZ mode?
We’re covering everything.
All right, Ghosts, let’s roll out.
[ Music ]
Jack, Mark, welcome.
Thank you so much for being here.
MARK GRIGSBY: Thank you.
JACK O’HARA: Thanks for having us.
LINA MADRID: Yeah.
MARK GRIGSBY: Welcome to the Ward Room.
LINA MADRID: Honestly, thank you for having me here.
This is such a cool room too.
We’ve got Ghost back there just watching us.
MARK GRIGSBY: Sure.
He’s always watching.
LINA MADRID: Let’s start with Infinity Ward itself.
The studio has been making Call of Duty games for — MARK GRIGSBY: Since the beginning, centuries, yes.
LINA MADRID: What do you think defines an Infinity Ward Call of Duty game?
JACK O’HARA: The people that make it, that’s what helps define it.
MARK GRIGSBY: That’s a good one, yes.
LINA MADRID: That was really good.
Ooh, I got chills.
JACK O’HARA: For us, you know, we spend a lot of time paying attention to the small details.
We spend a lot of time trying to be as authentic as possible to the subject matter for the launch of the game.
We’ve done a lot of research on Korea, the military in Korea.
We want to make sure that all of that comes through in the games we’re making.
MARK GRIGSBY: Then just the energy, just keeping the energy at a high level so everyone feels that same vision that we’re going for, the overall vibes.
LINA MADRID: Vibes need to be high.
Vibes definitely need to be high, yeah.
With Modern Warfare 4, stepping into the shoes of Private Park.
The opening mission has us in South Korea.
It looks beautiful, and we actually get a moment to kind of see the city at the peak of normalcy, which was really interesting.
I would love to know how you landed on focusing Modern Warfare 4 on the Korean peninsula for the majority of the game.
Also, what were some authentically Korean elements you really wanted to capture?
JACK O’HARA: When we started setting off to make this game, we knew we wanted to go to a fresh setting.
We wanted to go somewhere where we hadn’t been before, in order to reinvigorate a little bit Modern Warfare and go somewhere different.
Then we started talking about Asia, and then we started trying to hone in on where exactly, and then, really, we started dialing in on the fact that, you know, we’re in what’s called a Hallyu wave.
That’s the spread of Korean culture throughout the world.
It started in the ’90s with K-dramas making their way into Hong Kong and Shanghai and places like that.
Now we all eat Korean food.
We watch Korean movies.
We watch K-dramas.
We have a lot of Koreans who work here across the company in various different jobs.
We have a Slack channel that we call Korean culture where people can go in who are not Korean and say, hey, I’m making this thing.
How do I make this authentic?
I was just looking in there, and there’s two people having a conversation because, at IW, we always like to have, when the Juggernaut is there, he’s playing death metal in his ears, and so we’re, well, now we’re going to make some Korean death metal.
There’s two people having a conversation there about what the lyrics of the death metal song should be in Korean, right?
You know, looking through, there’s people discussing, are these snacks authentic?
Does this sign on the wall look authentic?
Then we started to dial in on the fact that, we’re always looking to make our games feel like they’re ripped from the headlines, which means not copied because you don’t want to feel trite, but you want it to feel like it could happen in our world, in the world that we live in today.
Korea, I remember coming across a picture from, I think it was CNN, that showed all the artillery batteries in North Korea on the border that are within range of Seoul.
It’s kind of crazy because when we talk to South Koreans, they don’t really think about it that much.
It’s this thing that’s in the background, seems unlikely, yet every able-bodied male is conscripted.
They serve in the military, and those military units are often cooperating with U.S.
troops because there’s such a huge U.S.
troop presence there.
All these things just kind of made a perfect for us for Modern Warfare.
LINA MADRID: I pointed to Ghost, who’s kind of watching us as we conduct this, but what I really found interesting throughout the campaign is you have Price and Ghost.
These are fan favorites.
We’ve been through everything together, and then there’s a really interesting juxtaposition between them, their missions, and then you have Private Park and his squad.
So how do you go about telling a cohesive story from two very distinct perspectives?
JACK O’HARA: It was definitely a challenge, and we kind of set this challenge off to start with because we were really interested in showing that fresh new perspective.
Obviously, we have to stay true to Modern Warfare and have our main characters there.
At the end of the last game, MW3, in the franchise, Price had just killed a general in the Pentagon.
It’s kind of hard to come back from that, right?
So we couldn’t just pretend that didn’t happen.
It was kind of also interesting and new to show Task Force 141 in a different light, which is Price on the run.
The squad’s been disbanded, or most of it, and so that was really interesting because it’s showing a new perspective for them.
We’re showing the new ground perspective, and then these two stories start off.
You’re not sure if they’re related, and then over the course of the campaign, you realize that these two groups are having a big impact on each other’s lives, even if they’re not fighting side by side.
LINA MADRID: You have to think of kind of the whole package, right?
With Modern Warfare 4, how do you honor these things that people from the past, you know, they love, while still managing to surprise people with this new campaign?
MARK GRIGSBY: Well, we’re fans of our characters and our stories as much as our fans out there in the wild, so we want to be true to that.
We want to make sure that we honor what we’ve created, what we love, but we also have to push, and we look at ourselves.
We go, all right, does that feel wrong?
We’re constantly asking ourselves, does that feel right?
Does that feel wrong?
Does that feel right for this character, and then we bring it back and go, all right, but what if we did this?
There’s been multiple times in the process where we were in a room constantly, you know, we’re fighting and stuff.
We don’t fight that much, but we fight.
LINA MADRID: You discuss very — MARK GRIGSBY: We discuss very, very passionately.
LINA MADRID: Passionately, yes, yeah, yeah.
MARK GRIGSBY: Someone might say something, and you’re like, oh, that’s really cool.
Then it grows into something else, and then we come back the next time, and maybe it changed again.
Somebody wanted something else, but we finally start finding those things that make us go, oh, ooh, wow, right?
LINA MADRID: Yeah, and we’re hoping that hits the public the same way.
I also went, ooh, ooh, wow, when I was playing, so yeah.
MARK GRIGSBY: Cool, cool.
LINA MADRID: One final question for you.
Imagine all the enemies in the campaign drop their weapons and give the player a moment of peace.
What would you want that player to then go run out and do, explore, maybe see a piece of the map, or maybe there’s some Easter eggs to take a look at?
MARK GRIGSBY: I mean, a lot of people have put a lot of attention, again, that attention to detail in the world that they’ve created.
A lot of people take a moment, look around before you shoot the next person.
DMZ, the DMZ level, Hajin, there’s so much detail in that map.
Whenever I’m in it, I’m running around, I’m checking things out, hoping that no one shoots me.
It would be great if no one’s in there so I could really explore all the different areas of that map.
That map is pretty badass, so — LINA MADRID: Awesome.
Well, thank you again for being here.
MARK GRIGSBY: Thank you.
JACK O’HARA: Thank you.
Of course, this is cool.
LINA MADRID: Let’s go.
Jack, Jacky, welcome, we actually had a Jack before, so now we have three Jacks that we’re interviewing.
This is great.
JACK HOPPUS: We’re everywhere.
LINA MADRID: I’m going to be collecting you all, basically.
JACKY REYNOLDS: Yeah, it’s a requirement to get hired here.
LINA MADRID: Okay.
Got it.
I played multiplayer, and my God, does it feel good.
JACK HOPPUS: You were crushing.
You were crushing.
LINA MADRID: Thank you.
We played together.
You heard it here first, but there were a couple of new mechanics that really surprised me, like the Gunny System.
How does a system like that help lend a hand to maybe a new player, but also, at the same time, reward those who branch out and experiment on their own?
JACK HOPPUS: Yeah, I mean, Gunsmith is a part of our creative class system that we’ve had for a bit, and we love the complexity and the depth that it brings to building your weapons, but sometimes you just want to go in and play.
You don’t want to sit in menus, or maybe you just unlocked a bunch of attachments for your gun, and you don’t want to, “Alt-Tab” to another website and find out what the meta build is.
Sometimes you just want to feel how good the gun is immediately, and Gunny was a tool that we used a lot internally as well.
Even amongst our more high-skill players that really love Gunsmith, hardcore players at the studio, they love Gunny because they can immediately tell the power of a weapon.
It’s been really fun to just see the random, crazy weapon builds that it’ll give you.
Sometimes you’ll get a build for quick scoping, and you play with it a bit, and you’re like, you know what, I want to change out the scope on this one, or, you know, maybe I want a new stock on this.
It’s a great launch pad for a new weapon build, but it’s also kind of good if you just want to, in the heat of the fray, you know, not sit in creative class for a long time.
You just want to immediately get a gun, so we love Gunny here at the studio.
LINA MADRID: Yeah, less reading, which is great for me.
Kill Block, we’ve got to talk about.
The shiny new mode, right, so 500 different slabs, over 500 that we designed for it.
How do you even come up with an idea like that?
Who said, “Let’s do a roulette mode with over 500 options?” JACKY REYNOLDS: One of our creative directors, Jeff Smith, who’s made a bunch of classic maps, like Vacant and Crash, he kind of had this idea — I think it was his last project — of what if we had a living map that could change every time you play it?
We got to work on all the level designers’ game, and we’re able to make all these individual pieces.
They’re, like, what if we could bring this part of a map from a classic part of the game, so you’ll see a crash slab or a high-rise slab from traditional modern warfare games.
When we stood this thing up, we found that it would work really, really great with gunfight, because every time the loadouts change, the map will also change, and so we’ve been having a ton of fun playing it on the studio, and the best part is that Kill Block is also set up to support a lot of our respawn modes, our TDMs, our Dominations, Search and Destroy.
JACK HOPPUS: Search and Destroy is so much fun on Kill Block.
It’s insane.
JACKY REYNOLDS: Kill Block is kind of a whole new way for us to think about making maps.
JACK HOPPUS: Just based off the amount of combinations we have, you can kind of get the stars aligned, and you get these crazy combos where the entire mid lane is all open, where it’s got a middle slab that has an open mid and the two ends both do, too.
LINA MADRID: Yeah.
JACK HOPPUS: You spawn in, and you see almost them exactly about to spawn, and you’re, I’ve got sniper, am I going to try to quick scope, or do I run to the side and get a flank route?
With traditional maps that we’ve made throughout the years, you kind of get this map knowledge where you can understand, okay, here’s the flank route that I should take, or here’s the one spot where I love to snipe.
With Kill Block, because that changes every time, you get almost slab knowledge, where you’re, oh, okay, I’m on this end slab.
I’ve played this before.
I can get up on the shipping container here, and the mid now allows me to use the shipping container to snipe down here, so you can kind of build this in your brain and accumulate this knowledge in a way that, when they align in a dope way, you can feel like you’re like, oh, I’m a genius.
I’m a genius.
I can take this flank route now, and we love it at the studio.
We always find these cool new combinations that we haven’t seen yet, and we’re, like, oh, this is so sick.
Like Jacky was saying, it’s super fun to play on modes like Search and Destroy and Kill Confirmed.
It’s a real pleasure.
LINA MADRID: Yeah, and then another mode, Ground War, Combat Outpost, name as large as the map, right?
Was there any back and forth when talking about how do we appeal to people like me who like to just snipe in the open field, or the tank demons, or even the respectable people who like to rat in a corner?
JACKY REYNOLDS: Yeah, ground war, it kind of lets us do a lot of the things that we want to do, but we can’t really do in your 6v6 encounters.
We’ve got a great vehicle sandbox.
We’ve got all these great killstreaks, and we’ve got, loving being a sniper, we want to give you these long-range opportunities that you have.
Ground war has always been, like, a great way for us to do that, and this project, we wanted to take ground war to Hajin.
With Hajin, we have so many awesome places for players to check out, and so bringing that in a ground war context, it lets us leverage the map and the best parts of ground war while bringing something new with Combat Outpost.
Combat Outpost, as you’re taking these points, you can stay on them for a little bit longer to get sort of team-wide buffs.
The first one you get is a UAV.
The second one that you’ll get is a care package for your team.
Then the third one you’re going to get is a tank that drops down, and the tank is really great.
You can just run over lobbies with it.
JACK HOPPUS: Ground War provides this big infantry-style vehicular sandbox that players can play in that you can still use all your same weapons and killstreaks from our core 6v6 modes.
It’s always cool to see this big air show when people are calling in helicopters and crossfires, and people are driving cars, and you’re coordinating with your team in a way that you can go from playing our intimate 6v6 modes and then also hop over to Combat Outpost is a complete different flavor profile.
LINA MADRID: Yeah, is there anything else that maybe you haven’t been asked that you really want to talk about, nerd out about?
JACK HOPPUS: I mean, I’m just excited for players to play all of our maps.
LINA MADRID: Yeah.
JACK HOPPUS: We’ve got a bunch of stuff that we’re stoked on for launch, and it’s been super fun playing in the studio.
I just can’t wait to be out there with the players playing right alongside them.
JACKY REYNOLDS: I’m excited for post-launch as well.
I think we’ve got a lot of really cool stuff coming right out the gate.
Like, even before Season 1, we’ve got, you know, some stuff coming around Halloween, and we’ve got stuff coming through the rest of the year, so yeah, we’re stoked.
LINA MADRID: All right.
You know, this is the Official XBOX Podcast, so what is this?
JACK HOPPUS: Oh.
That’s our XBOX Blueprint.
It’s inspired by the cool — when we were growing up, the cool plastic shell, the clear interior, where you could see the interior of the consoles and of the cartridges, too, and controllers.
It’s so sick, and the weapons seem completely cooked with this one.
It’s kind of a harkening back to this plastic shell era of hardware, and it looks sick in-game.
LINA MADRID: Yeah.
JACKY REYNOLDS: And it’s on the M4, so you know it’s going to be good.
LINA MADRID: Yeah.
Yeah, it looks beautiful.
I mean, just in time for the 25th anniversary, so we got that.
JACK HOPPUS: It’s sick, though.
When they showed us some of the early renders of it, it was like — LINA MADRID: Yeah.
JACK HOPPUS: You can see the bullets in the magazine.
LINA MADRID: Yes, yes.
JACK HOPPUS: The attention to detail is next level.
LINA MADRID: Yeah, definitely.
All right.
Well, thank you so much.
JACK HOPPUS: Yeah, thank you.
JACKY REYNOLDS: Totally.
LINA MADRID: I got to play DMZ.
It was a lot of fun.
I got Sherpa’d around, kind of shown the sites, some tips and stuff, but this is the new Extraction Mode.
Could you kind of set the scene, and also, for people who already love extraction games, what sets DMZ apart?
JOE CECOT: We’ve said that it’s our action extraction shooter, right?
And when we worked on Warzone way back in the day, we looked at Battle Royale and the tension and all of that, but we wanted people to get in fights, and that’s where kind of the gulag came from.
It gave you an extra chance, so you didn’t hesitate as much to get in that initial fight.
In developing the DMZ beta and in developing DMZ, we wanted to make sure that the same thing was true.
You didn’t mind fighting AI.
You didn’t mind going into dangerous areas, right?
So we’ve leaned in really hard to make sure we’re valuing your time, and whether you live or die, you’re progressing in DMZ.
You’re getting more powerful.
You’re having more fun.
It’s kind of like our philosophy around making an extraction shooter in Call of Duty.
GEOFF SMITH: Yeah, we always try to find rough edges in anything we do and iron those out from core MP to Battle Royales to this genre, and it’s the bringing your teammates back even if they’re dead.
It’s the MIA and these different things like Joe was saying and just really helping make it more accessible but still keep the tension and the depth of some of these.
LINA MADRID: Yeah, and we’ve heard there are story missions, the dynamic ops that really add layers to that experience, but are there any other sorts of ways that you keep each extraction fresh for players?
I know I saw there was the trait tree and a few perks that could really change up your play style.
GEOFF SMITH: We meticulously worked with single player to start this whole thing off and create this inciting incident that helped inform us what happened in the world and how could we set dress this world as to where did all the people go, and why does it look like this?
We wanted something that would drive the look of the world, and so you play through parts of it in single player.
All those parts are frozen in time for you to come back to and say, oh, wow, I was walking down this restaurant street.
I took this beach and took the city back.
I went through the trenches and fought through those.
We found in this genre that exploration and discovery of just the environment is a really big element, and it just helps the map become a character.
Added with the weather system, it just creates great replayability in that and many of our other systems with the trait tree.
JOE CECOT: Yeah, what I actually want to dive in is we’ve leaned in really hard to make sure that there’s this rich sandbox, and one of our directors, John Mundy, he likes to say, in DMZ you go in with a plan; you come out with a story, and it’s kind of this idea that you have these dynamic operations and they’re meant to give you some direction.
If you feel like you need that, you have it.
There’s a mission you can go do, but as you’re traveling through the world, a convoy might roll by.
A Deathstalker might fly by through the sky.
A player might come through, and you might fight, or you might say, hey, what are you working on?
We have another designer, Roman, who is amazing, and he’s Mr.
Loot, and not only has he placed all the places where loot can spawn and all the containers and whatever, but he’s really created this storytelling aspect to where loot is, why it’s there.
When you’re playing in Core MP, that experience doesn’t go directly into DMZ.
We want to make sure to preserve that extraction shooter experience, but when you’re playing in DMZ, all experience you run there actually does progress your Core MP rank, but the cool thing is your weapon levels are one-to-one between the two.
So you can actually work on your camo grind in both.
You can level up your guns in both, and leveling up the gun actually unlocks attachments in Gunsmith.
But in DMZ, the zag is that you have to use cash, in-game cash, to actually buy that gun and to actually customize that gun, or you can find a gun on deployment, bring it back, and bring it to your Gunsmith and add attachments.
As you’re playing with guns, you’re picking up the weapons off other players or off the hostiles in the environment.
You’re actually leveling those guns, increasing the ability to customize them so that you can then build better, more powerful, higher-rarity weapons to bring back in.
LINA MADRID: Nice.
Yeah.
One final question before I let you go.
When are we going to hear more about the dog from the opening?
JOE CECOT: Oh, my God.
LINA MADRID: Because that is keeping me up at night, and that’s on you.
GEOFF SMITH: That is on us, Rex.
That is on us.
You will see Rex again.
LINA MADRID: Okay.
All right.
GEOFF SMITH: There are plans for Rex.
We’re just not going to share them yet.
LINA MADRID: Good.
Well, thank you so much for coming to the podcast today.
It was a pleasure.
JOE CECOT: We could talk about DMZ for hours.
We’re really excited for everyone to hop in and play it and then to go into live seasons and kind of let it evolve.
LINA MADRID: Awesome.
Thanks again for coming.
JOE CECOT: Thank you.
LINA MADRID: Huge thanks again to Infinity Ward for having us out to play Call of Duty all day, and you can experience it for yourselves October 23rd.
See you in the next.
[ XBOX sound ]
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