Call of Duty Modern Warfare’s Multiplayer: Every Little Detail We Learned From the Demo

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a return to form in ways beyond just the name — Twinfinite recently learned this after playing the multiplayer for over four hours.

You can read our full impressions of the multiplayer preview right here, but in short, Modern Warfare looked and felt great, and it sounded superb. Once you’ve given that a read, come back to this and enjoy a glimpse at every little detail that we could glean from four hours of hands-on time with the game.

Let’s start with some facts about the design that comes straight from the mouths of the developers (who presented over an hour of information to us before we went hands-on) themselves. Here’s every little detail we learned from playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare multiplayer.

Modern Warfare: Design Details

1. Progression is unified — progression earned in one mode of gameplay will transfer between additional modes. We didn’t see anything other than multiplayer but developers told us that whatever happens in multiplayer can transfer to other modes in the game and vice versa
2. Developers call their new take on gameplay “Down the Barrel.” They highlighted this by explaining how the physics of shooting a gun now work, which we saw in action when we went hands-on. All guns have variable recoil effects per usual but now, the recoil of the gun is transferred to you, the shooter, and as a result, your head (in-game) gets knocked back to demonstrate that transfer of concussive power from each gunshot.
3. Small maps in the game used for the 2v2 Gunfight mode are called Flash Maps.
4. Medium-sized maps used for 6v6 game modes are called Tactical Maps.
5. Large player count maps are called Battle Maps. Battle Maps will be used for game modes like Ground War, which is an “epic large-scale mode supporting more than 100 players.”
6. While symmetrical three-lane maps are present in Modern Warfare, they’re almost exclusive to the 2v2 Gunfight mode. This is because map design has shifted focus to freestanding buildings positioned around the map to create power play areas.
7. When designing non-Flash Maps, developers attempted to recreate the feel of maps from games like Doom where each map has key areas that players attempt to take control of in an effort to gain the upper hand. Instead of running down one of three lanes in a more symmetrical three-land map, you might focus your aim on the two-story building on the right side of the map because it gives you great cross-sectional sight lines across the rest of the map, for example.
8. There is no mini-map in the game. Instead, there is a compass at the top that shows red triangle-like shapes to indicate to you where players who are shooting are located.
9. Because there is no mini-map, one of the first kill streaks you unlock is the personal UAV which essentially gives you the mini map you’ll be missing.
10. Doors on buildings can be opened.
11. Doors that can be opened on maps can be opened by pressing Square or X (on Xbox One). They can be slammed open by sprinting through them or sliding into them.
12. Doors can be breached but you don’t have to press a button or sit through a canned animation to do so. Instead, you can simply throw your C4 onto the door and detonate it. This will create the breach effect used in previous iterations in the series.
13. When doors open, they have a unique tell to let players inside or outside know that a door has been opened.
14. Bullet caliber determines how well a bullet penetrates an object. The weaker the type of bullet, the less likely it is to successfully penetrate through an object. A stronger bullet like a .50 Cal will go through most materials like butter compared to a weaker-caliber bullet.
15. All weapons can be mounted onto any form of cover by pressing R3 or RS (on Xbox One).
16. If you mount a weapon on a horizontal form of cover, you can use the weapon like you would a turret — effortless left-to-right motion with heavily reduced recoil.
17. If you mount a weapon on a vertical form of cover, like a stack of boxes, you’ll lean into the object reducing how much of your hit box is open while granting your weapon reduced recoil.
18. Killstreaks have been brought back to make each life more meaningful in-game, according to the developers.
19. Your characters wristwatch shows the time of your console or PC.
20. Your character hand, arm and wristwatch is determined by the operator you choose.
21. Operators are not specialists — they are cosmetically-different characters.
22. You can customize your operator to have things like a gillie suit.
23. There are 30 to 60 attachments for every weapon in the game. The assault rifles have up to 60 attachments while smaller weapons like pistols might only have 30.
24. Active Idle is a feature built into the game that affects the way your character and gun idles. While idle, your characters arms and hands might shift, move and twitch as they would in real life. The gun will sway in the same way too.
25. Some optical attachments have what the developers called optical aberrations — it’s basically minimal magnification that shows while not aiming down sights. When you’re not aimed down sight, you will still be able to see that your scope has some magnification.
26. The faster you move, the farther away your gun gets from your eyes. The farther your gun is from your eyes, the longer it takes to aim down sights afterwards.
27. The gun will show bullet effects like smoke and gas leaving the chamber.
28. Bullets react differently based on what they hit. A bullet that hits metal will sound differently than a bullet that hits wood.
29. You can hear the hammer of the weapon drop before disconnecting. This is part of the game’s reimagined sound design for the series that serves to make the game more realistic, according to the developers.
30. On that same note, bullet shells drop from the chamber and you can hear it. Depending on the surface the bullet shell lands on, it might bounce and you’d hear that too.
31. There were over 90 channels of audio used for the game with 20 of those channels going to the player character sounds.
32. When hip firing, the gun will sound different to how it does when you aim down sights. When you aim down sights, the gun will sound closer to your face (because, well, it is).
33. Each gunshot packs its own unique sound based on where the bullet goes. For example, a bullet shot inside a cave will be significantly louder than a bullet shot in the open.
34. While no official details were given, the game director said there will be very high player counts but that we wouldn’t hear about that until a later date. Considering we played a round of domination with 18 players on our side, we imagine there’s a game mode in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with even more players on each side.
35. The game relies on a new engine to deliver what developers call an immersive and photo-realistic experience. This engine uses technology to allow photogrammetry, a new hybrid tile-based streaming system, world volumetric lighting, 4K HDR, DirectX Raytracing (on PC) and more.
36. The game will launch as Dolby Atmos capable for all supporting systems.
37. The game will feature Crossplay across PC, PS4 and Xbox One.