Don’t expect to see any zombies in a Modern Warfare game, now or ever.
Infinity Ward’s creative strategist Robert Bowling says that it won’t be taking inspiration from Treyarch’s Call of Duty games for Modern Warfare 3. Bowling says that what Treyarch has done with Call of Duty is great, but Infinity Ward has a different vision for the series.
“[Treyarch] do things that we would never do but have turned out fantastic – like their Zombie modes – and added new features to multiplayer that we would never add, just because they’re a different style,” he said. Bowling said that studios having very different takes on Call of Duty meant that Treyarch and Infinity Ward wasn’t “cannibalizing” each other’s work, and gamers weren’t getting the same game every year.
“Every developer has their own personality and their own direction, and more so than ever we’re seeing people who really enjoy this style and the other,” he added. “And it’s not a black and white, good and bad; they’re very different experiences but in the same core gameplay.”
Of course, not everything that Treyarch has done for – or to – the Call of Duty brand has been positive: Black Ops received a great deal of criticism for multiplayer problems on the PC and PS3. While Bowling didn’t think that the mistakes make by other developers necessarily had an adverse effect on Infinity Ward’s brand, he did admit that it did impact Infinity Ward’s thinking. “I think it’s important to make sure that as a whole we listen to feedback as a brand,” he explained. “When we go into development we’re making sure that we’re aware of what people want to see even if it wasn’t something that was in a game that we did.”
He added that questions about the PS3 and PC versions were some of the first that Infinity Ward had had to field, and that it was important to the studio that everyone got the same experience.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 comes out for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC on November 8th.
Source: Gamerzines via CVG