Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Engine Focused on Gameplay

There are many new features that will make Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 a worthy upgrade after two years of Modern Warfare 2. For one thing, it'll have full integration with the comprehensive Call of Duty Elite service

For gamers who love the first two Modern Warfare games, this third entry will feature even more polish on every facet of the game. Infinity Ward has hired talent from unlikely places to improve upon single aspects of Modern Warfare 3.

To improve upon the animations, for example, the company recruited the help of a Hollywood CGI animator who worked on the models used in movies such as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the Animatrix and Beowulf. For online level progression, Infinity Ward looked to the MMO talent pool to find a specialist.

Infinity Ward's executive producer Mark Rubin told an audience at a roundtable discussion at Call of Duty XP that the developer's focus is on gameplay technology. The developers have been further fine-tuning the sensitivity and acceleration of the thumbsticks for the console versions of the game.

For PC gamers, the good news is that dedicated servers are back. What won't make some PC gamers as happy is that Modern Warfare 3 likely won't be a showcase for the latest and most powerful video cards.

We asked Rubin if Modern Warfare 3 featured any significant changes over the engine used to power Call of Duty: Black Ops.

"There have been significant changes," he replied. "But the types of changes that we do are more on gameplay than on technology. We are not focusing on changes that have fancy names such as 'full screen ambient occlusion'. The changes we do can't be easily labeled. All our tech is gameplay-oriented."

We pressed for more information, such as if Modern Warfare 3 would take advantage of new graphic technologies such as those afforded by DirectX 11.

"We are still looking at things like DX11," Rubin answered. "It's one of the things our team is looking at, but our focus is all about gameplay, not about technology. We want it to be more about fun than anything else."

PC gamers who play Modern Warfare 3, DX11 effects or not, will still get a better visual experience than those on console thanks to high resolution textures.

As for PC platform-specific support for things such as Eyefinity and 3D Vision, Rubin said that those features are still undecided, but is something it is working on with AMD and Nvidia.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • TeKEffect
    " The changes we do can't be easily labeled"
    that made me laugh
    Reply
  • Same engine from cod4 and they've made how many games out of it. These guys must have more cash than saudi arabia
    Reply
  • amk-aka-Phantom
    In other words, they're making excuses for outdated graphics. I hope that at least gameplay will be fun. Out of three CoD games - MW1, MW2 and BO - MW2 was good, MW1 was okay, BO was meh. I can disregard outdated graphics if the story and gameplay are great, but if they suck, you better give me Crysis-level graphics to make me buy such a game.
    Reply
  • Translation: We couldn't match Battlefield 3's graphics, so we'll spin it as if that's a good thing.
    Reply
  • alidan
    TeKEffect" The changes we do can't be easily labeled"that made me laugh
    from the sound of it, the changes are things like tweaking run speed with x gun, or jumping with a pistol out apposed to an assault riffle.

    i just hope that all game focus on gameplay over graphics.
    Reply
  • _Pez_
    This Article should be titled as "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Engine Focused on gameconsole" He says that they are focused on "gameplay" not about technology.. well this means that the product has a poor reputation and mediocre graphics work done on it based on old tech just like apple. Maybe I had high hopes on this title.
    Reply
  • atminside
    "We are still looking at things like DX11," Rubin answered. "It's one of the things our team is looking at, but our focus is all about gameplay, not about technology. We want it to be more about fun than anything else."

    WTF really?? It is all about game play and not technology??? What a moron. But in all honesty I can say I am not surprised at this considering this is coming from an a$$ hole who cares more about making money rather than making a well rounded game. I am sure glad i don't own a console to be tempted into buying the crap. BF3 FTW!!!!!
    Reply
  • fb39ca4
    Well, for console versions, at least, I'm glad the graphics aren't too good. I hate playing anything at less than 60fps without motion blur which I doubt is in BF3.
    Reply
  • AbdullahG
    This is the one of the things that concerns me as a PC gamer: we are not getting the most out of our hardware because of the game. I know PC gaming isn't all about the eye candy and is more about the freedom and choices we are given compared to consoles, but if you drop over a grand on a gaming PC, you want your games to look pretty AND have great gameplay. The same issue was with Crysis 2. I found the game fun, but I expected such a PC-based franchise to give us the best they can to PC gamers. Instead, we got DX9 and a game that did not live up to the reputation that was established by the first game. CoD isn't giving the most that there is to offer to PC gamers. Some franchises/developers such as the Battlefield franchise have their games for consoles, but they don't leave PC gamers in the dust. We still get DX11 and fun gameplay. Some franchises/developers may not offer DX11, but they offer more to us PC gamers than console gamers(look at Valve; we get Counter Strike, extras in TF2, and Steam). If only CoD could follow the same path as these franchises/developers, they would be as appealing to the PC gaming audience as BF3 or others of that path.
    Reply
  • ...!!!!
    Frostbite 3 FTW
    Reply