Infinity War’s reimagining of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (which it specified is not a sequel, but a fresh look at war today), published by Activision, is scarily brutal. And that’s because behind every turn, the next terrorist you turn to kill may actually be a civilian. When an enemy isn’t wearing a uniform, how do you tell them apart?
The scene I saw, which is early in the game and was from footage on a PlayStation 4 Pro, followed a terror attack in the Piccadilly Circus area of London in October 2019. Captain Price and Sergeant Kyle Garrick are closing in on a suspicious van. The meeting took place in a small theater here at E3 without photography or video allowed.
Garrick gets the call, jumps out of the van and is aiming through the crowd with his pistol when a truck explodes and knocks him out.
The attack is tracked to a townhouse in North London by an attacker code-named "The Wolf." Garrick is warned, there may be non-combatants in the house.
Days later, we see them break into the gate. Garrick aims into a window, another team is coming through an alley. They silently reach the back door.
Garrick puts up a ladder and climbs to the second floor, into the kitchen where he meets another team. They take a woman, silence her and pin her to the floor. She had left the kettle on.
Garrick looks into a room with people, shoots out the light and attacks enemies who wield guns with night vision. More soldiers come through the front door and they all go upstairs.
They open a door and peek in, see a man choking a woman. They shoot him, then she grabs a gun and attacks. Garrick kills her, too. Bullets come through another door, and Garrick shoots through the wall to kill another bad guy.
He picks up a shotgun to go with his AK-47. Bravo 6 moves to the second floor, again eyeing a door. There’s a bump, then bullets ring out. Garrick shoots through the drywall and throws a grenade, taking out the enemy, then another who races from around a corner. A third comes in from behind him and takes a bullet to the neck.
We see a soldier dragging a comrade’s body down the hallway. The rest head to the third floor. There are toys. A child lives here.
A woman grabs a baby from her crib and begs for mercy, and Garrick turns around, ordering a soldier to help her and shut the kid up. He shoots an enemy under a bed in the next room.
A woman in the attic begs not to be shot. “They were going to kill me,” she says, as she runs for a desk with a weapon.Garrick’s fellow soldier shoots her.
They find she was going for a detonator. And Price says they have the Wolf’s location.Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
releases October 25 on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
The game draws an interesting moral line in the sand, but we didn't see nearly enough gameplay to make judgment on quality. It did, however, look amazing on a PS4 Pro with sharp, sometimes lifelike graphics.
