Modern Warfare 4 will fix something players hated years ago

Infinity Ward has admitted that movement didn’t feel quite right in the studio’s last Call of Duty game. As a result, Infinity Ward is trying to fix this in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

Developers confirm this in the latest episode of From the Ward, a behind-the-scenes YouTube documentary about the development of Modern Warfare 4. Around two and a half minutes into the video, Infinity Ward co-studio head Mark Grigsby directly addresses the negative feedback the studio received on movement in 2022’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and how that impacted the development of Infinity Ward’s next game.

“We got kind of dinged on Modern Warfare 2 with our movement, where we took some things away, some freedom,” Grigsby recalled. “People were like, ‘Oh man, I can’t do this. This doesn’t feel good. The movement’s terrible.’ For this project, we were like, ‘We need to make some adjustments.'”

Jack O’Hara, the other co-studio head at Infinity Ward, then highlighted some of the movement features that have made their way into Modern Warfare 4. These include mantling from a slide and sliding into a supine position. The blog post released alongside the new Call of Duty’s announcement teases additional tweaks to climbing, hanging, and jumping.

We’ll need to go hands-on with the game before we can truly tell how different it feels. Still, these improvements are welcome. Modern Warfare titles this decade have felt less fun than recent Black Ops games, which use what Activision calls Omnimovement. While the intention is for Modern Warfare games to still have grounded-feeling movement, taking some notes on fluidity from Omnimovement isn’t a bad move.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will be released on Oct. 23 for Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X. As usual, a free open beta will take place before launch, so those who didn’t like Modern Warfare 2’s movement will be able to see what’s changed before deciding whether to buy this new game.