Although Activision Blizzard still doesn’t want to officially introduce this year’s Call of Duty to us (as it’s impossible to see the publisher skip a year with its franchise, which is why they rotate the IP between three dev teams, namely Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games, and this year’s dev, Infinity Ward), we can almost 100% say that after 2011, the Modern Warfare series will continue!

On LinkedIn, we can see at least five developers who were previously working with Infinity Ward, and they have returned. Examples? Mark Grigsby (animation director) worked on the first two Modern Warfare games; the same applies for Alex Roycewicz (game/level designer); Geoff Smith (multiplayer design director); and Joel Emslie (studio art director). Zied Rieke (an Infinity Ward founder) worked on all three Modern Warfare games, and now he works as the gameplay director for Infinity Ward.

Grigsby played a significant role in defining Call of Duty’s weapons – for example, he created the well-known knife melee attack in Modern Warfare. Roycewicz and Smith were behind some of the popular maps (for example, Overgrown, Wetwork) as designers; Emslie designed some popular characters (such as Ghost) and items (ghillie suit) in Call of Duty. Rieke? He designed the original team deathmatch spawn logic in the first Call of Duty, then the flashing regenerating HP system in the second one…

Aside from Rieke, everyone worked on Titanfall and Titanfall 2. Rieke (who was at Respawn at one point) founded Darwin Game Studio in 2012 before joining Naughty Dog in 2013, and then, he returned to Infinity Ward. The team is together, which is why it’s likely that Call of Duty might go back to the roots that made the franchise mainstream in 2007 with the first Modern Warfare.

If the traditions continue, then 2019’s Call of Duty will be officially named later this month, followed by the first gameplay around E3… and this year, it’s likely going to be shown during Sony’s State of Play stream, as Activision Blizzard and Sony have been in a partnership for Call of Duty’s DLC being timed exclusive (for a month) on PlayStation 4…

Source: GameSpot