Infinity Ward has finally peeled back the curtain on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, but the company isn’t ready to reveal much about the upcoming Warzone 2 battle royale just yet.
During a nearly 90-minute long closed-door presentation viewed by Dot Esports, multiple developers from Infinity Ward took the stage to talk about things like improvements to MWII, multiplayer map design philosophy, and campaign gameplay. One of the things they did not speak much about was the hotly anticipated new battle royale experience, currently called Warzone 2.
One of the bullet points during the showing was improved AI, including higher AI count that’s shared across game modes, including the presentation’s first mention of Warzone 2.
“That means putting [the new AI] in large-scale maps, large-scale environments, which includes what we’re kind of calling Warzone 2, I don’t know that the name’s been settled yet,” said Infinity Ward game director Jack O’Hara. “It’s the next Warzone experience, which is, this is another one of our tools that we’re using to make this the best Warzone experience that we’ve done in a long time. So we’re really excited for you to see it, but not right now.”
A press release from Activision did mention, however, that “a new Warzone 2.0 experience” will be “releasing this year,” so it appears that it’s currently scheduled to drop sometime during 2022 as of now.
Infinity Ward focused a good bit of its presentation on the new water that’s been designed for the games, including mechanics like swimming and diving. Water looks to be a crucial component of both multiplayer and Warzone, along with the campaign, including not just swimming but vehicular gameplay as well.
MWII and Warzone 2 are going to be a shared experience built from the ground up on the same exact engine, so when MWII releases on Oct. 28, players should get a good feel for what the battle royale will play and feel like once it releases someday down the line.
The developers also confirmed that RICOCHET Anti-Cheat will be available in Warzone 2 on day one, hopefully quelling an issue that’s plagued the original game from its inception.
