Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Campaign Missions Walkthrough Overview

Editors Note: Activision Publishing Inc. provided us with travel and lodging to visit Infinity Ward studio for a preview event.

After looking at that trailer, you may have seen something particular about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare — how realistic this Call of Duty game is. In fact, it’s the realest Call of Duty game we’ve ever had — and that was Infinity Ward’s full intention going into making Modern Warfare. If you thought No Russian was the worst they’ve done, this game matches that level of intensity in many aspects. 

During a studio visit last week at Infinity Ward, the team showed us campaign gameplay from two separate missions showcasing some of the story and how the game looks. 

Everything we saw was shown in-game on PlayStation 4 (this was made very clear, it’s PS4 gameplay in-game), and the graphics are the best we’ve seen in Call of Duty yet. 

Here’s an overview of the missions shown: 

London / Navy SEAL Raid Mission: 

The first campaign mission took place in October 2019 in London. (Yes, this game is literally a modern game, set in the current year.) The mission started off in the streets of London, as a British Police Officer is approaching a suspicious vehicle. Two individuals come running out of the vehicle and the officers start yelling at them to stop moving. As the officers and individuals get closer, the vehicle that dropped them off slaps the accelerator forward and the car blows up — leading to a major attack. 

The screen shifts to a debrief on the attack about what happened there, and it starts discussing the locations of where the attackers who planned it could be hiding. The demo then picks up with a Navy SEAL team about to breach a house. We are following and playing as a Navy Seal. 

The mission takes place in October 20, 2019. 

The SEAL team starts to breach the house through a back gate that is open. There is a team at the front too, but we follow the back door team as they enter this house. 

They start to approach the house with NVG off, but as they enter the house turn on their NVG. On the first floor, they approach a dining room that has three individuals. At this point, your character shoots the lights to dim the whole place. Then, the SEALs move in to take out all three suspects in the room with a silenced weapon. A women in the room runs for a gun but is shot down before she can fire it. The front door opens and the second SEAL team enters. 

They then move floor by floor to clear out all of the suspects. As the move up to the second floor, they approach a room and break down the door.

On the second floor, they approach cautiously to a room in their sights. As they are about to breach, someone inside fires multiple rounds towards them through the door. Your character goes full prone and starts shooting right back. The breach the room and ensure the suspect is down. They hear someone in the bathroom hiding and the suspect starts to fire through the walls. Your character falls to the ground again and then starts getting up slowly as he fires through the wall to take out the enemy. You then open the door and see the enemy dead with blood splattered across the bathroom. 

On the third floor, this is where the mission gets a little more dramatic. You breach into a room and look to your left to a baby yelling and crying. You see the mom start to slowly back up towards the baby, and the SEALs are yelling at her to stop moving because they fear she has a gun. A SEAL soldier runs towards the mom and was able to get to her before she could get any weapon. (Side note: I honestly thought they were about to shoot the mom with how the mission was going along, but they did not). Another soldier says “silence the baby” as he would not stop crying. The SEALs move towards a side bedroom on this floor and there’s a suspect hiding, leaning over the wall with a weapon about to fire. You take cover. The suspect lunges underneath a bed, but the SEAL spots the movement and fires at him before he can make another move. They then move towards the highest floor of the house.

On the highest floor, they breach a room where and see a woman who is attempting to access some data. They start to approach her and yell at her to stop moving or they’ll shoot. The woman still keeps tip-toeing backwards and as she reaches for something, the SEAL shoots her multiple times. You see on the desk that she was going to grab a hammer to use as a weapon. Once you take out this woman at the top floor, the mission enters a quick debrief and ends. 

For this mission, the entire house was recreated 1:1 from a real set to in-game with each floor have different targets and different suspect locations. Infinity Ward confirmed that there is more  of these “1:1” breach style missions in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. 

Flashback Mission 

The second mission we were shown was a flashback mission that gives us a look as to why two rebel fighters that are part of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare became rebel fighters. These fighters will connect with Captain Price throughout the Modern Warfare story (they did not show us this, but mentioned it to us), but this specific mission features a look 20 years ago as to the story behind the motivation for these rebel fights. 

As a note: this part of the demo shown to us, including cut scenes and gameplay, was from the daughter’s perspective.

The scene starts off with a big explosion in a country in the Middle East. After the explosion occurs, we are taken into the perspective of a female child who is stuck under all of the rubble caused by the explosion. The explosion was a drone strike (by I believe Russia). She is panicking and yelling for help. Another girl is stuck next to her but unresponsive. She tries to push around the fallen rocks and cement slabs off of her, but she is too small. We then hear someone come from above them and remove the rubble to see the girl stuck in there. Frantically, many more people come to remove the remaining rubble (even using a saw at one point). Once it’s removed, they pull the girl out, and she goes to her father’s hand, who starts asking where is her brother. The other girl with her in the rubble does not appear to survive. Now, another airstrike drops on the location.

The father picks up the girl and they both start running to find where her brother is. The sister says the brother stayed at home to study, so he wasn’t with her. They have to get back home to find the brother, but during the run back, Russian soldiers come in on vehicles, jump out of the vehicles, and just start shooting everyone — you can hear women, children screaming not to be shot; men and women yelling in pain. The father puts the kid down and tells her to follow behind him. As they start running and getting closer to their house, the Russian soldiers throw some sort of nerve/lethal gas. They bust inside their house, shut the door, and find the brother. They converse about what they must to do next (and the girl/boy are given cell phones). The father reveals that their mother has been killed. The father hands the boy a gas mask, tells him that the daughter will be okay without a mask right now, and prepare to leave. 

A Russian soldier is ordered to check door to door and comes into their house before they can leave. The father pleads with him not to shoot because there are children in the house. The father then lunges towards the attacker to take the weapon away and stab him. The little boy tries to help the father take down the attacker, but the attacker throws the boy into the door, knocking him out. The Russian soldier is a lot stronger and shoots the father numerous times — in front of the daughter. The daughter runs for her cover. The soldier starts to search for her around the house, and she starts to run into vents. This begins a little cat and mouse style chase. She picks up a screwdriver, runs at him, stabs him in the leg. He yells. The girl runs again, back for cover as the attacker is not subdued. They go around in this cat and mouse style chase for two more times with the girl stabbing him repeatedly in the legs with a screwdriver, and then, the brother wakes up. The action movies to the kitchen of the house, where a fight ensues again. The daughter stabs this attacker, alongside the brother trying to choke him out. As the man is brought down, the daughter finally gets a hold of the AK of the attacker and shoots him numerous times. The brother and sister converse about what they need to do, and the girl takes off the attacker’s gas mask to use for herself.  

Now, the two kids walk over to their father — with tears shown on the screen. The father is on his last breathe, telling the kids they must do anything they have to in order to survive. He then dies. 

The two kids decide to leave the house, both wearing gas masks. The girl gets on the boy’s foot to use as a pedestal to break the door’s jammed lock. It now turns into a stealth style mission.  

The two kids have to get across a long area where Russian soldiers are standing around, laughing at and murdering the civilians on the streets. As they are walking, you can hear the solider say that they are “rounding up” some of the women and children to take away, but then says that the women in front of him is too beaten up. You then hear gun shots. 

Then, a civilian who is injured sees the boy and grabs his mask, which momentarily falls off, begging for help. The kids both stumble over this man and keep running (the injured civilian chokes to death on the nerve gas), but the boy’s mask being off for a second causes him to start coughing due to the gas. The kids continue to run until they are out of the gas-filled area. They both take off their gas masks and start to search for a way to escape. They come up on a small village area and witness more soldiers killing civilians. The kids run through a shed as bullets fly over their head and you hear civilians yelling.  

They come up on another area not too far where they see a truck they need to take in order to get out. Since the boy is coughing, the girl says she will grab a gun and kill them both but needs a distraction. The boy walks to the other side of this fence, while the girl starts to slowly go closer. She sees a gun on the table, a .44 Magnum, and needs a distraction to get it. She pulls out her phone and calls her brother’s phone, which leads the two Russian soldier to investigate that ringing. The girl runs over and grabs the weapon, and starts to make her way into a position to shoot the Russian solider. She pulls up the gun, shaking a lot, and points it at the head of the attacker. We hear a *bang* and the screen goes black. 

That’s all they were willing to show us of that flashback for our event. 

These two campaign missions set up the direction Infinity Ward seems to be wanting to go with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. 

There’s a lot there, and you can check out my impressions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Campaign in a new post here.

For more of our coverage on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, check out our page for all the news we’ve posted here.