Extra action.
In yet another surprising move for Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 4 studio Infinity Ward has announced that the game's extraction shooter mode, DMZ, will be released prior to the game's official launch. DMZ will be available starting 20th October for players who pre-order a copy digitally.
Modern Warfare 4 now effectively has three release dates. The campaign unlocks 16th October, DMZ four days later on the 20th, and the full launch - which is when multiplayer will be playable - arrives 23rd October.
Though Infinity Ward has offered campaign early access with other Modern Warfare titles in the past, doing the same for DMZ - a multiplayer mode - is certainly new. It's a potentially shrewd move, allowing DMZ to capture streamers and generate excitement about the game ahead of its release over an entire week, with a big blip every few days. It also allows players curious about DMZ to play it without feeling they ought to be making progress in multiplayer instead.
Seeing as DMZ has its own separate progression, however, players who jump in early could potentially have an advantage come launch if they manage to accrue many items, not to mention the map knowledge they would get from simply spending more time playing.
Separately, Infinity Ward hosted a Reddit Q&A focusing on DMZ, and the question of a PvE-only playlist came up. If you're unfamiliar, a recent first-look gameplay video showed an option for Single Squad Mission in DMZ, which players took to mean a mode free from other players. However, the option disappeared in a follow-up trailer, leading to confusion. So what's going on there? Infinity Ward has an explanation, albeit an unconvincing one.
"The playlist you saw is a developer playlist that was never intended to be for public use, it lets our team load into a match alone to work," the developer answered. "In the shipping game, players choose to be solo by turning off squad fill, but it's not guaranteed to be only solos in that lobby."
I'm not convinced. Though it's obviously possible for Single Squad to be a dev-only mode, they typically don't require bespoke icons. It's also curious that Infinity Ward didn't blur the image to cover that bit of it, which is commonly done in these sorts of behind-the-scenes videos of gameplay footage, whenever the camera captures something we're not supposed to see.
Modern Warfare 4 officially launches 23rd October on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Switch 2.
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