Having set the standard for the World War II shooter with 2003's Call of Duty, then delivering a well received sequel two years later, Infinity Ward is returning to the franchise it created, but leaving its time-tested setting behind. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare eschews the war that has served as the foundation for so many video game; instead, the game has been furnished with an original storyline set in the modern day and revolving around factions based out of Russia and the Middle East.

Revolving around Zakhaev, a Russian nationalist in the Stalin mold, and Al-Asad, his Middle Eastern warlord ally--who, along with their respective henchmen, make up the game's main antagonists, the "Four Horsemen"--Call of Duty 4 is not based on any specific conflicts going on in the real world but is clearly inspired in part by the political atmosphere of the present day.

"We're trying to be sensitive to the fact that there are events in the world that we don't want to try and portray verbatim," single-player lead designer Steve Fukuda said to me during a recent trip to Infinity Ward's Encino, California offices. "We don't want to allude to them and then say, 'Hey, we're creating that right now.' I think that would be a little tasteless."

"Before, when we came to World War II, we had this ready-made package--Adolf Hitler and the Nazi war machine," Fukuda continued, touching on the new experience of crafting a non-historical narrative. "We don't have that now, so we have to come up with one on our own. At the same time, we have these mandates among ourselves that we want to have this technology or that technology--you saw the Javelin [anti-tank missile] and the AC-130 [gunship]. How do we bring all of this together? The only way we could really do that, while keeping the game exciting, and keeping it spiking up and down in terms of pacing, was to create our own backstory and our own characters."

Why Russia and the Middle East? As co-studio head Grant Collier explained, the Call of Duty feel has always been about two powerful sides locked in a see-saw-like battle, with one side--the player's--pushing forward bit by bit. The traditional modern concept of guerrilla desert fighting simply doesn't fit that mold, but a fictional alliance between two leaders of powerful factions could.

During a demo of the game being played by Fukuda, Collier showcased some of the impressive visual fidelity to be seen in Call of Duty 4--highly detailed foliage complete with fluttering butterflies in lush areas, particle-based clouds, a subtle depth of field effect when peering through a zoomed sniper scope, and convincingly flowing water ("This is our streaming technology," announced Collier, to a round of groans from those in the room). Also of note is the new real-time daylight system, which simulates a variety of factors relating to the time of day, and can be manipulated by the designers at any given moment. Collier pointed to several attractive setups--morning, mid-day, dusk, and so on.

Most impressive among the game's graphical increases is the level of detail present in character models. Character textures maintain a remarkably high amount of detail even when significantly close, and the cloth textures--an important part of a character model that represents a pouch-laden modern soldier--in particular deserve special mention for being rendered uncommonly well. Art lead Michael Boon noted that the team made a strong effort to avoid falling back into the all-too-common greasy look that tends to crop up in realistically rendered current games.

Call of Duty 4 has missions set throughout the world, and even in some cases across different time periods. With its first foray into original storytelling, Infinity Ward is hoping to create a rich and varied campaign. For the most part, players will switch between two main protagonists, but there are numerous plot elements that are conveyed by the player actually taking on a role of a more minor character. In one case, in what is apparently one of the game's shortest levels, the player actually takes on the role of an enemy who, as part of the story, dies about ten minutes after the player takes control.

Several levels from the game's campaign were shown, including a nighttime raid on a large ship, an assault on one of Al-Asad's coastal encampments orchestrated by a dozen-strong helicopter force, infantry combat on brutally open desert terrain, and dark, chaotic fighting in the corridors of a heavily wrecked city.

The clear centerpiece of the demonstrated levels was the AC-130 gunship level, as introduced by longtime Call of Duty military advisor and decorated retired Lieutenant Colonel Hank Keirsey, which puts the player in the role of a gunner manning the impressively destructive power mounted on the heavily-armed craft in order to take out enemy personnel surrounding a church--but not to harm the church itself. The largely point-and-shoot level is both extremely visceral in the sheer destructive power afforded to the player as well as somewhat eerie and ethereal in the muted, disconnected way the player is raining death upon tiny enemies far below. Well-implemented in-game post-processing effects create the ruggedly high-tech look of observing the targets through electronic surveillance equipment rather than the naked eye, adding a further layer of abstraction to the already indirect rain of fire.

Todd Alderman's multiplayer team from Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2 has been assembled once more to create Call of Duty 4's multiplayer, but this time around the team has focused entirely on multiplayer, rather than having to split its time between single-player and multiplayer as in Infinity Ward's past games. "We're extremely excited about the multiplayer," said Alderman. "I can't emphasize enough."

Modern Combat's multiplayer mode features an experience-based system with unlockable equipment that essentially allows players to create their own classes. While every player has access to several preset class roles, such as assault, heavy, special ops, and so on, players who have accrued enough experience from racking up kills and achieving objectives will be able to customize their primary weapon, sidearm, and grenades to create classes tuned to their own styles. The team was sure to note that the preset classes were configured with the same system used for custom classes, so there is no actual disadvantage to using the preset classes.

In addition to the equipment loadout, players may assign up to three perks. These perks allow players to simply increase stats such as health, operate special equipment such as GPS jammers, or perform special abilities such as a last-ditch near-death attack that allows the player to whip out his pistol for a chance to damage or kill his assailant. Players who pull off impressive feats during a game, such as completing a seven-kill streak, will also be able to call forth one-off abilities such as ordering in a helicopter strike.

As a nod to the PC mod community, Infinity Ward is including out of the box increased realism modes, which make such tweaks as significantly increased damage and the removal of the HUD, which should save some time and effort for the players who would be releasing such mods anyway.

There will be a demo of Call of Duty 4, though a date was not given.

Following the live demonstration of the game, I sat down with single-player lead designer Steve Fukuda to get a sense of what went into crafting the game's narrative component and what Infinity Ward's goals with that side of the game are. Continue to the next page for that segment.