Infinity Ward: There was no way we were going to do Modern Warfare 4

Infinity Ward had decided it wasn’t going to develop another game in the Modern Warfare series as soon as it wrapped up development on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, community manager Tina Palacios has told VideoGamer.com.

Speaking to us this week about the decision to develop a new sub-brand in the Call of Duty series with Call of Duty: Ghosts, Palacios revealed that, “After Modern Warfare 3 ended, we already knew from the beginning that we didn’t want to do another one. There was no way we were going to do another one. We wanted to go in a new direction.”

Palacios explained that Ghosts offered Infinity Ward the opportunity to “craft a story that gave players an origin synopsis into why you want to care about these characters.

“We never did with any characters in Modern Warfare,” she continues, “they were standalone in the moment, and we wanted to have players feel like they could connect to Hesh and Logan and the Ghost squad.”

Though Palacios chose not to discuss exactly why Infinity Ward felt the need to drop Modern Warfare, she suggests that moving to a new location following the mass exodus suffered by the developer in 2010 helped give it a fresh start.

“I feel like it’s not necessarily the game that gave us that sense [of a fresh start], it’s more of moving into a new studio. It’s a unique situation to be in for any studio because for us making Ghosts, not only are we putting our heart and soul into the game but we’re still really close friends with other developers. I think what we’re trying to do is create a game without anything else holding us back. We really just want to focus on creating an experience that’s new and fresh for us because ultimately if we don’t enjoy what we’re doing we’re not going to be there.

“So yeah, our main focus is just making sure that we ourselves would go home and play Ghosts without thinking of anything else on the side.”

Infinity Ward created the original Call of Duty and 2007 modern day reboot Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. However, the studio lost multiple staff soon after Modern Warfare 2‘s completion in 2009, including studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West.

But even though Infinity Ward has decided to back away from Modern Warfare, the series may still be alive elsewhere.

Sledgehammer Games, which created Modern Warfare 3 in collaboration with Infinity Ward, is rumoured to be developing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 for release next year.

Call of Duty: Ghosts releases on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and Wii U on November 5, with an Xbox One version to follow on November 22 and PlayStation 4 on November 29.