Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 devs had military advisors help during the story writing process

It turns out that the writing behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023)’s campaign was supported by a team of real military advisors, who were able to explain to the developers at Sledgehammer Games how planned in-game scenarios would be carried out in real life. 

In an interview with The Guardian, creative director Dave Swenson spoke about this process, and how it impacted the missions that fans have seen in already-revealed footage of the upcoming title.

“When we were talking about that level, we sat down with these advisors and we said, ‘OK, if you’re going to break into the Gulag, how do you do that?’” Swenson said, referring to the first campaign level which was shown during Gamescom 2023’s Opening Night Live. “And they were like: ‘Well, we’d probably have a team that would go in via submarine and they would climb the outside. But it wouldn’t be just one team. We’d always have a backup. We’d probably send them via parachutes.’ And we’re like: ‘This is cool. This sounds like a Call of Duty level!’”

This isn’t the first time that Sledgehammer Games called on the help of military advisors for a game - the studio previously did the exact same thing during the development of 2014’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, as was revealed in a different interview with The Guardian at the time.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is set to release on November 10 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC, but fans will be able to access the campaign up to one week early if they pre-order a digital version of the game.

For more games like Call of Duty, be sure to take a look at our list of the best FPS games available to play now. You can also keep an eye on the rest of 2023’s releases with our roundup of upcoming games.