The third Season of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has arrived, bringing a host of new features, updates and bug fixes. These additions build on the foundations laid in Modern Warfare's second Season, adding new Operators, new maps, and new modes for the Warzone Battle Royale.
Modern Warfare is the sixteenth title in the legendary Call of Duty FPS series, the ninth from developers Infinity Ward, and the first reboot of the Modern Warfare sub-series that launched in the late 2000s. Since its own October 2019 launch, Modern Warfare has proven itself to be one of the best titles in the recent series, with an engaging single-player and fast-paced, well-rounded multiplayer modes.
What's New for Modern Warfare
While not the first game to embrace a Season-based release system, Modern Warfare certainly seems to be making the most of it, with huge changes coming with each new Season. Season 3 is no exception, and kicked off with a launch week that introduced three new maps, two new weapons, and another new Operator to Modern Warfare's multiplayer modes.
The first of the new maps, Talsik Backlot, may be familiar to fans of the original Modern Warfare title, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This is because its a recreation of the highly popular Backlot map from that title, and returns players once again to a multi-layered hive of middle-eastern streets and crumbling buildings.
The second map, Aniyah Incursion, is also heavily based on an existing terrain. In this case a small section of the Aniyah Palace Ground War map from Modern Warfare itself. Shrinking down the scale of Aniyah Palace, the new map allows players to bask in the opulence of the main palace in the standard 6v6 game mode.
The third new map, Hovec Sawmill, is an entirely new creation. Set in Kastovia, Modern Warfare's fictional Caucasian Republic, the map has a fairly-open village layout, with a handful of good sniper spots and overlooks. Like other maps set in Kastovia, player should expect ex-Soviet architecture, pine trees and wooden houses.
In addition to these maps, the Season 3 launch has also introduced a pair of new weapons. The SKS is a lightweight yet hard-hitting marksman's rifle, while the Renetti is an excellent and versatile 9mm semi-automatic pistol. Finally, the Season's launch also included new Operator Alex, a character from the Modern Warfare single-player campaign, now sporting a prosthetic leg.
What's New For Warzone
Absolutely the biggest addition to the Call of Duty franchise and Modern Warfare sub-series in Season 2 was Call of Duty: Warzone. A standalone title featuring limited cross-over with Modern Warfare, Warzone brought Battle Royale back to the Call of Duty series.
With its innovative respawn system and fresh take on looting, Warzone has made quite a splash in the world of Battle Royales. At launch, the title was limited to games with three-player squads only, with a time-limited mode for solo-play briefly on offer later. This has all changed with the launch of Season 3, which brings not only four-player squads to the main game mode, but also to Plunder, as well as making solo-mode a permanent addition.
Initially, the Season 3 update replaced Trios with Quads, but after two days of negative feedback from a community who didn't know why options were being arbitrarily limited, this decision was reversed. This means Warzone now offers three distinct modes for its main game, and two more for Plunder. In addition to these new modes, a number of bug fixes and balance changes have been implemented. These include a UI tracker to make sure squads know how close they are to each other, and a fix for the bug which stopped players being able to self-revive in Solo.
What's Coming Next
Although a lot has been added in the launch of Season 3, there is much more to come as the season progresses. Among the upcoming additions that have been announced so far are a pair of new Operators, Ronin and Iksra, and new game-modes Gun Game Reloaded and Ground War Reinfected.
There are also a couple of new maps on the way, a remake from a previous title and an entirely new creation. The first of these is Hardhat, which is a recreation of the popular map from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Set in a construction site, Hardhat is a claustrophobic map of choke-points and half-finished buildings, ideal for close-quarters combat.
The second map coming later in Season 3 will be Aisle 9, which is specific to the Gunfight game mode. There haven't been any details about Aisle 9 released so far, but as a Gunfight map it's likely to also be quite small, and we can guess from the name that it will be set in some kind of superstore.
While players are not expecting anything as groundbreaking as Warzone to arrive in the later months of Season 3, it's good to see that Infinity Ward is committed to keeping gameplay in the standard multiplayer modes fresh. Competitive FPS titles like Call of Duty live and die on the strength of their multiplayer game-play, and it'll take some time until we know whether Season 3 has been the fireworks display we were hoping for, or something of a damp squib.