Modern Warfare 3 had a rough launch, with mixed reviews and many long-time Call of Duty players reporting their dissatisfaction with the new game’s release. Now that Activision’s game has been out in the wild for a little while, the shooter has received various updates and has seen its first season go live. The new CoD game is now in the limelight once more after The Game Awards 2023 event saw Kratos’ voice actor from God of War crack a joke regarding MW3 and its campaign length.
During the showcase, voice actor Christopher Judge took the stage to present Neil Newbon with his award for Best Performance this year. It’s during this part of The Game Awards that Judge, Kratos’ iconic voice, jokingly implied that Modern Warfare 3 had a shorter campaign story than his 2022 speech at last year’s ceremony event.
“No eight-minute speech like last year,” Judge said, bringing up his award speech from the previous TGAs event and then the recent CoD FPS game. “My speech was actually longer than this year’s Call of Duty campaign.” While few audience members awkwardly laughed, cameras panned over many looking markedly surprised to hear the joke that came seemingly out of the blue.
Previous CoD developers such as Infinity Ward’s former Ajinkya Limaye quickly responded, with Limaye saying that metrics showing how “CoD absolutely destroys all of the God of War games” are “equally laughable.” Most notably, Sledgehammer Games software engineer Darcy Sandall, who actively works on Modern Warfare 3, left a reply to the TGAs’ joke saying “as CoD developers, we’ve heard way worse.”
The developer’s post continues, as Sandall says that despite frequently heard comments or jokes about CoD, the team doesn’t expect to get them “from a peer, at an event that’s supposed to be celebrating this year’s achievements in gaming.” Sandall then refers to how MW3 leaked pre-launch, saying, “Especially with all the information that was leaked about its development.”
Our own Modern Warfare 3 review dives deeper into where the game fell and failed to deliver in terms of its content and performance, but this doesn’t discount how much work the developers likely put into the highly anticipated new CoD shooter. As Sandall notes in a follow-up post, the joke from Judge “would have been such a perfect moment to lead into a comment about the chronic overworking, brutal deadlines, and ruthless layoffs.”
Christopher Judge hasn’t left a response to any of the Twitter posts or other comments himself just yet. Right now, Modern Warfare 3 is still struggling with mostly negative reviews on Steam with a 5/10 on Valve’s platform. According to Bloomberg, the latest CoD was originally planned as an MW2 expansion rather than a standalone game, with a reportedly “rushed” development and a campaign allegedly crafted in 16 months.
If you want to check out the recent Call of Duty’s new content yourself, be sure to browse through our rundown on the latest Modern Warfare 3 Battle Pass and what doors it opens for you in-game. Alternatively, check out our in-depth guide explaining how MW3 Zombies gameplay works, and what you can do to best ensure your survival while playing.
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