A former Call of Duty developer has added to the current wave of rumours suggesting that this year’s COD will be Modern Warfare 4. Replying on Twitter to a fan who declared their intention to defecate if this were to transpire, the developer said “you better buy some brown pants” (via Dexerto).
That developer was Robert Bowling, former creative strategist and community manager at Infinity Ward. As COD fans will know, that’s the studio which created the Modern Warfare sub-brand, and revolutionised the shooter genre with its first entry back in 2007.
We’re in the midst of a wave of Modern Warfare 4 rumours, thanks to four American football players who said on Instagram that they had played this year’s Call of Duty at a private preview event (via All Games Delta). A fan then slowed down the footage they posted, claiming to hear the words “killstreaks” and “Modern Warfare 4”, though the audio is far from clear.
Here’s the video – see what you think:
It’s also possibly notable that, in Eurogamer’s coverage of that story, reading the first word of the first four paragraphs spells out ‘Modern Warfare 4’, though there’s no reason to think this is anything more than a cheeky nod to the rumours. Bowling clearly thinks they’re credible, and as he likely still has connections with Infinity Ward – whose turn it is to release the next COD – he’s in a position to know.
Related: check out the best FPS games on PC
This just adds to a pre-existing body of Modern Warfare 4 rumours. In a February earnings call, Activision-Blizzard confirmed that COD 2019 is “rooted in some of the franchise’s most important history” and will have a single-player campaign (via PC Gamer). Earlier this year, Infinity Ward’s communications manager was regularly tweeting mysterious, macabre imagery which some took as a hint that COD 2019 would be a sequel to 2013’s Ghosts, until Kotaku’s well-connected Jason Schreier quashed that idea.
It seems pretty unlikely that Infinity Ward would launch a new sub-series given the hostile reception to its last effort, 2016’s Infinite Warfare, and those comments about the franchise’s history. So while we still haven’t heard anything official, Modern Warfare 4 is looking like an increasingly safe bet. The annual COD is typically revealed well ahead of E3, so we shouldn’t have much longer to wait either way.