What you need to know
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, developed by Sledgehammer Games and published by Activision, is set to launch on November 10.
- Sledgehammer Games shared a new intel drop to show off a new feature coming to the gunsmith: aftermarket parts.
- An early look at Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer will be released on October 3 along. The 2023 Call of Duty: Next showcase is scheduled for October 5.
The launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is just barely more than a month away. Developers from Sledgehammer Games, along with publisher Activision, have begun to share bits of information about multiplayer. The latest intel drop for Modern Warfare 3 brought attention to the changes players can expect in the Gunsmith, including all new Aftermarket Parts.
Players of Modern Warfare 2 or Warzone are likely already familiar with the gunsmith. Previously known as Create-a-Class, the gunsmith has undergone a variety of changes with modern iterations of the now 20-year-old franchise. Modern Warfare 2 ushered in an era where players could kit out their favorite weapons while fine-tuning attachments.
“Think of them as remixes for the guns,” says Sledgehammer Games’ systems designer Nick Carraro. “It’s a way for players to come back to a weapon that they may have already mastered or played out, and it’s going to give them an entirely new dimension to interact with the gun in a way that regular attachments can’t.”
“They’re nearly a new gun.” adds design director Zach Hodson.
For the first time in Call of Duty history, weapons as well as blueprints, operator bundles, and mastery challenges will cross over between two premium editions of the game in a new feature known as Carry Forward. Players who have put hundreds of hours into unlocking gold, platinum, polyatomic, and orion mastery camos along with other challenges in Modern Warfare 2 will still be able to utilize those camos and mastery rewards as well as their corresponding weapons in Modern Warfare 3.
The downside to the Carry Forward policy, is a lack of new reasons to play with your favorite weapons in the newest version of the game. Aftermarket Parts will change this by giving players a reason to go back even after earning weapon mastery.
An early look at conversion kits
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Modern Warfare 3’s new aftermarket parts feature will allow players to unlock new conversion kits once a weapon reaches max level. There will be several to choose from when Modern Warfare 3 launches, though players will need to complete in-game challenges to obtain them. Conversion kits can open up a player’s weapon to all new attachments that were previously gated away from use, but they can also change a weapon so fundamentally that previously available attachments no longer work.
Sledgehammer Games provided a look at 3 Aftermarket Parts loadouts ahead of the multiplayer reveal. The first example of a conversion kit featured the Pulemyot LMG, a belt-fed machine gun that is a heavy behemoth with limited mobility. The Pulemyot can be converted with a Bullpup kit, which increases mobility and handling, allowing the LMG to become more run and gun friendly without the player having to sacrifice ammo.
Sledgehammer Games also showed off an all-new conversion to the Renetti Handgun, turning it into a handheld full-auto carbine. The conversion kit opens up Tactical Stance, an attachment previously unavailable to the Renetti, via 3D printing which makes the pistol more SMG-like. Similarly, the WSP Swarmwith Akimbo Brace Stocks can be unlocked via a weekly challenge during the preseason and equipped to allow the player to use the WSP Swarm as a deadly pair of akimbos. Fine tune to improve accuracy and add a Suppressor to ramp up your stealth plays.
A balancing nightmare?
Call of Duty has a long, sordid history with “meta” builds: unbalanced weapons that allow players to easily one-shot snipe an enemy from across the map with an akimbo shotgun. There’s some genuine concern to be had over how these new aftermarket parts are going to shake up gunplay metas to a point that Sledgehammer Games will never be able to balance them fairly. Let’s hope the support team is on standby post launch to fix the imbalance that these new kits are going to inevitably throw into the mix.
