What you need to know
- Call of Duty has partnered with Legendary Entertainment to bring Dune: Part Two to Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone.
- Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet, will be available now as a playable operator bundle in the in-game Call of Duty store.
- Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, played by Austin Butler, will be available as a playable operator bundle in the in-game store on December 16.
If you’ve ever wanted to play as Timothée Chalamet in Call of Duty, today is your lucky day. Legendary Entertainment has partnered with Activision to license two characters from Dune: part Two as playable Operators in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone. The first operator bundle, centered around the character Paul Atreides from Dune, is available now. The second, featuring Dune’s Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, will be available on December 16.
Both operators are portrayed in game by the same actors who brought them to life on the big screen. Players who purchase one or both of the new bundles can slide cancel and bunny hop their way across Warzone’s new map, Urzikstan, as Timothée Chalamet (as Paul Atreides) or Austin Butler (as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen). The two will even be able to battle it out with Santa Gnaws when the Season 1 CODMAS events take place later this month.
Players who purchase the new operator bundles from the in-game store will have access to the characters, tracer blueprints, and additional customization items included across Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Warzone, and Warzone Mobile. They will not be backward compatible with Modern Warfare 2, however.
The addition of the Dune: Part Two operator bundles ties in to a limited time event in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 titled DUNE Trial of Power. Players can unlock weapon decals, double XP, and the “Sand and Spice” weapon camo for free by earning XP during the week-long event.
Chalamet and Butler caught an early look at the in-game characters based upon their live-action counterparts at Brazil’s Comic-Con. There’s only one thing to do when you’re face-to-face when your nemesis in Call of Duty, of course.
You settle your differences like grown-ups and 1v1 on Rust. Which is exactly what Chalamet and Butler did. The outcome of the battle can be seen in the video from Comic-Con.
Call of Duty is no stranger to crossovers, with previous games in the franchise having operator bundles from classic 80s action flicks Rambo and Die Hard to hip hop stars Snoop Dogg, Nicki Minaj, and 21 Savage. Modern Warfare 3 is on pace to have more crossover characters than any other game in the COD franchise due in part to Carry Forward, a feature that allowed operator bundles from Modern Warfare 2 to be playable in MW3. Current options for licensed operators in MW3 include Spawn, Alucard from Hellsing, and Lillith from Diablo IV.
There has been some backlash from players who were disappointed in Modern Warfare 3’s lack of a “mil sim period” after launch where players would be limited to default operators instead of flashy paid skins. Some skins, like the Gaia operator which players nicknamed Groot, have been dubbed as pay-to-win bundles for allowing players to blend in with the environment too well. The visibility on the Gaia operator’s skin was so egregiously low that Sledgehammer Games ultimately decided to disable it until it could be changed. This made Gaia one of the first skins to be removed from the game, despite it costing players money to acquire.
