Over the last few years, Call of Duty: Warzone has become one of the most popular video games of all time, while also being one of the most divisive amongst fans. Though it started out strong, Warzone’s cracks began to show, and with the introduction of the Caldera map, things only got worse. Flash forward a few months, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is announced, right alongside a standalone sequel to Warzone, set to drop later this year. Expectations are high, and fans are hoping that Warzone 2 can live up to them, both in terms of technical factors, and integration with Modern Warfare 2.
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How Call of Duty: Warzone Has Integrated Modern Warfare, Cold War and Vanguard
When Call of Duty: Warzone first released in 2020, it based a lot of its design on the recently released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a 2019 reboot of the original Modern Warfare. For the first two years of its life, Call of Duty: Warzone had just one massive map called Verdansk. Verdansk began life with 20 primary points of interest, some of which were settings directly ripped from Modern Warfare’s campaign and multiplayer modes.
Verdansk’s Prison, TV Station, Boneyard, and Stadium were all taken directly from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and their structures and interior layouts remained practically unchanged. Both from a development perspective, and a fan perspective, this was a very smart move. For Infinity Ward, this meant that it could reuse assets and focus its efforts on the other wholly original areas, while for fans, these throwbacks acted as neat little rewards for playing the base game.
On top of this, the original form of Call of Duty: Warzone also integrated all of Modern Warfare’s multiplayer weapons. Throughout Verdansk, players could find Modern Warfare’s weapons in chests and on the ground. Warzone even went one step further, and allowed players to use their Modern Warfare multiplayer classes in the battle royale, which were obtained by purchasing them at a Buy Station. This incentivized players to tweak their loadouts to perfection, and even encouraged them to return to Modern Warfare’s multiplayer to unlock and level up their desired weapons.
When Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War released towards the end of 2020, Warzone attempted to integrate a few key aspects from that game. Along with giving the entire Verdansk map a 1984 makeover, reverting some buildings back to in-progress construction sites and tweaking some other points of interest, Call of Duty: Warzone also brought a slew of Black Ops Cold War’s weapons to the game, adding them into pre-existing arsenal of Modern Warfare weapons.
With the release of Call of Duty: Vanguard earlier this year, Warzone took its level of integration up a notch. Rather than just give Verdansk another makeover, Vanguard brought an entirely new map to the battle royale. Called Caldera, this new Vanguard-inspired map brought a range of WW2-themed points of interests, structures, and vehicles to the game. All of Call of Duty: Vanguard’s multiplayer weapons were also added to the mix, bringing Warzone’s total weapon count to well over 100. On paper, this level of integration sounds truly impressive, but in reality, things turned sour very quickly.
A new map may have been added to Warzone, but that meant the removal of the beloved Verdansk original, and many fans didn’t take the news lightly. On top of this, this integration with Vanguard also led to a host of technical issues, mostly revolving around balancing the game’s unfathomable number of weapons, perks, and grenades. With a constantly changing meta, bugs running rampant, and the removal of Verdansk, Call of Duty: Warzone began hemorrhaging players.
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How Call of Duty: Warzone 2 Can Integrate Modern Warfare 2
While Call of Duty: Warzone 2 should certainly integrate Modern Warfare 2, it needs to be careful on just how far it goes with it. One of the biggest lessons Warzone 2 should take away from its predecessor when it comes to integration is to bring iconic maps over the mainline title. One of the reasons fans didn’t vibe with Caldera as much as Verdansk was due to its lack of recognizable iconography. With Caldera taking little inspiration from Vanguard in terms of map integration, a lot of Caldera’s points of interest blended together in players’ heads, especially when a few of the locations looked similar to those found in Verdansk.
Call of Duty: Warzone 2 should ensure that at least a handful of classic maps are integrated somewhere. If the many leaks surrounding Warzone 2 are true, then it may already be doing this. According to infamous leaker Tom Henderson, as well as a few others, both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2 will be including maps from the original 2009 Modern Warfare 2. High Rise, Afghan, Quarry, Terminal, and more are all alleged to appear in both Call of Duty titles this year.
It’s also expected that Warzone 2, like its predecessor, will integrate the mainline release’s weapons and class system. As long as Warzone 2 doesn’t continue to add over 100 weapons over the next two years, this level of integration is good, and should avoid the mistakes that its predecessor made.
Call of Duty: Warzone 2 is in development.
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