Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 “Gameplay” Trailer Reveal With Makarov as the Prize

The first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 “gameplay trailer” was revealed in Warzone on August 17. We say “gameplay” with quotes because the footage appeared to be all cinematic footage than anything else. With Makarov in the picture, it was a foregone conclusion what we thought we wanted was instead what he wanted. The latest in the long-running franchise once again pits Captain Price against the his greatest adversary, Russian-born but ultimately independent terrorist Vladimir Makarov.

What We Saw in the Modern Warfare 3 Reveal

We didn’t get any multiplayer information during the reveal, nor was there any true campaign gameplay of note beyond the setting and detonating of C4. What we did find out was where Price and team will be heading, and those familiar with the Modern Warfare franchise will see a lot of familiar locations. One of the major areas shown was a Russian gulag high reminiscent of the one from the 2009 version of Modern Warfare 2, as well as some arctic operations.

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The fight in the campaign will also come to many Western cities. One scene takes place in a modern underground, with Price jumping out of a troop carrier with his signature M4 as enemies kill civilians around him. The rest of Task Force 141 — Ghost, Soap, and Gaz — make brief appearances, as does Farah the resistance fighter and old Price ally. Kate Laswell, Price’s CIA handler states the war is “on a global scale,” indicating Makarov’s plan involves plunging the whole planet into the fires of hell.

Makarov himself doesn’t make an appearance during the trailer until a flash of his in-game face near its end, but his presence was there at the end-of-event cutscene. During the event, players worked together as members of Graves’s Shadow Company, collecting dangerous chemical compounds from a bunker in Al Mazrah. Unbeknownst to us, Makarov’s men had already inserted themselves into the Shadow and made off with the chemicals.

Unfortunately, we can’t glean too much about the moment-to-moment gameplay of Modern Warfare 3, though there will be some stealth action in the gulag, underwater ops and a return of the night-vision sections made famous in Modern Warfare 2019.

A key point of the Modern Warfare 3 gameplay trailer was the pair of missile launches that Price failed to stop, much like he did in Call of Duty 4. Between that, the gulag and arctic sections, MW3 2023 is shaping up to try and recapture the magic from every Modern Warfare game in the series. Whether it can live up to those legendary titles is another matter, but we’ll see soon enough. Modern Warfare 3 is slated for a PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S and Series X, PC on November 10, 2023.