Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the upcoming game in the Call of Duty series, is set to be quite an emotional story, with a lead developer claiming that it has made playtesters cry.

In an interview with PCGamesN, studio art director Joel Emslie mentioned that “we’ve had multiple playtesters cry”, with campaign gameplay director Jacob Minkoff then backing up the claim by stating that he “thought it was a joke when they told me, and then I watched a video of it. It was a real human moment, and now I’m like, ‘I worked on a game that made someone cry.’”.

The game will contain a lot of controversial forms of warfare, all of which have been used in real life, including a nerve gas strike and even a bombing in the streets of London. The team has also made sure to hire consultants from different cultures and nations so that everything in the game is portrayed somewhat accurately and respectfully.

“We’re not arrogant enough to think that we’re going to understand all of the nuances of how these types of events and subjects could affect people all around the world. We’re not shying away from provocative subject matter, we’re not pulling our punches, but we’re making sure that we engage as many people as possible to make sure we do things right.”

And the game isn’t looking to shy away from letting players kill civilians either.

“Call of Duty has always had ‘friendly fire will not be tolerated’ warnings when you kill too many civilians. Obviously, we’re trying to make things much more realistic, much more visceral this time, so that if you kill a single civilian you feel bad, because you might see a woman go for a gun but instead she’s going to grab her baby. We want you to feel bad, and the characters around you will respond and react to what you did, too.”

“On top of this, we also have a collateral damage score that we give you after each mission, a rank A through to F score. We talk about ‘unknowns’ – an NPC is an unknown until they prove whether they’re a threat or not. If you kill no innocents and you evaluate all unknowns correctly then you’ll end up with a rank A, and if you kill more than three you will get a rank F. There are rewards associated with being as accurate with your threat assessment as possible.”

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is set to be released on the 25th of October 2019 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Are you looking forward to seeing a more realistic and serious story with Modern Warfare? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.