Search results
Sep 9, 2022 · One Day, Five Ways: Inside the Creative Culture of Infinity Ward. It takes a village to launch a game. Five Infinity Ward employees describe life at the studio, how they got to where they are, and what it’s like working on the new Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare™ II. 2022 is a huge year for Call of Duty.
Jun 2, 2022 · Now, as we look to 2022 and beyond for this iconic series, we’re proud to welcome back Infinity Ward as the lead developer for this year’s Call of Duty experiences to be released starting on October 28, 2022. As a teaser to the Worldwide Modern Warfare II Reveal on June 8, remember the following as Task Force 141 assembles to stop a new threat:
Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Infinity Ward) Call of Duty: Ghosts is rooted in a military fairy tale – a spec ops Battle of Thermopylae in which 14 men stay behind to defend a civilian ...
- The making of Infinity Ward's iconic sniper mission.
- Tactical Espionage Action
- Two Targets, One Trigger
- Heart Racing, Legs Crawling
By Matt Purslow
Updated: Oct 26, 2023 2:05 pm
Posted: Jul 26, 2023 12:00 pm
This week marks the 20th anniversary of Call of Duty. As part of a week of Call of Duty coverage, this feature takes an in-depth look at 'All Ghillied Up', the ground-breaking mission from Modern Warfare.
Developer Infinity Ward changed first-person shooters forever when it launched Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007. Set on the frontlines of a politically murky war, its adrenaline-fueled action set pieces redefined campaign design for an entire generation. But while levels like Crew Expendable and Charlie Don’t Surf channelled the trademark intensity of Call of Duty’s World War 2 days, one mission set the series’ rulebook ablaze and threw it out of the window. It was called All Ghillied Up.
Unfolding amongst the ghostly remains of post-Chernobyl Pripyat, All Ghillied Up is a sniper mission that embraces patience and precision. Its Metal Gear Solid-inspired stealth sensibilities mark a significant shift in gears not just for Modern Warfare’s story, but the entire Call of Duty franchise.
So All Ghillied Up was going to be a sneaking mission. Quiet. Restrained. Just that fact alone introduced a huge amount of complexity into the project. Alavi was faced with a simple truth: Call of Duty was an intense shooter. Its very DNA - the code underpinning the whole experience - didn’t understand the concept of stealth.
“It was war all the time,” says Alavi. “The AI was never designed to not see you. So I was like, ‘We can fake this.’ But I don't like doing that because you can see through it instantly, right? I was like, ‘Or, I can make this Metal Gear Solid style. I can make this the best stealth mission in a Call of Duty game.’ And without telling anybody, because I knew they were going to try to stop me, that's what I tried to do.”
By his own admission, Alavi is not a programmer. And he’s certainly not an AI programmer. But after a conversation with Infinity Ward’s AI master, he was able to envision a way he could force Modern Warfare’s enemies into a stealth format.
“Basically [the AI programmer] gave me the ability to shorten the [enemies’] view cone,” Alavi explains. “So I hard coded it where if you're standing up, the enemy's view cones are standard. But if you're crouching, it's less. And if you're prone, then it's way less.”
“And then on top of that, I just had to hard place everything. I started placing triggers for grassy areas versus non grassy areas, which would change that view cone. And then I started placing triggers for shadows. So I baked the shadows into the level, figured out where they were, and then placed triggers where the shadows were so it would bring in the view cone even more. And then what started out as just a couple of simple things ballooned into almost 20,000 lines of poorly written script that literally took me, I want to say, two months.”
The script may have been poor, but only one thing mattered: it worked. The enemy Russian troops were quite literally blind to the player crawling just inches away from their ankles, and that was the first step in creating a heart-pounding stealth experience. The next was to craft a sequence that would have players holding their breath along with their character. Enter All Ghillied Up’s tense crawl through a Russian convoy.
“So what happened was actually that, in that very first encounter, I had MacMillan not shoot the second guy,” Alavi reveals. “But it felt terrible. Because if you're bee-lined on this one dude, you're putting all your focus in on him and you're trying to get to the other guy, and if he just starts firing his loud AK, then you feel cheated, right?”
The answer was to have MacMillan observe your every shot and clean up if things went wrong. Players who instantly grasp the stealth sensibilities of the mission will wait for the soldiers to separate and look away from each other before taking them out one at a time. But MacMillan works as a safety net; if the second guy sees your shot, he’s dead before he can even raise his gun. This keeps the mission flowing, and creates an authentic sense of teamwork between you and your partner.
Considering how synchronised sniping has become the iconic image of All Ghillied Up, it’s actually used pretty infrequently; just twice across the entire mission. The best example of it comes at the mission’s midway point in a sequence in which you must cleanly dispatch four enemies. As with all the best stealth encounters, this is a lethal puzzle to be solved.
“It was like two guys right next to each other, and they're kind of walking and then they face away and that's your opening,” Alavi explains. “And then there’s the second set by the pond where they're throwing the bodies away. Now you’ve got four guys. [...] And now there's a puzzle. It's like, do I shoot immediately? Because I'm probably going to lure all four of them. Or do I wait for them to come by? And obviously MacMillan's giving you some advice, but he leaves it up to you.”
Player choice is not something typically associated with Call of Duty campaigns. But All Ghillied Up, a mission that seems practically ‘on-rails’ from a distance, is actually surprisingly malleable. Many scenarios across the level can be solved in multiple ways, and the script will even acknowledge and respond to your actions.
“So basically I will say this: I will never make a stealth mission again,” laughs Alavi. “Because what started off as ‘I want this to feel right’ turned into ‘I need to account for every goddamn situation’."
All Ghillied Up is followed by One Shot, One Kill; the explosive second half of the assassination mission in which you must hold out against wave upon wave of relentless enemies as you wait to be extracted from Pripyat. The pacing of these two missions almost mimics the act of a calculated shot; the slow, steady intake of breath that’s held just long enough to steady the crosshair, followed by the explosion in the chamber.
This careful attention to pacing can also be seen within All Ghillied Up itself, which weaves between slower moments of predator-like confidence and hurried dashes to new hiding spots. But, as with almost everything in game design, this masterful pacing didn’t come out of Alavi’s head fully formed.
“Working on that level actually taught me a lot about how important pacing is,” he says. “Not just inside of a level, but across the game as a whole.”
“The first mistake I'd made was putting way too many enemies in the level and you had no breathers in between,” he recalls. “I realised that it didn't feel good and I needed these moments to both rejoice in doing so well or getting out of a hairy situation, but also just kind of reset the tension again.”
We can see this unfold in the final two sequences of the level. As Price and MacMillan close in on the abandoned hotel from which they will conduct their assassination, they cross paths with a second Russian convoy.
“I was like, ‘Okay, well you've gone through this whole mission with your ghillie suit, right? Well, what if I take that away from you? What if you can't hide in the grass anymore? Can we still do something fun there? Can we still do something with high tension?’”
- Matt Purslow
Infinity Ward did have doubts following the playtests, with one veteran who flat-out refused to play leaving a big impression. "There were definitely some people at our company that [objected ...
Feb 3, 2022 · A new generation of Call of Duty is coming soon.Stay frosty. February 3, 2022. Also interesting is that Infinity Ward is taking back the lead on the battle royale Call of Duty: Warzone, which ...
People also ask
What has Infinity Ward done for a living?
Is Infinity Ward taking back the lead in Call of duty Warzone?
Will Infinity Ward continue to revolutionize the gaming experience?
Is Infinity Ward the next call of Duty game?
Where is Infinity Ward based?
Is Infinity Ward coming to Warzone?
Sep 25, 2019 · In 2007, Infinity Ward released Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare®, reflecting the complexities of contemporary warfare through its Campaign. At the time, the game, as well as its sequels, set itself apart weaving its single player story through the sociopolitical action taking place 24/7 on a global scale.
