Full Co Op for Modern Warfare 2 Broke the Immersion

Modern Warfare 2 is slowly creeping towards its release date of November 10 and with the substance of the game pretty much known at the moment, the developers are taking some time to actually explain why some of the choices related to the upcoming experience have turned out this way.

In a day and age when most shooters are shipped with complete cooperative support for two and even four players in the main campaign, some gamers have expressed disappointment at the single player of Modern Warfare 2 being completely designed for just one protagonist.

Rob Bowling, one of the developers on Modern Warfare 2, told VG247 that initially his company introduced co operative gameplay in the campaign. He added that “We did it early on; that’s what Spec Ops started out as, as co-op through story. But it really broke the cinematic experience, took the immersion out of it, out of the story and the pacing and everything we’d spent so long crafting. It just ruined the experience we were aiming for, so we took it out, kept the single-player for that one player intact and polished it.”

One needs some guts to take something out of the game when players clamor for it and Infinity Ward deserves some credit for actually sticking to a format that it believes better protects the quality of the gameplay experience delivered.

Early looks at the Spec Ops sequences, which are designed for two-player gaming either over the network or in split screen, say that they are more intense than single players sections but also shorter. And this setup makes sure that the most climactic elements of the single player campaign remain something that can be experienced alone by the player to increase the tension and the emotion.