Modern Warfare 4 preview: a Korean war, a rebuilt DMZ and Switch 2 on day one

In 38 days, on Friday 23 October, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. It opens with North Korea invading the South. It removes hipfire bloom from gunfights. It brings back DMZ as a full extraction mode with a base to return to. And it is the first Call of Duty on Nintendo hardware in more than 13 years. Infinity Ward revealed the game on 28 May, ran a two-weekend open beta that ended on 1 September, and released a new campaign clip on 4 September. This preview sets out what the studio and Activision have confirmed, and what they have not.

A campaign built around an invasion of South Korea

The story follows two threads. Private Park is a young South Korean soldier seeing combat for the first time. A routine patrol descends into a desperate fight through collapsing cities when North Korea launches a full-scale invasion. Half a world away, Captain Price is on the run after the events of Modern Warfare III. Activision's announcement post calls him an "operator-turned-outlaw" who is hunting for a weapon powerful enough to shift the balance of power. The campaign then spreads well beyond Korea, with trench warfare on the peninsula, close-quarters fighting in New York, car chases through Paris and SAS night raids in Mumbai.

Speaking to Xbox Wire, narrative director Jeff Negus said the cast is one of the largest Infinity Ward has assembled. Park's squad includes the conscripts Jay, Cho and Moon, and two US Marines, West and Dunn, are embedded with them. Associate design director Alex Norris said Korean soldiers speak Korean to each other and a dialect coach worked on the dialogue. Staff with Korean backgrounds checked details down to the signs in a convenience store seen in the reveal trailer. Norris also said the artists reproduced Paris across the whole city, not just one corner the way Amsterdam was built for Modern Warfare II.

The campaign was also part of the beta, a first for the series. The mission "Entrenched" has players fight alongside infantry and armoured vehicles to stop a nuclear power station falling into enemy hands. On 4 September Activision posted a second look, "Stranded", in which a squad is hunted deep inside North Korea. Anyone who pre-orders digitally can play the full campaign from 16 October, a week before launch.

Multiplayer: no bloom, a rebuilt mantle and a map that rearranges itself

Infinity Ward calls its new gunplay system Ballistic Authority. Its main promise is simple: hipfire bloom is gone. Shots now travel where the weapon is pointed, and recoil, convergence and handling have been rebuilt to follow player input more closely. Movement adds hanging, climbing and pipe climbs in place of some ladders. Mantling is no longer a locked animation, so players can aim, sprint out or back away partway through a vault.

At launch there are 12 core 6v6 maps. Six were in the beta, including Silkworm, a South Korean shopping district, Rooftops in snowy New York, and Transit 213, a bus yard in western India. Kill Block is a training facility built from modular sections that can form more than 500 layouts, and it changes between rounds. The new modes are Hijack, Arms Deal, Frontline and Inflation. Ground War returns as Combat Outpost, which pairs vehicles and infantry. Create-a-Class now puts Operators, weapons, equipment and killstreaks into a single loadout. A helper called Gunny suggests close, mid and long-range builds, and most weapons have an Apex Attachment that changes how they behave once fully levelled. Players also choose between two Prestige paths: Classic resets their unlocks, while Regular keeps them.

Activision's Call of Duty: NEXT recap adds a change to killstreaks, now called Smartstreaks, which count objective play as well as kills. It also says camo progress carries across Multiplayer, DMZ and Warzone.

DMZ returns with a base, a crafting printer and a notoriety system

DMZ is set after the campaign in Hajin, a fictional exclusion zone in a region bordering Russia and the Korean peninsula. Scarred by radiation and mass evacuation, it is littered with abandoned military technology that players recover as off-the-books CIA assets. Activision's DMZ deep dive describes it as one of the largest environments the series has built, with areas including an irradiated reactor, a prison complex, Hajin City and a military base. The weather shifts from run to run, with sudden downpours and fog banks cutting visibility.

Between runs, players return to a Forward Operating Base. It holds a persistent stash, a 3D printer that crafts armour, backpacks, night vision and killstreaks from salvaged parts, a firing range and a board tracking enemy lieutenants. Each Operator has their own backpack, loadout and trait tree. A new MIA system lets players spend in-game cash to rescue an Operator lost on a failed extraction instead of losing that progress. Players earn XP even when they die. Killing other players raises notoriety and puts them on a bounty leaderboard, and proximity chat now changes with distance, direction and surroundings.

Hajin will also become a Warzone Battle Royale map in Season 1, alongside Zodiac, a new Resurgence map built by Beenox. From Season 1, Warzone will stop working on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

“I think when it comes to contemporary Call of Duty, and more specifically Modern Warfare, it has always been ripped from the headlines.”Jeff Negus, Narrative Director at Infinity Ward, speaking to Xbox Wire, 28 May 2026

Switch 2, PC and the hardware line

Modern Warfare 4 is not coming to PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. Activision says building only for current hardware allows larger maps and denser battles. The Switch 2 version is being built natively by Infinity Ward with Digital Legends. According to the Switch 2 beta post, that version supports Joy-Con 2 mouse controls, gyro aiming, the Switch 2 Pro Controller, HDR and handheld play, plus cross-play and cross-progression with other platforms. Switch 2 pre-orders opened on 26 August, and Switch 2 owners could play the open beta without pre-ordering.

On PC, Beenox is co-developing again. The announcement lists DLSS 4.5, ray-traced reflections, ambient occlusion and shadows in every mode, multiple upscaling and frame generation options, and shader preloading, which was tested during the beta. TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are required. The beta's recommended PC specs were a Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i7-8700, 16GB of RAM and an RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6700 XT or Arc B580, with an SSD required. Activision says the specs for the full game may differ.

Editions, prices and what is still unannounced

• Release date: Friday 23 October 2026; digital pre-orders unlock the campaign on 16 October
• Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Steam, Battle.net and Nintendo Switch 2
• Price (US): $69.99 Standard, $99.99 Vault Edition and $30 to upgrade, as listed on Steam and the Xbox Store
• Vault Edition: Price, Valeria, Ghost and Blix Operators, a Special Forces Operator pack, five signature weapons, one season of BlackCell and a DMZ bonus; returning players get 10 percent off pre-orders
• Game Pass: not included at launch; the Xbox Store listing says it will not be on Game Pass this year

Some key details are still unconfirmed. Activision has not dated Season 1 beyond saying it will arrive shortly after launch. The contents of the Vault Edition DMZ bonus are still to be announced, and final PC requirements have not been published. Physical copies are confirmed for PS5, Xbox Series X and Switch 2, with no disc version on PC. Sony's PlayStation Blog post carries the same date and three-mode structure, so the open questions now sit with the post-launch seasons, not the launch itself.

The Modern Warfare 4 reveal trailer: North Korea's invasion, Private Park's squad and Captain Price's off-book war.

The fight is everywhere. Take a first look at "Entrenched" from the #MW4 Campaign. Pre Order and play this mission in the Modern Warfare 4 Beta:

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) on X