Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will feature a new DMZ extraction mode that will be a big part of multiplayer gameplay.
The game is coming on PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 on October 23, and this time the campaign is set in South Korea, where there is an actual demilitarized zone.
And DMZ marks a return to the popular extraction mode (made popular by Escape From Tarkov and more recently ARC Raiders and Marathon) that could user Call of Duty into a more competitive state in multiplayer shooters.
The setting
Nestled within a tri-point region bordering Russia and the Korean peninsula, Hajin is a contested exclusion zone where rival forces battle for control of abandoned military technology and strategic assets left behind after the events of the Modern Warfare 4 Campaign.
The atmosphere within the Hajin Exclusion Zone shifts can change based environmental effects, creating new opportunities and challenges on every run. Sudden downpours can reduce visibility and force Operators to adapt how they explore, move and engage, while dense fog banks and overcast skies transform familiar routes into tense navigational gambles.
Scarred by radiation, mass evacuation, and the collapse of civilian infrastructure, the region is one of the largest and most ambitious Call of Duty environments ever built, designed around exploration, environmental storytelling, and high-risk operations.
From the irradiated fallout reactor and the highly secured prison complex to the remains of Hajin City and the heavily defended Military Base, every region inside the border area and exclusion zone offers different combat opportunities, sealed or hidden areas waiting to be discovered, traversal challenges and points of interest with hidden entrances accessible only via water, and other operational risks. Players willing to push deeper into the unknown can uncover hidden secrets, pursue high-value gear, and engage in increasingly dangerous missions with greater risks and rewards.
A second try
Call of Duty launched DMZ as a beta mode four years ago that was a special version of Call of Duty: Warzone’s battle royale. The point was to go into the standard map, fulfill quests, grab loot and escape with it — or you lost it all. It was Activision’s attempt at making an extraction mode, like the popular Escape From Tarkov game. But the DMZ beta was canceled for unannounced reasons.
Geoff Smith, studio multiplayer creative director, and Joe Cecot, studio multiplayer creative director, made a presentation on DMZ at a recent press briefing. Smith referred to it as a “proper DMZ” mode.
“It started as this crazy experiment, but it quickly became a proving ground and a testbed for us through seasonal updates and live experiments,” said Smith. “And later watching the genre evolve, we’ve learned a lot about what resonates with players and what we were lacking in our beta, and all that knowledge and those action items became this foundation for us as we’re shaping this new vision of DMZ from the ground up.”
In the single-player campaign of Modern Warfare 4, there’s a nuclear reactor that melts down and creates an exclusion zone where the new DMZ takes place.
“Our story in DMZ picks up a little while after that campaign and ties directly into the greater Modern Warfare universe. In that world, DMZ offers a rich sandbox with escalating AI threats, dangerous bosses, environmental puzzles, raid-like operations, narrative-driven story missions,” said Smith. “It’s really more than just a third mode. It’s a full-featured game inside Modern Warfare.”
Progression is at the heart of this genre, and DMZ provides this full hero’s journey, Smith said.
“We have an out-of-game board operating base that acts as a hub for player progression and growth, and over time you acquire gear, skill, and the reputation to feel like a tier one operator,” Smith said.
In DMZ, the player is a character who is an off-the-books asset working for the CIA, Ceot said. You’re self-funded. The exclusion zone, after the military occupation from the campaign, has been left rich with military technology.
Your mission in DMZ is to secure, capture, and neutralize that technology.
“Just like any great extraction shooter, there’s other rogue operators in the area. You can choose to work together with them, or you can take them out, but don’t let them stand in your way,” Cecot said.
The zone exists in an area of the Korean peninsula called Hajin, and it’s unlike other Call of Duty maps. It’s in an area where a nuclear reactor has melted down, and you fight there in single-player and come back to it in DMZ.
“All the different elements and things that you’ve seen are all frozen in place for you to come back to and discover, because we realized early on the core pillar of this experience is exploration and discovery,” Cecot said. “Telling stories through the environment and letting players unravel mysteries on their own helps the map become a character itself. Hajin is this polluted, war-torn battlefield polluted by radiation shaped by mass evacuations, and it’s left it abandoned and uninhabitable. This narrative set dress affects every deployment, from how you explore to how firefights unfold.”
The bulk of the map is made up of three different land masses, three different countries. It includes the South Korean exclusion zone, where the radiation is hit the hardest, up to the northeast is North Korea, and Russia is up there.
When you spawn into the game, you have to secure any weapons you see. But if you don’t beeline to your mission with your squad — like chasing down a high-value target — you may find yourself in the middle of an ambush. Those going for an extraction will alert other squads. So there’s bound to be some kind of firefight as you escape or prevent others from getting out with loot.
DMZ will come with multiple flavors of play, like story missions, dynamic operations and then free runs. You’ll be able to heal with bandages, drag someone as you revive them.
In another story mission, your job is to abduct a key general who has been woundedand your job is to get intel from him. You have to be sneaky to infiltrate an active military base. When you choose these story missions, you are matched with other players who are on the same story mission. That gives all the players on your team the same clear objective.
Then there are dynamic operations. These function in the same way when you match rank with other players in dynamic ops. You were all on the same operation as you went in. But when this system was built before, the contracts built in the previous games played out the same way. The devs randomized the locations, but the steps you took were always the same, so once you did one, you understand how it works, Cecot said.
“That works, but in dynamic operations we actually randomize the steps that you take, so when your boots hit the ground, the first thing you get is the main objective. We need to take out a key HVT. We need to blow up a missile before it can be launched. We need to go download some intel, and then blow up a server room to cover our tracks,” Cecot said. “But the steps you take to achieve that main objective are different every time.”
There’s the option for free roam. You feel like you understand the mechanics of DMZ and you don’t need to be told what to do. You can hunt targets on your own to get dog tags. DMZ allows for this option. You can head over to casino and you can try and mess with players who are doing their casino heist story mission.
The world of DMZ is alive. Air traffic is plentiful, and there are dangerous convoys moving thrgh the world. You can fight low-tier grunts or you can take on lieutenants or commanders. You have to avoid heavy tanks moving through the terrain.
“You push and the world pushes back,” Cecot said. “We have a new star system in DMZ. As you raise your star level by going loud and killing AI in the area, your star level increase, and the harder AI come after you.”
The game has a brand new stealth system. You get an alert if an AI is about to spot you. You can avoid that.
“We have this goal that every deployment feels different,” Smith said. “The weather system helps with that as well.”
The weather can be foggy, sunny, sprinkling or raining.
“DMZ is a game within a game,” Smith said.
You can use different operators for different play styles, whether it’s PvP or PvE. You can use one that is good for looting, but if you die, you lose all your stuff. If you are killed, you can be tagged as MIA. You can spend cash to send in an evac team rescue that operator, and you can go back into future missions with that operator. The catch is it gets more expensive over time to do the rescue.
With each deployment into the exclusion zone, you and your squad come back to your forward operating base, and as you increase your DMZ rank, you will unlock new stations, new functionality in DMZ. Over time, you unlock the 3D printer, the vendor, the gunsmith and more.
Over time, the devs want player to care more about having a meaningful looting experience, Smith said. It’s good to find useful gear like better guns, plate carriers, bigger backpacks and killstreaks. But throughout Hajin and containers within the world, you’ll find materials and unique printer ingredients that let you craft gear to improve your loadout and performance. You can print directly to your stash or operator.
A bad reputation will come back to you
“We wanted to make sure that PvP was as rewarding as it could be. So we developed a new bounty system,” Smith said.
Here’s how it works. As you go in and you kill other players (not in self-defense), then you start to develop a reputation behind the scenes. If you kill enough players, a bounty will automatically be put on your head.
“And if someone kills you and they pick up your dog tag, they’re going to see that that dog tag has a bounty and they can extract that to get that reward,” Smith said. “If you keep killing players, you keep leveling up that bounty. Eventually, you cross into the wanted stats. What that means is that other players in the match who want to be bounty hunters can pay intel. They pull out their tablet, and they say, ‘I’m going to pay for intel on this wanted player.’ They can get their location, and go hunt them down.”
That’s going to lead to an ecosystem with the best bounty hunter or the best player killer, and there could be leaderboards that highlight the top players each week.
Jack O’Hara, co-studio head at Infinity Ward, said in an interview with GamesBeat that DMZ does not replace battle royale. It ships as a mode as part of Modern Warfare 4, separate from Warzone.