We don't know a ton about specifics, but according to years of leaks, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022) is getting a big, tactical new mode supposedly called DMZ. Players will load into large maps and get tasked with completing objectives while they manage their equipment and weaponry, making their way across the land carefully, much like Escape from Tarkov. The existence of this mode, though, could mean problems for Modern Warfare II. In this article, we'll explain why you should worry about Modern Warfare II’s Escape from Tarkov-like DMZ mode.
What's Modern Warfare II's DMZ Mode About Anyways?
Tactical gameplay was something of a focus of Modern Warfare (2019), so you can think of DMZ, if that's what the mode actually ends up being named, as a natural extension of this kind of gameplay. It's meant to be a more sandbox take on the open-world Call of Duty gameplay loop of Warzone.
Ultimately, this will likely be a bigger, more fully-featured version of modes like Plunder in Warzone or Fireteam in Black Ops Cold War with more of a tactical bend to it. In DMZ, players will reportedly load into large, new maps (or maybe even Warzone 2's map) where they can only bring certain weapons/equipment with them, which they can lose, that they're supposed to rely on to complete objectives before exfilling.
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Completing objectives successfully is expected to reward you with currency and experience that you can use to better gear yourself up to take on more involved objectives. Naturally, playing this mode will be a way to level up guns and unlock camos for Modern Warfare II's multiplayer as well as Warzone 2, if Modern Warfare II's weaponry does appear in Warzone 2 as is expected.
This mode is projected to be well-supported as a live service throughout Modern Warfare II's two-year-long lifecycle where news maps, objectives, and content will be regularly added. Plus, this mode has been rumored to have been in development as far back as during Modern Warfare (2019)'s development, so it's not supposed to be an afterthought like Specs Ops in Modern Warfare (2019) unfortunately was.
Why You Should Worry About Modern Warfare II's DMZ Mode
The focus of Modern Warfare (2019) was tactical gameplay, in many ways. This led to a stripped-down minimap, larger more complicated maps, and a host of controversial equipment, like Dead Silence as a Field Upgrade among many other design decisions.
The vast and overwhelming majority of Call of Duty fans aren't happy with this direction. It's not that tactical gameplay is bad, far from it. Many games are tactical and are popular because of that, and if you look at a game like Warzone this is itself a more tactical Call of Duty experience that also happens to be the most successful product Call of Duty has ever released.
Tactical gameplay is a problem because the classic CoD action, 6v6 competitive multiplayer, doesn't really work with tactical gameplay. At its heart, traditional Call of Duty multiplayer is all about arcade action, which makes sense considering CoD's status as an arcade shooter. In terms of the series' bread and butter, fans don't want the core multiplayer experience changed all that much.
If a big part of Modern Warfare II is to be this tactical DMZ mode, it could suggest that in general Modern Warfare II will lean more into the tactical gameplay of Modern Warfare (2019), which would not sound like good news to many fans.
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On top of that, historically side modes in Call of Duty aren't that popular. Look at Fireteam in Black Ops Cold War. This required its own development time on top of development time for its array of large open-world maps. So, there's the concern that a considerable amount of time and resources will be dedicated to this DMZ mode that only a small portion of the game's population actually regularly plays.
Why You Shouldn't Worry About Modern Warfare II's DMZ Mode
On the other hand, DMZ could mean great things for Modern Warfare II. Leaks indicate that certain design decisions of Modern Warfare (2019), like the minimap or general map design, are going to be walked back in the multiplayer side of Modern Warfare II, returning to a more traditional CoD setup.
If this is true, that's fantastic news, but it would also mean that the DMZ mode in Modern Warfare II could be a safe space for the folks at Infinity Ward to lean more into tactical gameplay and give gamers a fresh new CoD experience alongside the familiar one fans already crave.
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Plus, what's more is that tactical shooters like Rainbow or Escape from Tarkov are designed to be slow and somewhat clunky. This is done to mimic the real-life experience of using guns that need maintenance, can jam, and all the rest. The result is a more tactical experience.
DMZ could offer up the smooth, polished feel of Call of Duty alongside a host of more tactical elements and gameplay mechanics, hopefully serving up what could be the best of both worlds. Warzone did something similar to battle royale. For a long time, BR games were somewhat clunky, slow, and tactical by design, while Warzone took the arcade-y feel of Call of Duty and combined it with the classic BR experience.
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