Modern Warfare - one of the biggest games of our times - will be making its Wii debut in November and while many fans would like to play the sequel on the console, Activision's Daniel Suarez told ONM that it makes perfect sense to bring the first game in the series to Wii next month.
We spoke to Suarez, the executive producer of Modern Warfare: Reflex, and he explained why they are bringing Modern Warfare to Nintendo's console and told us how they've improved upon World At War. As you'll discover, Reflex is Modern Warfare with nowt taken out!
Why did you decide to bring Modern Warfare to Wii?
Daniel Suarez: As you know, Modern Warfare is one of the greatest shooters of all time. We're bringing it to Wii for a number of reasons. There's a huge audience out there that have never played this game. It was originally developed by Infinity Ward, it's being ported to the Wii by Treyarch, and it's the third Wii title that they've brought to Wii - the first was Call of Duty 3, then last year's World At War, and now Modern Warfare.
What improvements have Treyarch made over World At War?
DS: They've implemented a number of improvements over World At War, the first being graphical. They've been continually optimising the graphics engine and performance so that we have a higher texture resolution - if you compare the two side by side you can really see the difference. The other thing is improved particle effects and they've introduced ten player multiplayer - in World At War we only had eight player multiplayer. But the big thing is that this is a full, 100% complete version of Modern Warfare. World At War didn't have some of the features that the other versions had, but this one does - it's a complete and undiluted port. You name it, it's in there.
We've also improved the way the Friend Code system works in-game. It's a lot more user-friendly. Another thing we looked at closely was the controls. We got a lot of feedback from World At War and what people wanted was to customise the controls. We've given them that. You can do anything you want with deadzones, buttons and so on. There's a lot of customisation, and people want that.
We really want to emphasise the fact that this really is the complete game. Squad Mate mode is in there, too - it's a feature we had in World At War and it kind of gives you a Mario Galaxy style of co-op play so I can jump in and jump out.
Why are there not more shooters on Wii?
DS: It's something a lot of people talk about. I think one of the reasons is because of the perception that consumers of the Wii want a different type of game. World At War sold really well on the Wii, it's got great numbers in terms of the amount of people that play online as well. I think you'd be surprised - it's a lot more than you'd imagine.
So we looked at that and said there's an audience out there that have never played Modern Warfare and they want that experience. Why are there not more shooters on Wii? We're lucky here at Activision in that we have developers like Treyarch, and this is their third game on Wii. We have a dedicated team working on the Wii and that's what their passion is.
How about Modern Warfare 2? Is that coming to Wii also?
DS: Treyarch is working on this (Modern Warfare: Reflex) right now. Infinity Ward is working on Modern Warfare 2 right now. I think it's fair to say that we want to give the Wii consumer new experiences and we'll continue to do that.
