Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the ninth installment in the popular first-person shooter franchise, marked a turning point in the series’ history. While the game continued the narrative arc of its predecessors, it also introduced a new gameplay element: Open Combat Missions.
The intention behind these missions was to allow players more freedom and choice on how to go about accomplishing their goals. Nonetheless, the trial did not go as planned leading to a bunch of missions which were widely perceived as unoriginal, annoying, and detrimental to the campaign experience in general.
Modern Warfare 3: Open Combat Missions – A Failed Experiment
Open Combat Missions have been critiqued for failing to relate with the overall storyline of the campaign. Open Combat Missions appear unrelated to traditional Call of Duty missions that over the years have been replete with character dialogues, cut scenes and plot driven objectives. This led frequently to players finding themselves doing generic tasks in environments they had seen before and without proper connection with what else is happening in the story at large.
Also read: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer (PS5) Review – This Ain’t It
This lack of connection was further compounded by the absence of character development and emotional investment in Open Combat Missions. While traditional missions often feature memorable characters and their interactions, Open Combat Missions lacked these elements, leaving players feeling detached from the action and the characters involved.
The gaming community has attacked the Open Combat Missions in Modern Warfare 3 with a lot of criticism. Gamers have complained about the repetition and unoriginality in these games. This is worrying because it makes them all look like Warzone and multiplayer derivatives, which leads to an overall lack of playability and feels lazy. The gamers’ disappointment with Open Combat Missions clearly indicates that the game has failed to deliver what they anticipated hence spoiling the entire gaming experience.
[MW3] “Open Combat” missions are cover for sheer laziness
byu/KarmaPolice10 inCallOfDuty
Other than that, it never made sense in Open Combat Missions allowing loadouts to be changed. Since most of the mission structures are stealth-based, there is nothing like changing weapons for them. This further insulated on how tedious and shallow these missions were.
Open Combat Missions tried to redefine Call of Duty’s campaign gameplay by giving players freedom and choices. Still, it did not live up to all expectations thus ending up being an assortment of meaningless tasks that did not add value to whole experience.
Instead of building upon the core gameplay elements that had made Call of Duty so successful, Open Combat Missions ventured into uncharted territory without a clear direction or purpose. The result was a series of missions that felt out of place and detracted from the overall cohesion and enjoyment of the campaign.
Open Combat Missions, failure upon which others are built, provides a lesson that Call of Duty must learn. As much as innovation and experimentation are important, it is important to ensure that the changes are in line with the core gameplay elements that have made this series popular. In other words, when Modern Warfare 3’s Open Combat Missions got too far away from what it was supposed to be, it turned Open Combat missions into a failure which became one of its non-failed entries.
In the end, Open Combat Missions remind us about not forgetting the basic principles of Call of Duty. The series has always been about innovation and experimentation; however, these aspects have never compromised the unique features such as fast-paced action scenes, amazing stories, and unforgettable characters. However, Open Combat Missions failed to capture these key ingredients as they tried to create something different resulting in one of its failures.
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