New Modern Warfare 3 Call of Duty Animation Hints at Advanced Warfare

Highlights

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 pays homage to 2014’s Advanced Warfare with a weapon animation that features the game’s start screen logo.
• Fans are coming around to Advanced Warfare after its mixed reception, and there may be an Advanced Warfare-themed season in the future.
• Sledgehammer Games, the developer of Advanced Warfare, are likely to handle the crossover with Modern Warfare 3 if leaked information is true.

A new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 weapon animation makes a blatant reference to 2014’s divisive Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Having just started its first season, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has added a wealth of new content, including two killstreaks, several game modes, two new 6v6 maps in Meat and Greece, and more.

Fueled by futuristic jetpacks, Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was released in 2014 to very mixed reception from the Call of Duty community at the time. It was the first of three Call of Duty titles in a row to incorporate jetpack movement into its combat, leading the way for Black Ops 3 and Infinite Warfare to follow suit in the years after. With that said, Advanced Warfare is nearing its tenth anniversary next year, and as such, many Call of Duty fans are finally coming around on Sledgehammer’s first game as a lead Call of Duty studio.

It seems Sledgehammer Games is also nostalgic for Advanced Warfare as well. On Twitter, DETONATED shared a short clip of a weapon inspect animation for a Mastercraft gun blueprint set to come to Modern Warfare 3 during the next few weeks. The weapon blueprint, which looks to be a Rival-9 SMG, mimics the look of a classic handheld game console, complete with a small screen on the side. During the weapon inspect animation, the character flips the weapon to the side to hold the gun like a handheld console. They then turn the screen on to be greeted by the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare start screen logo. Mashing the A button, the character is then hit with some sort of error screen humorously mimicking Call of Duty‘s infamous “Update Requires Restart” message.

It’s clear that this is Sledgehammer hinting towards perhaps an Advanced Warfare-themed season coming down the road, as it’s previously been leaked that some of Advanced Warfare‘s futuristic weapons will make their way into Modern Warfare 3 at some point. Supporting this idea is a new skin included in Modern Warfare 3‘s new Season 1 battle pass, the Incite skin for Scorch, which closely resembles a futuristic jetpack soldier that looks like it would be featured in Advanced Warfare. As the developers behind the 2014 game, it makes sense that Sledgehammer will be the team handling such a crossover, if the leaks are true.

Could An Advanced Warfare Sequel Happen In the Future?

With sentiment surrounding the 2014 title growing rosier and Sledeghammer supposedly planning to incorporate some of its weapons into Modern Warfare 3, a true Advanced Warfare sequel sometime down the road doesn’t seem out of the question. As for this MW3 Mastercraft weapon blueprint, it’s unclear which bundle it’ll be a part of, but it’s expected to land in Modern Warfare 3‘s in-game shop sometime in the next few weeks during Season 1.