Call of Duty takes the game engine to a new level in upcoming releases

Activision's Call of Duty Next special event in Los Angeles saw a number of important announcements regarding the shooter franchise.

But perhaps one that may have gone unnoticed but is nonetheless quite relevant to the future of the series beyond Modern Warfare II is that from now on all Call of Duty games will share the same game engine. This is a refined version of the engine that debuted with Modern Warfare in 2019 and the combined talents of numerous studios.

Modern Warfare II features a physics-based materials system that enables next-generation photogrammetry, a new quad-based hybrid streaming system, new PBR rendering both above and below the water surface, volumetric lighting, 4K HDR and more, as well as a new GPU polygon count milestone.

It's a huge technical hype that Infinity Ward wants to make standard for the franchise, and also includes new toolchains, improved movement systems and AI intelligence.

Ricochet enhanced and enabled at launch

The Ricochet anti-cheat system has been constantly improved and updated (and in fact today we learned that half a million cheating or offensive accounts have been banned from Warzone thanks to it). In fact, for the release of Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0 it will be launched globally and simultaneously with the games. In addition, it will be updated continuously and more frequently than before. Cheating is going to be a lot harder now.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II will be available worldwide on 28 October on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC. Warzone 2.0 will follow a few weeks later on 16 November on the same platforms. Time to get back to combat.