Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Dev Explains How Open Combat Missions Actually Work

ign.com:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has new Open Combat Missions that Activision says offer players greater freedom than any Call of Duty has before. But exactly how do they work?

In an interview with Xbox, David Swenson, campaign creative director at lead developer Sledgehammer Games, said these Open Combat Missions, or OCMs, add an “incredible” level of choice to the player.

OCMs offer the player a raft of choices for mission completion. You can, for example, go for a stealthy approach and use night-vision goggles and suppressed weapons to complete the mission without alerting enemies to your presence. If you want to go all guns blazing, you can use extra armour plates and wade in.

It’s worth pointing out you won’t be given an OCM that’s a dedicated stealth op, with silenced weapons to choose from. Rather, if you want to take the mission on stealthily, you can do that by only using a knife and playing the OCM as a stealth mission. Conversely, for an all-guns blazing approach, you can use one of the vehicles available in the mission for an assault. According to Swenson, OCMs can be challenging and “often” lead to multiple attempts to work out a satisfying tactic.

Some of the OCMs contain what are called Armaments, Modern Warfare 3’s campaign name for Call of Duty’s famous killstreaks. If you search your surroundings and find an Armament, you’ll get a tactical item, for example calling in air support. We’re not sure if this means Call of Duty’s classic UAV or AC-130 Gunship, but we do know Armaments are in the single-player campaign.

Helpfully, you don’t need to actually kill any enemies to earn an Armament in an OCM, which means stealthy players can carry on being stealthy and still get one.

“If you want to sneak through the