Modern Warfare 3 was a crunch-driven 16 month project that began as a Mexico-set spin-off, according to reports

rockpapershotgun.com:

This winter's dismally received Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was created in "less than a year and a half", with staff working overtime to make up for mid-development changes of direction, according to a new report published on the day of the latest Activision shooter's release.

The story comes from Bloomberg, and is supposedly based on interviews with over a dozen current and former Call of Duty developers, who have asked to remain anonymous. It restates the paper's earlier claim that this year's Modern Warfare 3, developed by Sledgehammer Games, was first planned as an expansion for last year's Modern Warfare 2, hence the carrying over of weapons from the previous game. It was allegedly upgraded into a full sequel following the delay of another Call of Duty game once slated for release this year.

According to Bloomberg, the project that became this year's Modern Warfare 3 began life as a smaller-scale Modern Warfare spin-off set in Mexico. Codenamed Jupiter, it was designed to be relatively economical to develop by virtue of focusing on a single location, rather than zipping across the globe like the numbered Modern Warfare titles. In summer 2022, however, publisher Activision rebooted the game as a full direct sequel to Modern Warfare 2, featuring the villain Vladimir Makarov.

To pull this off, the anonymous devs say they had to crunch, working nights and weekends over around 16 months, in order to develop a longer campaign set in various locations. The developers also say they had to deal with friction with executives at Infinity Ward, lead developer of the Modern Warfare series, who had executive oversight on Sledgehammer's work and offered feedback late or made what Bloomberg describes as "significant and