The inside scoop on Modern Warfare 2’s high-octane return to form by the writers and actors who made it happen
“Ooh, a chicken and egg question!” cackles Brian Bloom, a likeable and loquacious New Yorker with a string of film, TV, and videogame credits on both sides of the screen that stretch all the way back to a bit part in Sergio Leone’s 1983 classic Once Upon a Time In America.
He’s currently holed up in a former stock exchange in Amsterdam on a press junket for the latest Call of Duty instalment, Modern Warfare II, on which he served as lead writer. The new game is a direct sequel to 2019’s reboot, Modern Warfare, rather than a remake of the 2009 sequel of the almost exact same name, Modern Warfare 2, which was itself a follow-on from the original Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (pay attention at the back).
We’ll get to the question in question in a moment. Bloom and his equally expressive colleague Jeff Negus, the game’s Narrative Director, had just spent the best part of an hour on stage explaining what they set out to do with their game, a theme they picked up again in the first few minutes of our subsequent interview.
Modern Warfare II picks up exactly three years on from the final frame of its predecessor – “it starts when you put the proverbial disc in… although you’re not putting a disc in anymore”, says Bloom – with returning characters, SAS Captain John Price and Sergeant Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick – having spent the intervening time recruiting their new Task Force 141.