In a recent interview with Videogamer.com Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling explained why Modern Warfare 2 will only allow two player co-op, and why it has it’s own campaign. The ‘Special Ops’ mode was “designed to be replayed over and over again”.

Their justification for not having four player co-op like it’s predecessor Call of Duty: World at War did was because “two player seemed to be the magic number for co-op. That’s when it stayed really fun and intense without becoming a clusterf**k of things. We just found that two-players was the most fun.”

When asked why there was no co-op in the story to speak of he said “We don’t do co-op in our story because we’re crafting a very specific experience and we don’t want to ruin that by cramming co-op into it. We take the moments that work really well with co-op, we bring them out and we put them in Special Ops.”

“Story’s all about pacing. Sometimes moments get toned down because they don’t fit with the pacing of the experience you’re trying to deliver. There (in Special Ops) it’s all about fun. It’s about playing over and over again, getting a better time – you’ll have a time at the end of it – it’s about challenging a friend going in on co-op and trying to beat it on veteran.” said Bowling.

It’s nice to see a developer stick to it’s guns (no pun intended) when it comes to their games. Not compromising quality just for the sake of having certain features. But I think a top notch developer like Infinity Ward could find a way to make it work. Being able to enjoy a great game with three of your friends heightens the overall experience.

I think it worked quite well in Call of Duty: World at War. There was really never the feeling of it being a clusterfuck at all. It sounds to me like maybe Infinity Ward was too far into development when Treyarch released World at War, and showed that four player co-op was more than doable. That’s why they made it a separate ’Special Ops’ mode. A tack on if you will.

I’m a little disappointed to be honest. Modern Warfare 2 will still be ridiculously amazing but it would have been nice if Infinity Ward would have made the single player campaign playable as a four player co-op and let us, the players decide if it ruined the story or our experience. Clusterfuck or not.

Tags: Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 2