Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's New Gunsmith Feature is a…

Summary

The multiplayer mode in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is reverting back to earlier features like a faster movement speed and original mini-map changes, but the Gunsmith feature is being expanded on.
The Gunsmith feature in Modern Warfare 3 allows players to unlock Aftermarket Parts that can completely change the design and gameplay of weapons, adding complexity to customization options.
While Aftermarket Parts complexity will feel like a great thing for hardcore players, casual fans may find the Gunsmith even more confusing and hard to navigate because of the new mechanic.

From everything Sledgehammer Games has revealed so far, it seems as though Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is really trying to push the series forward in a few sizable ways. In its recent trailers, Sledgehammer has confirmed that Modern Warfare 3's campaign mode will feature some big additions, such as more open-ended missions, and Modern Warfare 3's Zombies mode is also making some big changes, going properly open-world for the first time. And those aren't the only changes coming with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 made some pretty controversial changes to the series' multiplayer, a mode that's largely been unchanged for the best part of a decade now. In an attempt to appease fans, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is walking back almost all of those changes, such as bringing back a faster movement speed and reverting the mini-map changes. But there's one MW2 feature that Modern Warfare 3 isn't walking back, but instead embracing fully and even expanding on, and that's the series' Gunsmith feature. However, its new mechanic could end up being a double-edged sword in this sequel.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's Gunsmith Has Both Its Upsides and Downsides

Gunsmith was first introduced in 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, where it felt like a natural evolution for the franchise. While Call of Duty games had been letting players customize their weapons for over a decade at that point, Modern Warfare's Gunsmith offered the most streamlined, next-gen way to do that, letting players clearly see their weapon and all of its accompanying stats, and see plainly how an attachment would affect those. Intuitive, simple, and clean, Modern Warfare's Gunsmith felt like the perfect addition for a game that was trying to soft-reboot the franchise for the modern age.

Last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 took things quite a bit further with its own version of the feature aptly named Gunsmith 2.0. Carrying forward the same general layout and UI as its predecessor, Gunsmith 2.0 was just as intuitive to use, but it did offer some more complex features for those looking for them. On top of having more attachments than ever before, Gunsmith 2.0 introduced a weapon platform system that allowed players to mix and match these attachments across a range of different weapons. Gunsmith 2.0 also added a weapon tuning feature that allowed players to manually tweak each individual attachment to give the weapon more preferred stats.

While these additions added a great deal of depth to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's extensive arsenal, it did make the Gunsmith feature feel a tad too complex, going directly against why it was loved in the first place. And now, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is about to complicate things even further. In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's Gunsmith, players can now unlock a series of conversion kits for the game's weapons called "Aftermarket Parts." These Aftermarket Parts can completely change the design and gameplay of a weapon. For instance, Sledgehammer has shown that a pistol's Aftermarket Parts will convert it into a mini SMG, while an LMG's conversion kit will change it into a bullpup configuration.

This new version of the Gunsmith has both its upsides and downsides. On one hand, a more complex Gunsmith with Aftermarket Parts gives die-hard Call of Duty players something new to unlock and experiment with, rewarding them for completing some presumably tough challenges. However, on the other hand, making Gunsmith even more complicated in Modern Warfare 3 may only end up continuing to alienate the series' more casual audience, an audience that longs for a return of just an old-school drop-down list of attachments that can be equipped with just a click or two.