After months of rumors and leaks, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is finally getting its massive new battle royale game mode today.

I haven’t written much about this latest Call of Duty title: While I like that Activision has returned the grittier and more realistic Modern Warfare style, the new game leaves me a bit cold. Where its predecessor, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, is vibrantly colorful and chaotic, the new Modern Warfare has an overly-dull color palette and a confusing progression system. Worse, the latency is horrific on Wi-Fi, almost unplayable.

But this new battle royale mode, called Warzone, may finally bring me—and other lost souls–back to the latest COD. It’s basically a gigantic new map—or, in Activision’s words, “experience”— of a place called Verdansk that supports over 100 simultaneous players, over 300 points of interests, and a wide variety of landscapes, many of which were pulled from previous popular COD multiplayer maps.

“A mix of areas including the cityscape of downtown Verdansk complete with tall buildings, the more rural Krovnik Farmland, and urban areas with many interiors prime for looting, decorate this expansive map,” Activision’s Stephanie Glover writes. “Players can explore Verdansk on five different vehicles – ATVs, Tactical Rovers, SUVs, Cargo Trucks, or Helicopters. Ride with your squad to your next destination, take out a rival, or drive to escape the closing circle.”

In addition to a traditional Battle Royale mode, which features three-person teams, Warzone also provides a new Plunder mode that lets gamers respawn as they “race to collect the most Cash which can be found across the map or gained by eliminating opponents. or completing contracts, objective-based tasks that reward Cash and other loot.”

For COD: Modern Warfare fans, Warzone shares the main game’s cross-play and unified progression system, and all earned content—like Battle Pass items, Operators, weapons, and customizations—will carry over to Warzone. It’s a big download: When it goes live later today, Warzone will weigh in at 12-22 GB; but those who want to get started early can download it now. Call of Duty: Warzone is free for COD: Modern Warfare owners, of course, but anyone can play it for free as a standalone game. That download will be an incredible 83 to 101 GBs.

Tagged with Call of Duty