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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was released 13 years ago, and after all these years, there’s new leaked footage showing a scrapped alternate ending for this game. In fact, this was a teaser for a MW4 sequel to the original MW trilogy. However, the developers might have removed this MW3 alternate ending in favor of building something new: a game that we know as Call of Duty: Ghosts. Was it a good decision, though? I doubt that.
What’s The Modern Warfare 3 Alternate Ending?
Leaked by different users on YouTube and X, the Modern Warfare 3/MW3 alternate ending takes place after the credits roll. We have Captain Price killing Vladimir Makarov, and then he lights a cigarette to relieve his pain. In the original version, Price smokes and the scene ends in FPS mode. In this leaked iteration, however, we see Price dropping his cigarette as a mysterious man emerges on the back.
That bald man is all there’s to it, and Price dropping his cigarette is probably a sign for him getting back to focus on another mission. Who is that guy? This has definitely something to do with revealing a new villain that’d threaten Price in the never-released Modern Warfare 4. Instead, this cutscene is scrapped so that Infinity Ward would work on Call of Duty: Ghosts.
Activision Chased Ghosts By Removing A Rich MW4 Plot
Ghosts is a mid-tier Call of Duty game. It has a normal Campaign mode with an ambiguous story, a Multiplayer mode that wasn’t perfectly polished, and two survival game modes that most Call of Duty fans wouldn’t remember. So overall, Ghosts was a random shot by Activision to develop a new game series, which was quite an obvious decision following the cliffhanger at the end of its Campaign.
Why did this happen? It’s not clear, but was it worth the shot? Absolutely not! Imagine a sequel to Modern Warfare 3, where a new threat that had worked in the shadows of Makarov appeared. A world after World War III was so worth watching and a rich narrative would make the idea flourish. But instead, we got a family tale in the middle of nowhere. Now, I don’t mean that Ghosts was a bad game overall, but it’d be much better to see a MW4 than that.
If there was a plan with an alternate ending for Modern Warfare 3/MW3, why scrap it to write a whole new scenario in another universe? In other words, if we had the Ghosts seriesinstead of the Modern Warfare games, it would be awesome to play Ghosts 4. But the removal of what we had with the Modern Warfare universe was a big mistake that led to the dark times with Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, and the later games that could never reach the heights of OG Modern Warfare and Black Ops titles.
Now after 13 years, the leaked Modern Warfare 3 alternate ending video won’t get us anywhere, while Ghosts 2 is probably in production as of writing. Recent leaks are suggesting that Call of Duty: Ghosts 2 is very well an option that’d be developed by Infinity Ward, releasing in 2026 after two Black Ops games. At least we get to see what happens after that 2013 cliffhanger.
