The multiplayer life cycle of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is now truly at full flow, with post-launch content already being rolled out to supplement the title's core multiplayer gameplay. Despite Season One Reloaded of the title being set to release on December 14, recent high-profile leaks have supposedly revealed information regarding the second season of the game, and even that of Warzone 2.0.
While these leaks have predictably ignited discourse among Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's community, it must be said that the information is of course unofficial at this time and may be subject to change. One of the most interesting factors of these leaks regarding the core multiplayer of MW2 is that its second season will supposedly see a return of the Castle map from Call of Duty: World at War. Although this map has been featured in other CoD titles, its nature as an original Treyarch map appearing in an Infinity Ward title would be an extreme rarity for the franchise.
The History of Castle in Call of Duty
Castle originally appeared in Call of Duty: World at War, which released in 2008. With World at War depicting World War Two, this original form of the Castle map was set in the South of Imperial Japan during the conflict, and saw Japanese forces face off against U.S Marines in a traditional Japanese fortress, from which the map got its name.
It can be argued that Castle was one of the most memorable maps in World at War's roster, so much so that it recently made a re-appearance in the franchise. The recent Call of Duty: Vanguard featured a remake of Castle within its map rotation at launch, with Vanguard sharing the World War Two setting of the map's original game. While of course boasting better graphical fidelity, the Vanguard version of castle additionally featured destructible environments like shoji screens to set it apart from its predecessor.
The Importance of Castle in Modern Warfare 2
The recent leaks regarding Modern Warfare 2's second season indicate that Castle is set for a return, as well as the Ronin operator from 2019's Modern Warfare. An immediate oddity regarding this potential re-introduction would be that Castle would be appearing in a setting outside of World War Two for the first time. Given the motifs of the alleged season two key art that leaked, as well as the potential return of Ronin, many are theorizing that season two will possess a Japanese theme, which would add logic to Castle's presence in Modern Warfare 2.
Most crucially, however, is that Castle is a map synonymous with Treyarch, the veteran Call of Duty development studio behind World at War. Both Treyarch and Infinity Ward have long been considered the two powerhouses behind the CoD franchise, with their respective Black Ops and Modern Warfare franchises often going head-to-head in discussion and debate among fans.
An established element of this legacy has always been a complete separation of the different map pools of the two development studios, with other CoD studios like Sledgehammer Games being the only studio that has historically borrowed from both Treyarch and IW in map re-implementation. If Castle is to appear in Modern Warfare 2, a very longstanding franchise precedent will be broken, with Infinity Ward pulling from some of Treyarch's most well-received maps. This of course would spell good news for the future of the franchise, with both studios perhaps beginning to act more symbiotically going forward.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
