Summary
- Call of Duty's Gunsmith system revolutionized weapon customization, offering players access to a wide array of attachments and customization options.
- The Gunsmith feature, introduced in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, has become a staple of the franchise, allowing players to fine-tune their weapons.
- Battlefield could benefit from implementing a Gunsmith-like system for enhanced immersion, potentially addressing the criticism of 2042's unresponsive weapons. Additionally, a complex Gunsmith just makes more sense for a series like Battlefield instead of the more arcadey Call of Duty franchise.
Though its first few entries were still pretty sizable successes, the Call of Duty franchise really hit the big time with 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a game that changed the landscape for online shooters. Over the next few years, Call of Duty continued to improve upon Modern Warfare's groundbreaking formula, and the franchise saw success after success. But it hasn't all been smooth sailing for the Call of Duty franchise.
Though Call of Duty continues to be one of the most successful video game franchises on the planet, its critical reception has seen a stark decline in recent years, with the series' most prevalent criticism being its repetitive nature, with its formula having remained largely unchanged for almost two decades now. But that doesn't mean that Call of Duty hasn't tried to innovate, and there's one recent feature that deserves to find its way into other military shooters like Battlefield: the Gunsmith.
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Call of Duty's Gunsmith System Explained
First introduced in 2015's Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Gunsmith is essentially an improved version of classic Call of Duty's custom loadout system. In this original iteration, Gunsmith allowed players to choose five separate attachments for their chosen weapon, along with applying a range of custom paintjobs and additional cosmetics. 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare took the Gunsmith to an entirely different level, allowing players to drastically alter a weapon's performance and purpose by picking from a massive range of attachments.
Since 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the Gunsmith has become a staple feature of the franchise, appearing in every entry since, including Call of Duty: Warzone. In 2022's MW2, the Gunsmith even allowed players to fine tune their weapon's individual attachments, being able to manually balance the gun's statistics to suit the player's needs.
Battlefield Could Make Better Use of Gunsmith's Immersion
Both the biggest blessing and biggest curse of Call of Duty's Gunsmith system is its complexity, and the immersion that comes from that. Customization has always been at the heart of multiplayer Call of Duty, and the Gunsmith feature feels like a natural evolution of that franchise pillar, allowing players to truly make their weapons feel like their own. That being said, Call of Duty still very much bills itself as an arcadey shooter intended for more casual audiences, and the more complex Gunsmith gets, the less likely it is for those audiences to engage with it.
Instead, Call of Duty's Gunsmith system might actually be more suited for a series like Battlefield. Loadout customization in Battlefield has always been a few steps behind Call of Duty, but Battlefield 2042 tried its best to innovate in its own way, allowing players to swap out weapon attachments on the fly. One of Battlefield 2042's few saving graces, this mechanic often felt quite satisfying to use, letting players swap between close-range and long-range at a moment's notice.
But while this attachment-swapping mechanic was fun to use for a while, it wasn't imperative to Battlefield 2042's gameplay, and a system like Call of Duty's Gunsmith would work much better. Complex, intricate, and a tad finicky, Call of Duty's Gunsmith could be used to great effect in a game like Battlefield, where immersion is usually at the forefront of the experience. A Gunsmith system in Battlefield could really enhance immersion by doubling down on historical accuracy, allowing players to customize their weapons with a range of real-world attachments. Additionally, a big point of criticism of Battlefield in recent years is that its weapons have felt a little unresponsive, and that's something a Gunsmith feature could fix, allowing players to drastically change their weapons and see the results first-hand.
