Infinity Ward on moving past Modern Warfare

For Infinity Ward, leaving the Modern Warfare franchise behind has been a positive experience for the studio, according to executive producer Mark Rubin.

"For us, we tied everything into the Modern Warfare universe. It was that universe and we tried as hard as we could not to every stray from that; from the lore behind it, from the characters, from everything about it," Rubin told GameSpot when discussing Call of Duty: Ghosts and its new alien-themed Extinction mode.

Rubin explained that Infinity Ward saw the opportunity to make a new Call of Duty sub-brand as one that would not only please fans, but also developers, because it gave them something new to work on.

"So I think once we sort of broke away from that and created this obviously very new franchise within Call of Duty, that we didn't feel as tied down to the lore," Rubin said. "And we felt like this is our opportunity to really do something new and do something fun for not only the players, but for the devs to work on as well."

Rubin previously described the decision to leave Modern Warfare behind as "not a hard decision, but a long decision." Though he said continuing the Modern Warfare story arc after 2010's Modern Warfare 3 would have been "easy," Infinity Ward ultimately decided to move in a different direction.

The result is Call of Duty: Ghosts, the latest entry in the hit shooter series and one that is being billed as having a more emotional storyline. Infinity Ward has tapped Academy Award-winning Traffic and Syriana author Stephen Gaghan to write the game's script.

Call of Duty: Ghosts launches this coming Tuesday for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Wii U. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions will be available at launch.

It is not clear if Activision plans to ever return to the Modern Warfare franchise. The publisher currently has five wholly owned studios working on the series. A Call of Duty game for 2014 has yet to be announced.