MW4 factions: Groups and story roles

Modern Warfare 4 turns Shadow Company into an antagonist, and puts the Korean People’s Army on the offensive for the first time in the series. The faction structure below is compiled from the campaign premise, the operator roster, and the DMZ briefings.

Factions at a glance

Shadow Company

Shadow Company is a private military company founded by Phillip Graves in 2017 as a global risk management, protection and deployment firm. It employs former special operations members and is contracted mostly by General Herschel Shepherd and the United States Army.

The company’s history in the series is long:

• War in Verdansk — hired by Allegiance to locate Victor Zakhaev, and operating outside the alliance’s boundaries so they could take the fight directly to Al-Qatala. A team led by Marcus “Lerch” Ortega flew to the Acropolis National Arena, where Rozlin “Roze” Helms blew the roof off to let them land inside.
• Operation Rogue Arsenal — Shadow Company contractors were part of the convoy carrying three ballistic missiles to American allies in the Middle East. Konni contractors intercepted the convoy in Al Mazrah, eliminated the Shadow Company element and stole the missiles.
• Return as antagonists — having been a supporting-turned-antagonistic faction in Modern Warfare II and a supporting faction in Modern Warfare III, Shadow Company returns in Modern Warfare 4 as an antagonistic faction.

The company operates under the motto Umbra Catervae — “shadow group” — and its commanders carry the codename Spade. Shadow Company uses the faction labels printed in the launch roster for playable Operators.

Konni Group

Konni is a Russian ultranationalist private military company, founded around 2018 and composed largely of former Spetsnaz operators. It is led by Vladimir Makarov and The Archer, and is allied with the Inner Circle and the Ultranationalists.

Konni’s activities are tied to chemical and radiological research:

• In late 2019 Konni occupied an abandoned underground bunker complex in Al Mazrah, United Republic of Adal — once part of the Soviet Defense Research Division, used for chemical weapons research and supercomputing. Using that data, the group irradiated the surface and built the Defense Research Center and Building 21, a large research facility where it continued studying the effects of the gas on human subjects.
• Seeking more subjects, Konni occupied Ashika Island and moved samples of the gas there.
• Following Makarov’s arrest on April 6, 2019, members of the Inner Circle — including Andrei Nolan and Ivan “Ares” Alexxeve — joined Konni to plan for his return.
• On June 8, 2023, 72 hours after a reported chemical attack on Vondel, Milena Romanova tasked Konni to secure the city under the guise of a peacekeeping force.

Konni is the faction most often positioned as a military adversary rather than a political one, and it operates in nearly every multiplayer level in the series.

Korean People’s Army

The Korean People’s Army is the primary armed force of North Korea and the antagonist faction in Modern Warfare 4’s central conflict.

The premise inverts the series’ usual framing. In Advanced Warfare, the North Korean forces were the first antagonist faction the player encountered, and the U.S. was defending Seoul. In Modern Warfare 4, the KPA is on the offensive in a full-scale invasion, and the player defends.

Las Almas Cartel

The Las Almas Cartel is a Mexican drug cartel based in Las Almas and appears in Modern Warfare 4 alongside the campaign’s DMZ content. It was formerly allied with Konni Group and Al-Qatala in earlier titles, and the cartel’s territory in Mexico is one of the contested environments operators pass through in extraction runs.

Mexico’s own faction list includes the Mexican Army, the Los Vaqueros special forces unit, the Las Almas Cartel and at least one unidentified cartel. Notable Mexican characters associated with the region include Alejandro Vargas, Diego Salgado, Jesús “Chuy” Ordaz, Rodolfo Parra and Valeria Garza.

United States response

The campaign’s Korean front is backed by a 10,000-man task force deployed by the United States Marine Corps, responding to treaty obligations established a century earlier. South Korea is a member of the Winslow Accord in Black Ops III, which frames the alliance MW4 draws on.

The campaign premise names a young squad of South Korean soldiers fighting on the collapsing front lines, led by Private Park, who faces live combat for the first time. Beyond the front lines, Captain Price operates outside the system he once served.

Operators who return

Several characters carry the faction structure into the operator roster, and at least two reappear specifically as DMZ enemy lieutenants:

Roze’s own path is worth noting: she graduated from Army Ranger School, left the service, joined the Jackals mercenary group under Viktor “Zane” Metiko, and in 2020 accepted Graves’s offer to help restore order in Verdansk. By 2022 she had cut ties with Shadow Company. In MW4 she appears on the other side.

How are playable factions assigned?

The launch roster assigns a faction label to each playable Operator. It does not publish individual studio ownership for the characters. Development credits therefore cannot establish an additional roster or an Operator unlock requirement.

How does this relate to the launch roster?

Activision publishes 33 Operators for Multiplayer and DMZ in its launch roster. The complete playable list records the source’s faction labels and unlock criteria. Story characters, military units, skins and selectable Operators are different records; do not add them together as a roster count.

How does this relate to the launch roster?

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