'Unoriginal' Call of Duty blasted for reviving another dead protagonist

Understandably, Call of Duty really wants to make itself brand-recognisable by housing characters that appear year after year.

But when you splatter their brains across the floor in the campaign as a token death scene, why on Earth are they making a comeback six months down the line as if nothing had ever happened?

The theme of reviving Call of Duty's fallen soldiers is here again, as (spoiler alert if you've not played Modern Warfare 3's campaign) Soap is back from the dead, and fans are fuming at that "aggressive" live service model.

Soap returns from the dead in Modern Warfare 3 Season 4

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As part of Call of Duty's live service model, each bi-monthly Season is supposed to follow on from the last, all of which take place on the timeline after the end of the Campaign.

But Modern Warfare 3 Season 4 has brought forward its main protagonist, John "Soap" MacTavish, who was brutally capped off in this year's story mode.

In the Campaign, you watch Soap's ashes get scattered into a lake by the rest of Task Force 141 after the malicious menace Makarov puts a bullet through his skull in his underground coup. 

But it appears that Soap somehow survived the death blow and his incineration, as the cremated ashes must have regrown his body to return in Season 4. Yep, seems legit.

Modern Warfare 3 fans hate Soap's revival

Soap follows a massive collection of undead characters in Modern Warfare 3, as Graves somehow survived his KIA status from a tank explosion and other coffin dodgers came in the form of Barkov and Kamarov. 

Popular Call of Duty content creator Jon "MrDalekJD" Hutchinson was one of the more vocal players against Soap's undead status, taking to social media to say, "This man took a bullet to the head, was pronounced KIA on public record, had his ashes scattered by TF141. And yet SOMEHOW is back from the dead?! Make it make sense."

Another popular rant from a fan began lashing out at the "aggressive" live service model where these barbaric resurrections are used as a tool to sell skins.

"Once again, Call of Duty resurrect an objectively dead character purely so they can sell skins for him," said "HiddenXperia" on Twitter. "Soap was literally shot in the head in MWIII's (awful) Campaign, now he's magically alive. I'm so happy I grew up playing CoD before it was ruined by aggressive live service."

Soap's reintroduction should come with a video explanation closer to the launch of Season 4 next week, but it's certainly not a move that CoD fans have received well.