Following Orders comes third in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign and ranks among its bleakest missions. You take the role of a North Korean soldier under Commander Ri Ju-Young, combing a fog-covered village for a defector trying to reach the border. Combat is scarce. Most of the mission involves checking homes, reading notes, and choosing dialogue, with three decisions determining who survives. No choice causes mission failure, but two determine whether your character makes it out alive.
Quick answer: Open the first-house lockbox with code 214, question the husband about the South Korean medicine, bring the hidden woman out of the kitchen hatch, then execute the defector. That is the only path where your soldier survives.
Following Orders choices and outcomes
Following Orders has three decision points. The first one only affects achievements. The last two combine to set the ending.
| Decision | Option | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Interrogating the couple | Contraband questions | Location revealed, no harm |
| Interrogating the couple | Threaten | Location revealed, no harm |
| Interrogating the couple | Shoot non-vital spot | Location revealed, No Harm Done lost |
| Woman in the hatch | Bring her outside | Final note readable |
| Woman in the hatch | Hide her | She is found later, final note lost |
| The gallows | Execute (woman brought out) | Your soldier survives |
| The gallows | Execute (woman hidden) | Your soldier is hanged |
| The gallows | Refuse | Ri shoots you, defector dies anyway |
Every route reaches the same story beat. The defector dies, and Ri orders her troops to kill the villagers and burn the village. Mission completion still counts no matter which ending you get. Only your character’s fate and the trophies are on the line.
Following Orders objectives and reward
Objectives always arrive in the same order, and none of them have a timer. You can search each house as slowly as you like.
| Order | Objective | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Find information about the defector | First house |
| 2 | Regroup with Ko and Ri | Outside |
| 3 | Bring the Defector out alive | Second house |
| 4 | Find every civilian | Final house |
| 5 | Assist with defector | Village courtyard |
- Completion reward is a Double XP Token.
- The campaign offers solo play and has no cooperative mode.
- Recruit, Regular, Hardened, and Veteran are open from the start.
- Realism unlocks after beating the campaign once, and YOLO unlocks after beating it on Realism.
First house: all contraband and the peaceful interrogation
Sergeant Ko holds the husband in the living room while his wife stands in the kitchen. You can interrogate the couple, threaten them, or kill them outright. Killing them does not fail the objective and skips you straight to the next one, but it locks you out of No Harm Done. Clean out the house before you start any dialogue, because each confiscated item adds a question you can put to the husband. You need at least two pieces of contraband to get a compliant answer without force.
| Item | Type | Where it is |
|---|---|---|
| Heart medicine | Contraband | Red lockbox, first room on the right |
| NOTE FROM YOUR FRIEND | Note | Same red lockbox |
| MP3 player | Contraband | Bathroom wall cabinet, near entrance |
| Western novel | Contraband | Upper cabinet, room left of the kitchen |
| BAEKSEOLGI-TTEOK RECIPE | Note | Kitchen, left cupboard |
| Extra rations | Contraband | Kitchen cabinet just above the recipe |
The Western novel is titled “The Moon and Our Planets.” Each pickup only counts after you press the CONFISCATE or READ NOTE prompt. Opening a cupboard on its own does nothing.
Once all four items are in your pocket, run the interrogation in this order.
Other routes give you the same location. Pointing your gun at either civilian, or bringing the wife into the living room and threatening her there, still counts as harmless. Shooting either of them in a non-vital spot also gets the answer, but it costs you the trophy. Picking “Run while you can” with the wife opens the backyard, where she is killed, and there is nothing to collect out there.
If you used force, load an earlier checkpoint or restart the mission through Mission Select to attempt the peaceful approach.
Following Orders lockbox code: 214
Some players call the red lockbox a toolbox. It is in a cupboard in the first room on the right, and its three-digit code is 214. The clue is in the kitchen’s BAEKSEOLGI-TTEOK RECIPE note. It lists rice flour (2kg), salt (1 tsp), water (1L), and golden raisins (4 packs). The instructions say to use flour first, water next, and raisins after that, while leaving out the salt. That sequence gives you 2-1-4.
You can also shoot the latch instead. You get the same heart medicine and NOTE FROM YOUR FRIEND either way. Pick up both items separately so each one registers.
Second house: catching the defector
Outside, Ko passes the location to Ri, and she orders the defector brought out alive. The house next door has no notes or contraband. Clear the rooms until you reach the bathroom, where blood in the sink shows the defector passed through. The ambush comes from whichever room you clear last, either the bedroom or the bathroom. The defector lunges at you with a knife, you counter the attack, and Ko tackles him. It is a scripted scene, so you will not die here.
The squad hauls him into the courtyard, then Ri directs you to clear the final house, triggering the civilian objective.
Final house: the kitchen hatch and the hidden woman
A cellar beneath the tiled kitchen floor is where the final civilian is hiding. You can also find the last two notes in this house. Killing this civilian, unlike the one in the first house, causes the objective to fail.
Choosing “Okay. Stay hidden.” or pressing HIDE WOMAN shuts the hatch and locks NOTE FROM MOM away for good. She is discovered later anyway, and hiding her turns the execute ending into one where your soldier is hanged.
Assist with defector: execute or refuse
Back in the courtyard, Ko reports that every villager has been rounded up, and Ri demands a hanging. You help tie the noose to a tree limb with the ASSIST prompt. The defector is stood on a wooden stool, and you are handed the rope. On PlayStation, hold L2 and R2 to execute, or press the refuse prompt (Q on PC).
Executing means your soldier kicks away the stool. If you brought the woman out of the hatch earlier, your character survives the mission. Refusing and speaking up makes Ri draw her pistol and shoot you. The defector is hanged anyway, and Ko orders his squad to open fire as the village burns. Neither choice earns an achievement.
No Stone Unturned and No Harm Done trophies
Both trophies are Silver (50G each) and can be earned in a single run.
| Trophy | Requirement | Unlocks when |
|---|---|---|
| No Harm Done | Get the defector’s location without hurting civilians | Husband names the house next door |
| No Stone Unturned | Confiscate 4 contraband items, read 4 notes | You read NOTE FROM MOM |
The game confirms progress as you go. A NOTES FOUND counter appears with each read, so you should see 2/4 when you leave the first house and 4/4 when you look into the cellar. The objective also switches to Regroup with Ko and Ri once the husband talks. If the counter comes up short, go back to the first-house lockbox and the bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen cabinets. In the third house, remember that reading the neighbor’s note does not hand you the key. You still have to pick it up by the window and use it on the hatch yourself.
The Double XP Token arrives when the mission ends, separate from either trophy. Following Orders also contributes four notes toward Noteworthy, the trophy for reading 50 of the campaign’s 64 notes.
