[Editor's note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware it may not jive with the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been in the headlines quite a bit recently, mainly concerning the leaked footage of the airport level. We've had varying levels of reactions go around here amongst the watercooler at Destructoid, and I've noticed a wide range of opinions in the comments as well.
The thing is, I just can't stand by Infinity Ward's decision on the scene.
Honestly, I get a horrible, unsettling feeling in my stomach when I think about the scene. I sat and watched it a few times over, and despite what explanations I've heard about the scene and Activision's statement on it, it just doesn't come across as something that "evoke the atrocities of terrorism," at least not in a way that it should.
The scene itself
As far as things seem to be, you're playing as an undercover CIA agent who has to participate in this attack on an airport. You're only required to take out the security guards here, but your teammates are going wholesale slaughter on the place, and there's nothing preventing you from joining in, save for your own morals.
And even then, you're going to lose a part of your soul playing through the level. Why? Because it's asking you to condone this sort of action. You have to stand by and watch -- even participate -- in this slaughter. Yes, it's supposed to evoke the horrors of terrorism and show the harsh choices people do have to go through in real life, but it does it in a way that's blunt and ham-fisted, in my mind.
In my mind, what the scene actually does is take the will to fight out of me. By having me participate in the slaughter, it makes me question if this fighting is even worth it. It seems as though there's no way for me to reconcile with what I've done -- saying that it's in order to protect a greater number of lives
There are a number of reasons why the ghosts that our government agencies have implanted across the world are chosen for their missions, and one of them is undoubtedly because they can manage to stomach the actions they have to undertake so that the rest of the world need not know about them.
The GTA equivalent
I saw a lot of people commenting that "Big deal you can kill civilians have you ever played G.T.A or saints row you can do it in them and in a more brutal way you guys are making it seem like a huge or deal when its not" (That one is from jordang.) Yes, you do slaughter civilians in the Grand Theft Auto series, but I don't particularly like this argument.
The first reason is that while you do have the freedom to murder and rob civilians, when you do, you are presented with an immediate and negative feedback for the action (wanted stars). Repeatedly doing the action sends police chasing after you, and leads to your possible arrest/death soon after. There isn't that in the game. In fact, the slaughter is rewarded with a positive outcome: allowing you to proceed in the level. The lack of negative feedback in the game from this scene, instead choosing to rely on a player's internal morality to let them know this scene is bad.
Second, there's an expressly different mindset when playing Grand Theft Auto. The game's tone takes itself much less seriously and to an extent I find the violence "comic." There's a clear line between comic violence and brutally realistic violence, which is where I put Modern Warfare 2. There's just not the same level of realism when it comes to shooting down civilians running away from you when compared to running over old ladies with "Vladivostok FM" playing in the background.
And that's really not a bad thing. It's just that the two things don't have the same tone to how they treat the situation. It's like pitting Zombieland and Night of the Living Dead against each other. Sure, they've got the same basic point of contention (zombies), but they tackle them in such different lights, that it's pointless to draw parallels.
In the larger context
A feeling I got not only from the commenters but from Infinity Ward is that "Hollywood does this sort of stuff every day." There are varying extents to the effectiveness of this claim, but my feeling on storytelling, not solely in film or videogames or any other medium, is that there are rules or guidelines for a rewarding story.
The rules and guidelines not only help people to create an effective story, but also helps explain the rationale for why certain boundary-pushing scenes or stories are being told. You can trace a logical progression through the horror genre, for example. But when something pops up that is so radically out there, it more often than not will get hammered down.
I'm not talking about "out there" in an innovative sense -- I mean something that's overly gory, bordering on snuff. It ignores the cultural rules that have been formed in order to attempt and describe their vision, which others just might not share.
And that's what I feel Modern Warfare 2 has done.
What they could have done
Does Infinity Ward and Activision have the right to make this? Absolutely. This is the USA, after all, and Modern Warfare 2 has some serious artistic value, so the obscenity label should be placed nowhere near this work. I just think that it violates the cultural taboos that I mentioned earlier.
It wouldn't be right of me to simply bash this work and not give any suggestions, now would it? So here's how I would have tackled this, with the limited knowledge I have about the entire story.
I would have had the level itself play as the aftermath. You go in as a medic, attempting to find survivors amongst the piles of bodies. There would be some, and you're simply trying to hear their stories before some of them die, to get an idea of what happened.
Yes, the scene would be tough to go through, and may be equally controversial, but I think it would give the appropriate impression that Infinity Ward is going for with the airport scene. It would ignite that sort of anger and disgust with what happened that makes you want to go out and get revenge, in my mind.
And as for the horror of having to give up your soul and participate in something like this as an undercover agent? What about inserting flashbacks later on in the game? As you're chasing down a terrorist or something, the player has flashbacks to chasing down civilians in the airport? Torturing them with an altered reality (something Kane and Lynch failed to exploit properly) could be extremely effective.
The use of negative space, allowing the player's imagination to fill in the blanks as to what happened, is something much more powerful and more frightening, in my mind. Infinity Ward would have done well to take advantage of that.
Conclusion
What Infinity Ward has done here is certainly something ambitious. They're attempting to take storytelling in another direction, giving it a stronger sense of realism than we've ever seen in a game before, some might argue.
But as revolutionary as it might be, my feeling is that Infinity Ward is handling this in the wrong manner. The way that the plot is likely being handled comes across with a lot of the wrong messages, and shows a poor method of thinking when it comes to the sensitivity of the issue: simply presenting something like this in its full form.
Ultimately, it's not up to me to decide the fate of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It's up to you, the general public, to decide. You can choose to cancel your pre-orders and not spend your money on the game, instead placing it elsewhere. God knows there are plenty of games coming out to spend your money on.
I'll leave the decision up to you, but as of right now, I can't throw my weight behind Modern Warfare 2.
Contest:
11:00 PM on 11.01.2009
| 
To be honest I'm not quite sure where I stand on the issue. I know that a lot of people who are going to be playing MW2 won't give a damn about immersion or storytelling, hell, some of them skip SP all together. So as a result a lot of people are just going to see it as another level where you shoot dudes. So I'm not entirely sure it's necessary to put a scene like this in a game with a F.A.G.S PSA statement, since I'm fairly sure that shows the target audience of the game quite well, 13 year old xbox kiddies.
The actual event itself however, doesn't feel like an event, it looks just like an average level. If IW wanted to stir REAL emotions, they could have given some weight to your actions rather than killing faceless civilians, but instead they go for the GUNS GUNS GUNS route, which kind of kills the experience a bit. Remember the ending of MW1? When those people died, you FELT IT. That's because they had character. Plus other stuff I won't go into because it's MW2 spoilers.
Anyway, I've rambled on a little too much. Nice article.
Hopefully opinions such as yours will make Infinity Ward rethink or remove the offending scene. I understand the idea they're trying to get across, but I agree that it could be done much more tastefully. One does not need to play a cat torturing simulator to know that torturing cats is bad.
I didn't see the video, and I'm kinda glad I didn't. I'm not the kind of person who can completely shut down his brain while playing a game, so I actually connect with the characters and scenery like most people would a good book or movie. The thing I want to ask is, is this really necessary? There are better ways to show the horrors and evils of terrorism than having the player experience it all firsthand. This point is especially true if you're forced to kill people to advance. Now that I think about it, didn't they later say that the section was optional? It seems like backpedaling to me, but if you're going to have such a controversial section in the game be completely optional, why have it at all?
This reeks strongly of "controversy for controversy's sake" to me. And, to go further off the deep end, look at the type of people who say that video games teach us how to kill. Do you want them to find out about this? This is exactly the kind of ammunition that we don't want those types of people to have against gamers.
What was that one game...? Six Days in Fallujah or whatever? Doesn't it strike anyone else odd that that game got so much flak in development that it eventually went canceled despite being a supposedly faithful look at the war, and yet this game is absolutely going to be released with the player actively engaging in terrorism?
Regardless of me being right on those points, I still feel the section was thrown into there only for the "because we can" factor.
Even though I think they could have been a bit more subtle in presentation, I'm still intrigued. But I can't make any sort of realistic judgment having not played it and having only seen it in shit-o-vision.
It's a shame I'll have to wait so long to play it; I'm buying it used. Fuck you Activision.
I can't say IW had noble intentions with the game, I don't know the guys personally, but I can see some positiveness in the negative.
That's the real beauty of it, in my opinion. If a level evokes such a strong response, it's getting somewhere. Granted, it needn't be so necessarily negative, and almost telling the gamer to hate himself, but this is a step towards what moral choice in a game SHOULD be. Not cut-and-dry "here's a good option, here's a bad one" that slightly changes conversation trees or whatever. An actual choice. Based on actual morals.
Citizen Kane this is not. (I personally think the comparison to Citizen Kane is stupid, for any medium. What's the Citizen Kane of books? Sorry, unrelated.)
But anyway, even if this is a bit of a clumsy, misguided execution, it's the kind of thing that puts in a little bit of hope for advancement.
also, i have a feeling you never had any intention of buying this game anyway, as this was written to be your mature examination on videogame entertainment and its psychological effects on todays society. 4 more pages and MLA format btw.
for your BattleField: Bad Company2 blog just say "EVIL E.A." except you never had any intention of buying that one either.
One of these days Zeta, straight to the Moon!
I honestly think IW got stuck looking for something that would cultivate a similar "wow" factor to the infamous nuclear blast in Modern Warfare, and that's a real shame because they seem to have shot over a potentially incredible sequence into a no mans land.
Personally, this obvious misstep isn't going to stop me from buying the game. I'm sure I'll still enjoy it, despite this sequence. To each his own, I suppose.
Games as a medium have the power to force the player to do things they don't essentially want to do. I applaud Infinity Ward for being willing to push the boundaries of what is acceptable within games. If someone doesn't have the stomach for it that's no issue - but you aren't meant to be comfortable with this and that's really the important part of this scene. Cutting away or fading to black is just skirting around the event and plenty of games already do that and if games are to be taken seriously as a medium they do need to push a little bit outside of comfort zones.
Despite this amusingly enough I won't be buying the game for awhile as I'm a PC gamer who happens to like things like dedicated servers. If their IWNET works out fine and everyone swears it's perfect I'll pick it up.
Fuck activision, but GO IW! If we dont let this sort of storytelling happen in games, the growth of the industry is stunted. There are things in movies that can hit just as hard. Yes you may not be able to be the one DOING whats happening in the movie. But you have to view someone doing it who is enjoying it! Thats a whole different thing....satisfaction of an atrocious act is all but evident in movies. Now allowing for it to happen by your hands ( reluctantly or....whole heartedly) Gives a different prespective in many ways.
I believe most will skip the scene. Or they shall play it and most will not shoot anyone, unless necessary to progress. Now, in this sense you are just viewing the scene in a more interactive and gritty form.
How is this scene in COD MW2 any different? Just because it uses the T-word. You know, Terrorist. Ever since 9/11 that word has had uncomfortable emotional baggage for Americans. Well, you know what, I'm not an American. Other countries in the world have experienced terrorism before, but only when the US experienced it, oh only then does it become taboo. What about Counterstrike, where as a terrorist, you take hostages? Why is that any different? Oh wait, that's right, CS was developed BEFORE 9/11. Apparently when non-Americans get killed by terrorists, it doesn't become a taboo topic.
I have no issue with this. It's been done before. In many other games.
Having said that I will not be buying COD MW2 because in Australia, IT IS 120 FREAKING DOLLARS! Our dollar is at 92-95 US cents last time I checked. It's almost EQUAL to your dollar, and activision are still charging double. Now, they have a right to do that, they are the publisher, it's their game. They are a business and they want to make money and that's fine. Free market and all that jazz.
And I have the right to not buy it. 120 is too steep for me. I'll wait until it gets down to 80 bucks before I buy it.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
you watched the COD4 nuke scene before you played the game, do you think it would have the same impact. (I still haven't played COD4) Play the game, then we shall see.
I *could* walk away from this article and not be critical... except for your totally bullshit justification of GTA's violence as being above this. It is PURE BULLSHIT. If you are going to spout about how this is unacceptable, and then say "but yeah, I GTA is still okay" then it is... (redundant for emphasis) BULLSHIT.
Oh, GTA is comic. So if we make killing innocent people fun... THAT IS WHAT MAKES IT BETTER? Oh, right. You were just *suckered* into running over old ladies with a car because the game manipulated you with it's fun factor. And, right the "wanted stars." Wait... so are you saying that GTA is showing real world consequences or not? You defend it by saying, "Buuttt.... but there are wanted stars in GTA! They aren't making you do it! They are punishing you for it!" And the on the other hand you say "Yeah, but it's pretty fun. I mean they make it comical so mindless murder makes me laugh, so it's all good."
Like I said. I'm not *big* on what they are doing, but I can understand what they are attempting and give them that at least. And if all you had to say was that you, think that it was inappropriate, then that would be fine by me. But yeah... Bullshit.
I think it is irresponsible to jump to conclusions until you truly know whether IW has evoked the emotions/reactions they were aiming for.
If people had judged Michelangelo's David before it was fully released they might have thought he was just sculpting a cock! (Humor: it can navigate us through even the most controversial times)
It's selling for 90 bucks on Steam
Looks like I'll buy it after all.
Now, this is completely counteracted by the announcement that you can skip the scene in question. That feels like the move of a developer/publisher afraid of the controversy the scene can cause, and in my eyes, destroys the artistic integrity of the game, and the integrity of the developer/publisher. Instead of attempting to push the boundries of what is acceptable in gaming, they are caving in and hurting the entire industry.
Your GTA4 comparison lacks depth. There are many, many missions in GTA4 where the goal of the mission is to kill cops and civilians. There is no inevitable arrest or death in the Three Leaf Clover mission for instance, you are tasked with killing dozens of cops and then getting away with it. There is no satire or comedic tone in that mission either, it is played very serious as an homage to the movie Heat, a brilliant film all about bad men as well by the way. GTA4 is not at all as comedic on the whole as previous entries, and has many very serious story segments much more brutal than Modern Warfare 2.
I think your arguement is frankly dangerous, as are the similar arguements in some other media outlets. It is basically saying "games are different because you are the character," which is what Jack Thompson and others have been saying about games for a long time now. All the hatred thrown at Thompson and really he was never saying much other than you are now (only in a much more insanely presented fashion, granted). Once we as gamers admit that being in the role of the killer is different than watching a killer on TV, we are basically begging for government oversight and intervention, which given the situation in Australia is not exactly outside the realm of possiblity.
In the end I can summarize by saying it's just a game, we have seen worse before, it's all make believe and polygons, just like Freddy is all makeup and wires. It's telling a story, and if you don't like that story, don't buy it, but leave the arguements intended to make it out as something else in your mind, they are fabrications slanted to your political view.
I stand by that this could (and should) be one of the most important and revolutionary developments in gaming and in fact in post-9/11 society as a whole. I am genuinely surprised anyone would consider not buying the game because of this, if anything I think it deserves much more support. I wasn't going to buy the game until it hit the second hand market because of the inflated price - but recent developments have started to convince me otherwise and though I'm still not prepared to shell out for a pre-order, I am at leats going to be buying a new copy of the game now.
This really stood out to me, and I think it's what IW is trying to achieve. As gamers playing games where death is EVERYWHERE, we're generally pretty detached from it. When a scene in a video game comes along and manages to get that gut wrenching, disturbing, terrible feeling that should accompany death, I think they've done their job. I think it's supposed to be blunt, supposed to smack you in the face, and leave you with an "Oh my God..." sort of feeling.