GDC continues to out-E3 E3 with yet another incredi-announcment. This time it’s Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2. Note that’s not “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″, just “Modern Warfare 2.” Which is an odd choice. Is it fear of “Call of Duty 5/6″ sounding too haggard and aged? Is it shame/annoyance at Treyarch’s entries in the COD lineage? Or is it because they want to save “COD 5″ for a different theme, as 4 was to CODs 1/2/3?
Anyway, atmospheric but possibly controversial teaser trailer beneath the digi-hurdle.
Civilian massacre sure is an odd way to promote a videogame. This may just be a mood-setter, but if we were to sniff around for hints, we can identify that’s likely a continuation of the Russian terrorist cell storyline from COD4, there’s a possibility the series will take us to civilian-inhabited areas for the first time, and that there could be some high-tech sonic tracking technology. Or something. I don’t know much military lingo.
An immediate concern is that COD4 was curiously satirical about war and the glorification of the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, whereas this trailer goes straight for terrorism as drama/entertainment. It’s certainly brave, but it’ll be fascinating to see how the game itself treats this delicate subject.
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I loved CoD4’s singpleayer to bits… well the SAS missions at least, most of them were very tense and highly enjoyable and the story wasn’t at all bad I don’t know what some of you people are expecting.
Lunaran: surely it making you uncomfortable was the point? No it was probably just an accident that it did that because anything that relates to the current feelings of the general public is just “cashing in”
As far as I can tell, the eniter POINT of gears was it’s over confidence, it’s partly what made it so hilariously fun for me.
Serenegoose: They weren’t civilians on that freighter – I’m not sure what gave you the impression they were.
the revealer: Propaganda storyline? Did you play the same CoD4 as I did? When one of the playable characters dies due to a nuclear detonation (oh, spoilers for the 3 people left in the world who haven’t already played CoD4 or heard about that bit), the last thing I think is that it’s a (booya) propaganda storyline…
..the package is aboard a medium freighter, ESTONIAN registration number 52775.
Captain Price: There is a small crew and security detail on board.
Gaz: Rules of engagement sir?
Captain Price: Crew expendable.
as far as I’m aware, britain is not at war with estonia in this game, or indeed with any country. so the crew on the freighter are not soldiers, so they’re civilians. of course the security detail who fight back are something else entirely.
You drop down, in front of the bridge, and gun down the surprised bridge crew without so much as asking if they’d like to forget they ever seen you. murdering civilians? yes indeedy. :)
“I think calling MW satire is giving it too much credit. Doesn’t satire have to be rooted in humor? That tends to be how it signals its own presence. MW seemed to just suffer from an excess of self confidence, much like Gears.
It didn’t strike me as any kind of parody of US foreign policy, just a clumsy (but successful) attempt to cash in on support for/ignorance of it. That aspect of the game just made me squirmingly uncomfortable because my actions felt so unjustified. Then again The Office makes me squirmingly uncomfortable too, so maybe the British humour-gland is just vastly more advanced than ours.”
This. MW didn’t feel satyrical to me. There were thought-provoking touches (costs of weapons when you die, killing the sleeping soldiers) and the game certainly was well made. But I couldn’t call it critique of the subject matter, much less satire. Why not as bone-headedly pro-imperialist as most other “WAR! FUCK YEAH!” games by big studios it certainly wasn’t very incisive either. One can tell a lot from that in the ‘you died, here’s a quote from a great historic personality to mull over while you respawn’ bits in the game besides Aeschylus, Einstein and Sun Tzu you get retarded drivel by Colin Powel like “The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong,
unless proved otherwise.” which makes the face groan.
The RETURN OF THE RUSKIES actually makes sense. You know, if you read newspapers at all.
I found the single-element of COD4 utterly boring – a hyper-linear rail shooter which I only played 2 levels of – while the multiplayer was loads of fun. Normally FPPs are the other way around for me; playing SP, ignore the MP. I can’t imagine I’ll be getting, er, COD:MW2 ’til the bargain bin.
P.
Serenegoose: The very fact that they say that the crew is expendable means they’re viewed as combatants and not as civilians. That and the fact that the freighter gets sunk by migs does sort of convey that they aren’t non-combatants – let’s be honest here, if anyone else thought it was civilians you were killing in the first mission of a game that’s sold millions, you’d have heard something of an outcry by now!
“That aspect of the game just made me squirmingly uncomfortable because my actions felt so unjustified. Then again The Office makes me squirmingly uncomfortable too, so maybe the British humour-gland is just vastly more advanced than ours.”
I’ll attempt to avoid making the obvious American’s not understanding irony comment here. :) I’ll just say that if something makes you squirm uncomfortably than that may well be the point. Making you cringe is certainly the point of The Office and some aspects of COD4 are meant to make you uncomfortable with your actions.
On the use of the word satire, I think it does apply here. Satire doesn’t need to be humorous, just to ridicule. I would say that the American army is made to look fairly ridiculous throughout the course of the game, charging into some place that doesn’t concern them and getting defeated. The British having to come and save them is just the icing on the cake. Perhaps to Americans this doesn’t come across, but it is pretty common for those outside of America to notice the way in fiction Americans are often portrayed as saving the day (look at most WW2 films.) COD4 stands out because of them for once needing to be saved.
If they’re in civilian areas, maybe they dropped CoD because it’s not a “call of duty” – it’s not a war.
“…the American missions could have been good – a pitched battle is always fun. That said, it suffered… because the allied squad AI generally involved following you.”
Whilst the SAS missions were so great because they generally involved you following your AI team mates.
And I think THAT is the key to superior squad mates in games.
Normally games would have the squad mates following you and you ordering them around.
Which is incredibly complex to create and always always ends up with you cursing your shitty AI team because you died.
The genius of the SAS missions was that by putting you as the subordinate you remove the complexity, added a natural way to provide mission orders whilst still giving you the option to think on your feet.
Making Gaz and Price supermen didn’t hurt either; it’s hard for a Quarterback to complain when his blockers are Hercules and Tim Riggins.
Helm, I don’t think you got why that Powell quote was there. Especially, you know, RIGHT AFTER YOU GET YOUR FACE SHOT OFF!
To clarify:
The reason it made me squirm was not from the dramatic irony of knowing more than the characters in the game did. It felt to me like the developers wanted me to be totally behind those characters, and I squirmed on their behalf.
I won’t argue that the game is a frightening charicature – I only question whether it was intentional.
This might as well could have been a teaser for a proper SoF III. Anyway, CoD: MW has always been about bringing back a decent-enough military shooter with normal weapons, people crave for that kind of thing. It was the setting that made it such a huge success, not the CoD name per se.
@l1ddl3monkey: Thanks, I was hoping that someone would step up and translate it. Though I disagree that it must mean that the meanies are russian, and that it needs to be about a commie revolution. What would be a helluva lot cooler is if it actually was a new US revolution, and the russian speaking stuff is just a ruse.
… sigh, one can dream can’t one?
Maybe it’s because I was watching the low def version, but didn’t he actually say “Remember, go Russian.”?
As in, fake being Russian / having a Russian accent?
I’ve never really liked any of the CoD games. My main hate of the series seems to be it’s main mechanic, which is the ever respawning waves of enemies. Which only stop when you are then forced to recklessly rush up past a certain point on the maps. You then walk around the corner and encounter your next wave. Rinse and repeat through CoD1-CoD:WaW.
I never got what was so great about CoD4 either, I found it teeth grindingly maddening. You fire a few rounds into an enemy only to watch them stumble down to their knees and then get back up again. I mean what the hell is going on there? When I shoot people I expect them to die. And folks kept banging on about that bit where you died after the nuclear blast, as if it was this great moment of gaming epiphany. Whilst I just sat there and thought, “Oh right I’ve died, guess I won’t be playing him again, next!.” My opinion CoD4 was just an above average shooter of the mindless variety that required you to keep your fire button glued down for the most of it. Even the MP I thought was basically an Unreal style frag fest dressed up in contemporary military clothing. But I guess must be wrong given the amount of people that think it’s the most amazing shooter ever.
Chaz has never witnessed someone be shot, FYI.
I love that people demand more humanism in their games but immediately expect guns to instantly eliminate an opponent from the playing field. Like wounding never happens.
And yeah, you’re most definitely wrong.
This trailer makes me somewhat uneasy. I’m unsure whether I’ve got a good reason for that, or if I’m just being over-sensitive. I’ve written some over-wordy thoughts here, so please feel free to shout at me in the comments.
Wow, Vegas 3 looks really strange, and they seem to have changed the name.
@ack
Surely you mean a R.U.S.E.?
Also UBI made “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Vegas 3: Same Game Six Times”
“Chaz has never witnessed someone be shot, FYI.
I love that people demand more humanism in their games but immediately expect guns to instantly eliminate an opponent from the playing field. Like wounding never happens.
And yeah, you’re most definitely wrong.”
Let’s see:
-Infinitely respawning enemies until you pass a trigger? Ok he’s right there.
-The same formula (enemies spawn, you move forward to ‘a’, they stop, enemies spawn, you move forward to..) throughout every game.
-If you shoot someone with three 7.62×51mm NATO rounds, that fucker drops dead. Also, if you’re going to argue what kills people in real life, shooting someone in the following places would take you out of the fight: Kidney, lung, heart, spine, liver, brain, artery (any major blood area). That doesn’t happen, and the health of enemies in the game WAS hilariously high.
There’s a lot to pick apart about the game – the way to defend it is to emphasize the positives of the game. Which I’ve yet to hear in any real way, but I have some of my own (the guns animated well, they were fairly well balanced, they were diverse enough to allow differing styles of play, and when no-respawn was on, it became quite tactical.)
The Mile High Club on Veteran and Chernobyl levels spring to mind when thinking of the things COD4 did right.
I’m pretty excited about the game, I loved the original and IW does a pretty good job of keeping their games awesome. There are tons of things that aren’t realistic in this game, and you know why? Because real war isn’t fun, and this game has to be. Fun is more important than realism, especially in video games, is it not? It doesn’t have to sacrifice quality to be a brainless shooter like Serious Sam (which is awesome), but there are some areas that they’re going to have to fudge to make the game actually fun to play.
One of the problems is, though, that having enemies you’ve shot actually DIE is both realistic AND fun. The issues that people complain about (fairly) are when ‘realistic’ things are added because they’re realistic, not because they add any enjoyment to the game.
(oh, in addition to shoot = die being realistic, so is not having infinite enemies running at you.)
I assume that was an airport that was in the background… the announcer sounded like they had a British accent.
UK vs Russian Terrorists?
Thanks for the delete guys. Anyway like I said. MODERN WARFARE = NOT satire. I repeat, NOT satire. It’s as neo-con as 24 and Tom Clancy.
But I do love the game though despite it’s pro-war crap.
You’re fine to make your point, MC – the delete was because you were being a nasty man with it.
I never really had a problem killing the baddies in Modern War, maybe it’s because I’m so awesome at that game. Stop shooting their lil’ tootsies and aim for their eye?
Oh, I meant it in jest :) Apologies all round nonetheless.
I won’t argue that the game is a frightening charicature – I only question whether it was intentional.
See, I think it was — in retrospect, looking back upon the earlier Call of Duty games, I think that Modern Warfare was the culmination or “coming out”, if you will, of a story that they’d wanted to tell for awhile. I mean, the first game and its expansions were the gung-ho, America-Saves-The-World World War II stories they were because they were inspired by those stories in other mediums in our culture; but as you move into CoD 2 and its story, there’s more emphasis put on the horrors of the war and other countries’ role in it, particularly Russia, which our media often demonizes.
So then when Infinity Ward disappeared to make Modern Warfare, they come out with this story that, as previously mentioned, makes the Americans look like idiots while the SAS comes in to save the day and even makes the player DIE while wearing the masks of a variety of characters (a civilian and a nuked soldier crawling in the dirt, among others) to emphasize the human loss and ultimate meaninglessness of the conflicts that we fight in “Modern Warfare.” Just by the way that it was executed, I can’t help but feel it’s not a coincidence.
And it’s also why I disagree with Circus — for a war game, I detect a lot of anti-war undercurrents, more Hemingway than Clancy, if you want to make a comparison like that.
Not that I’m comparing a rather mainstream video games storytelling abilities to a high Modernist work, mind you, but you get the idea.
On the offical website, you can “analyze” the trailer. (Pause the video and zoom in on stuff.) I was able to spot a few things.
scuba gear
submarine
oilrig.
That stuff points to playing as units like the US Navy SEALs or the British SBS.
I also spotted a MH6 Littlebird helicopter, with US soldiers wearing protec-style helmets, which screams Delta Force. Mayabe we’ll being playing as several militaries from around the world? That would be neat, jumping from one nation’s forces to another’s.
“Not that I’m comparing a rather mainstream video games storytelling abilities to a high Modernist work, mind you, but you get the idea.”
But you just did. It’s not that brave. I know we get ‘a little’ quite more often than ‘a lot’ in videogames when it comes to writing bravely but that shouldn’t suggest we should adjust our expectations so much. Perhaps a war game will come out in the future that dissects the nature of warfare for real and if we go to hyperbole for conservative games like MW then what words will we use for that then? As a commentary on war, MW was in my opinion rather tame considering how many people get killed gruesomely in the name of a vague and exploitative cause like ‘counter-terrorism’ in its duration. In the scale between Hemingway and Clancy it’s still off in the far end I mean. I acknowledge your point (and the point of others in this thread) that it’s not so bereft of critique but there’s really too little there to say this game is attempting lucid commentary on the nature of war or anything. We should desire more than this before we reach for the Hemingways! Still futuretech military pulp novel level writing and ethos.
I actually thought that the “Remember, they’re Russian” line seemed like a humourous extension of the extremism seen in the days of the cold war.
But maybe I just misheard the line.
Looking good!
Is it wrong? Seems a little bad taste in the wake of the Mubai attacks. I don’t know, after reading so much about false-flag terrorism it’s difficult for me to look at the subject without feeling like I’m being propagandised.
“What the fuck were they thinking?”
The line is “Remember, no Russian”. As in, don’t speak it. Sounds like asymmetric warfare to me. And if they can’t deal with current situations directly, Infinity Ward have already proven they can tackle contemporary themes nonetheless. I am hopeful.
Erlam, I’m not sure what game you played, but enemies went down with three shots, tops.
Calling this a pro-war work is hilariously misguided and, well, stupid. For one, anti-war works do not exist. Because violence is fun. Watching violence is exciting. Why do you think people join the army? Or, you know, kick other people’s heads in?
Or play video games?
Besides anything else, you’re also missing out on the fact that the Yanks are portrayed as psychopathic hooligans who fuck up so bad it literally blows up in their faces and the SAS as sociopathic killers with a wide streak of gallows humour and who will only tolerate people as far as they are useful to them.
Now, if you’re bitching because it all comes off as entertainment mainly, well, you’re obviously in the wrong medium.
SPOILERS: You won’t get Hemingways because modern games *gasp* require large teams to make. You can’t sit down at a table and write one up over years and years.
You know what I think? I think we should stop demanding that visual artforms imitate literary ones. There’s an idea! You don’t ask an oil portrait to sing. How about we let games be games and explore themselves as such. Developers should do more of this, and Infinity Ward seem to be aware of this to the core of their being, and with such ease, it could only be deliberate.
Helm, again, note the kind of people you’re playing throughout the game.
It opens with you gunning down sleeping sailors for fuck’s sake.
Also, good to know counter-terrorism means so little to you. Doubtlessly, you’d probably justify it being vague and trivial even if a car bomb went off on your street.
But ah, society does despise the monsters it requires to further extend and feed itself. You’re not the slightest bit better. And being born into it is no excuse.
Jesus, I didn’t think people actually thought about the game this much.
Honestly, for me it was one of the best FPS games I’ve ever played. I never found myself wanting to over-analyse the thing, though me and my friends found the detached humour of the gunship crew somewhat creepy but likely realistic.
Ah, Estonians are always up to something. They have a good ice-cream though.
These “civilians” in Crew Expendable were wearing a uniforms and had machineguns in theyr hand.I dont know many civilians like that.Besides the cargo ship carried a nuclear weapons on the board.It seems also that the crew called in a Mig strike on the same ship in order to sink it before anyone finds out what its carrying.
Well We can’t rule out that possibility that not all of the members on board could have been combatants. Particularily there was something cold about shooting someone in the sleep but eh I not too bothered it just a game. I do however work shipping in a local port of mine and generally if we have guests on board we keep to ourselves. sometimes people hire their own crews.
Besides, Price clearly states that there is a security detail (probably the Ultranationlists guardind their nuke) and small crew (undetermined)on board. I’d say we were mostly fighting that “security detail” while the (possibly affiliated or nonaffliated) crew unfortunately got caught in the midst. Perhaps some didn’t know what was going down with them shipping a nuke and were either ” I’ll mind my own business” or paid not to ask questions. As for the migs once we roped down perhaps somebody on the ship knew they were done for and ordered the strike. Of course, this is mere conjecture.
Gaz: Rules of engagement, Sir?
Captain Price: Crew expendable.