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If you are not buying Modern Warfare and want to know about its crazy plot then read on?
-Or-
If you are curious as to why, for me, I just can't get my head around it then read on.
The Story (Spoilers!)
At the end of this massacre, the villain shoots you to make it look like the CIA walked into Moscow airport and killed everyone - a ludicrous conceit. You are supposed to believe that the Russians would not know that the CIA had infiltrated the gang, or that the gang are all Russians anyway. The fact that four terrorists take on and kill 200 Russian SWAT is even more daft.
The following day Russia stages a full scale invasion of the USA and large land battles take place in a suburban town (for no real reason - or explanation) and on Capitol Hill/The White House. We are supposed to believe the Russians were so mad, they were able to stage a full scale assault on the US in retaliation. Where are China and Europe in all this? The Russians barely had enough troops to invade Georgia in 2008. What about the global condemnation that would follow. Would the rest of the world just stand by? How did all these 10,000s of paratroopers & tanks, and aircraft cross European airspace?
To solve the problem a special ops team kidnap a terrorist in Sao Paulo (not sure why), rescue a prisoner from a Russian Gulag, steal a Russian nuclear sub and launch its nuke into space. The ICBM is detonated over the US east coast to cause a EMP wave that causes all planes and helicopters to crash, as well as destroy the International Space Station.
With me so far?
The special ops team then hunt down the dissident to kill him. Some how doing this will end the full scale conflict that has taken over the world?
To solve the problem a special ops team kidnap a terrorist in Sao Paulo (not sure why), rescue a prisoner from a Russian Gulag, steal a Russian nuclear sub and launch its nuke into space. The ICBM is detonated over the US east coast to cause a EMP wave that causes all planes and helicopters to crash, as well as destroy the International Space Station.
With me so far?
The special ops team then hunt down the dissident to kill him. Some how doing this will end the full scale conflict that has taken over the world?
Opinion
It is all completely implausible.
I don't buy the argument it is just a game. IW have gone out of their way to set it in a contemporary setting. If it was a Fallout style twisted reality I would let it ride, but they set it up as a "what if".
The "what if" is based on the worst kind of soviet-era/communist aggressor tripe and lacking any historical context from the last 20 years. Worse, it is based on an enemy, and nation, who has never had the capability to do what they suggest. The major premise that a single out of context terrorist incident could cause a conflict on this scale is a leap even "24" writers would have trouble with. The single player plot is fictional garbage and neo-con scaremongering of the worst kind. The fact the plot is almost impossible to follow doesn't help either.
What MW2's story is, is a string of set pieces in locations the developers wanted to exploit for shock value. They often have no relationship to the story and lack any kind of logical cohesion. It is fiction, but it is ludicrous fiction. At least Tom Clancy based his tech-war writings on genuine facts and plausible events.
I am not the only one who finds it completely silly, I've read several reviews saying pretty much the same thing (see Charlie Brooker's and Eurogamer's reviews).
As for the scene in Moscow Airport, it is certainly one of the most violent things even done in a game. It doesn't offend me, but I did find it unnecessary and over-the-top (people crawling away bleeding to death and then being shot). As a plot device, it completely failed.
I do like many of the levels, taken in isolation, and I get that it is an action movie. However, the makers have gone out of their way to make it a "what if" story, and it deserves to be critiqued as such.
I'm sure the co-op and multiplayer will provide hours of entertainment, but the solo story in MW2 is a massive misstep, in my opinion, and belittles a lot of the ground breaking immersion that IW created in Call of Duty 1 and 2. Personally I found the story to be laughably preposterous and, at times, baffling, bloodthirsty and misjudged.
3 comments:
Many of your arguments fall flat. If you remember in the level where you had to assault a base in a storm you were tasked with retrieving something. That thing was "the key" to everything on U.S. soil including its defense and satellite systems (such a thing does exist). Second Europe and China would never want to be involved and it explains in the game that the world would look the other way as Russia takes a baseball bat to America, just as they did after 9/11 when we took it to afghanistan. Countries have gone to war for much smaller, see WW1. As to the four men taking on Russian KGB, its a video game dude. Also, the CIA would never tell russia about any of its operations, one because the more people that know, the more chance that it will fail, and two because we are still not on very good terms with the Russians. And the Russians have more than enough troops to occupy America. What are you talking about? They have biggest reserves in the world, their military is superior to America's in terms of strength and reach.
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