A couple of weeks ago I was reading about video game design and I learned about the Call of Duty Series and its emersive storytelling. I knew the series existed, but I always assumed it was a traditional war shooter -the plot exists to justify shooting stuff, it doesn't really connect anything together. Really, this is a fine thing for war games as, from the perspective of the infantry involved, their job really is just a series of unconnected "go there, shoot them," orders.
So I was really excited. A war game shooter with storytelling, plot, drama, characters... this was great! I was making plans to buy an X-box just for these games (and a few others).
I was so excited I went to YouTube and found a couple of Let's Plays so that I could see what I'd missed. I was actually sorely disappointed.
To begin with, the games look awesome. They are easily as realistic as Black Hawk Down with perhaps a bit less blood. Actually, the realism of the rest of the game makes the basic unrealism of the genre stand out, that's how realistic it is. It's also very pretty. The set pieces are breathtaking and the levels are so emersive you lose yourself in them. Then there's a lot of scripted awesome, like an M1A1 blowing up a T-90 by picking it up on the infrared scope and shooting it through a building.
But the hooking point for me was the story, which at the end of two games I realized... made no sense. Specifically, the character of General Shepherd, who was a big attraction, was a let down.
*****
The Story in Brief:
Sometime in the 1980s history diverges from ours. The Soviet Union crumbles, but the Russian Federation never becomes strong, and the former Soviets never become even as independent as they are today -as evidenced by the presense of a bunch of Russian Soldiers in Pripyet, Ukraine in 1995. The Democratic Russian government (Loyalists) is fighting a fairly constant shooting civil war with Russian Ultranationalists lead by the distinctly not-Russian Imram Zakhaev.
Zakhaev is actually a former Soviet strongman from one of the Soviets who apparently longs for the good old days when he was in charge of whateveristan so long as he bribed the Russian KGB lackey every month, and now that those days are gone he seems to think a strong Russian Empire will help him. Well, maybe he's envisioning himself as another Stalin. Before becoming a Russian Politician he made his fortune selling arms to the Rebels. He was deemed enough of a threat that the British tried to kill him in 1995 in Ukraine. They missed.
As the game begins, British SAS is prepping for a mission in the Bearing Strait, which they then launch. They storm a freighter, kill everyone aboard, and locate a stray Russian nuclear warhead, which they learn from the manifest is heading for an unnamed country on the Arabian Penninsula. They tell the Americans, who happen to know the guy in charge of this country, Al-Faradh. They find this out just in time for Al-Faradh to be the victim of a coup. This is, incidentally, a great level and credits sequence which shows so much of the mess going on in this country in the coup aftermath. Lots of shooting, executions -basically every reason why we're glad they don't happen here. Anyway, the level ends with Al-Faradh being executed on national TV by the new dictator, Al-Saud. The Americans being concerned about Al-Saud and Russian Loose Nukes prep the nearest Marine Expeditionary Unit, SEAL Team 6, and a NEST team to remove Al-Saud and secure any nuclear devices he has.
SAS gets a message from a loyalist spy who tipped them about the freighter in the Strait that he needs to talk to the... and then he gets cut captured. Why SAS is running ops in Russia rather than loyalist Spetznaz I've know idea -well, Spetznaz has a bad habbit of killing the people they're trying to rescue, but we'll presume they don't always kill the hostages... Anyway, SAS is inserted with a Russian Spetznaz/Airborn unit to storm the village where the Rebels are holding the spy. They get the spy, who tells them to call off the attack, Al-Saud is laying a trap.
Unfortunately, before they can report this, they get shot down in Russia and spend just enough time running for cover that they can't call in until its far too late.
The Marines land and battle their way across the country, securing everything except the capitol. They prep for their final assault when the SAS reports, and SEAL Team 6 and NEST confirm, that the nukes are in the capital, armed, and set to detonate. The Americans start to withdraw, but the nuke explodes, vaporizing the 30,000 marines. You get to walk around the rubble for about a minute before succumbing to your injuries and dieing.
The Russians report that Al-Saud didn't commit suicide, but is instead hiding out with the Rebels in Azerbaijan. SAS is inserted, they capture, interogate, and kill him after confirming that he was working for Zakhaev, and that it was Zakhaev who set him up the bomb.
SAS and Marine Force Recon, with the Russians, track Zakhaev to a remote missile silo in one of the former Republics, managing to secure the silo before he can detonate missiles on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. They then get chased out into traffic (why there's an interstate next to a missile complex I've no idea) where they are finally trapped on a bridge. At the last moment, they are saved by the Loyalists who swoop in, and in a dramatic moment the leader of SAS, Captain Price, slips his pistol to the new guy, "Soap" McTavish, who plugs Zakhaev.
The survivors of the raid are taken to a Russian hospital, where only McTavish makes it home to Britain. In the intervening 5 years, things go to hell in the Russian Federation. It's never clear how bad, but the Rebels get substantial control of the country. Enough to control the army, the navy, the air force, and the prisons. Zakhaev becomes the symbol of Russian Ressurgance, and the Allies are blamed for martyring him -somehow overlooking the fact that he tried to nuke the US, did nuke the MEU in the Gulf, and the Allies responded by shooting him rather than paving the entire Russian Empire in glass to a depth of 6 feet. Things are apparently bad enough that McTavish runs the necessary ops to jump from Sergeant to Captain, and the Allies put together Task Force 141, a dedicated anti-Russian unit. As a consolation, they give it to Major General Shepherd, who was the commander of the MEU which was nuked. Why an Army Major General is in charge of a Marine Expeditionary Unit is never explained. Maybe it was a joint thing.
Anyway, 5 years later (2015 give or take) the US Army is still in Afghanistan taking cities back from the Rebels and making the world safe for democracy (good grief I hope we're not still taking cities back in 2015...). Shepherd recruits Joseph Allen, a Ranger, for TF141, and promptly gives him to CIA to slip into the inner circle of Vladamir Makharov, Imram Zakhaev's former Right Hand Man turned hired gun.
McTavish, now heading up an element of TF141, and "Roach," the newest British recruit break into a Russian base to steal back the ACS module from a downed plane before the Russians can crack the codes. Roughly the same day, Joseph Allen (wondering if he's got a relation to Ivan...), masquerading as one of Makharov's men, participates (or not, Player's choice) in a terrorist assault on a bunch of unarmed civilians in Moscow's Zakhaev International Airport. Just why, exactly, CIA is going along with this is never explained rather than shooting Makharov and handing the crumpled body over to the remaining loyalists I've no idea. Anyway, turns out Makharov knows Allen is a spy, shoots him, and leaves Allen -who for some reason must have CIA PLANT tattooed across his chest -dieing on the runway. The Russians find him, draw the obvious conclusion that CIA just launched a terrorist attack on them.
TF141, knowing that Makharov did the attack, but unable to prove it, go to Brazil to find the arms dealer who supplied Makharov with American weaponry. They find the dealer's contact as he's about to get shot by a different gang, and after a running gun battle, they strap him to a chair and go to work with a car battery -as a side note, even CIA doesn't do this, and I'd imagine SAS would be rightly offended at the suggestion that they'd do it either, no matter how justified. They find the buyer, who reveals that Makharov needed to frame the US for the attack in order to get the Russian government, now largely controlled by the Rebels, to green-light a punitive raid on Washington, DC.
Before they can phone it in (we're litterally days since the raids on the Russian base and the Russian airport), the Russians invade both coasts of the US, slipping past the American radar and sonar by using the data from the cracked ACS module. The Rangers, rotated back to Virginia, come out of their homes to find their base under attack. They quickly assemble to repel the Russian Paratroopers from the base and then push out into Suburban, Virginia. Once the Americans get their act together, they stomp the Russians all the way back into D.C. over the next two days.
Meanwhile, TF141 plans a raid on a Russian gulag to liberate a prisoner who knows something about Makharov, but to do that they have to capture a Russian Oil Rig that has been set up as a AAA platform. The Navy doesn't just obliterate it because the Russians are holding the rig crew hostage. This makes no sense, but I'm just going to presume that normally the rig would be held by the Loyalists and the Rebels captured it, so the Allies aren't blowing it apart as a favor to the Loyalists. You know, the guys who are so helpful that they couldn't even tell us there was a fricking invasion force prepped so that it could launch and land within a day of the greenlight.
Anyway, the Gulag only holds one prisoner, and is awesome if you thought The Rock was a cool movie (several shoutouts to this, incidentally). Turns out the prisoner is Captain Price, who somehow the Rebels diverted here from the hospital, out from under the nose of those helpful loyalists who someone explain to me why we haven't nuked them already?
Apprised of the situation, Price decides the best thing to do, in contravention of Shepherd's orders, is to steal a Russian nuclear submarine, and launch a missile at Washington, DC, setting it off in space to create an EMP to disable the Russian heavy equipment... and I guess he figures the Americans can get their own heavy equipment from Missouri to DC in less than the day it will take the Russians to get theirs to DC from Arkangel given what's already been shown of their logistical capability. Now, this does have the nice effect of saving the Ranger's hide, as their staring down the shaft of a Russian attack helicopter when the EMP goes off, and the helos promptly fall out of the sky (this is actually pretty funny in a sick sort of way).
The infantry gather on the lawn of the White House, which is controlled by the Russians, and launch an assault to retake the White House and the other shielded Federal Buildings so that they can get into contact with Headquarters. HQ informs them that they are sending the B-52s, and they need to pop green smoke (another The Rock reference) to mark their positions. After fighting through the White House, the Rangers get up on the roof and pop green smoke to signal all clear, at the same time green smoke pops on the Capitol and DoJ and other major buildings and landmarks. Really, this scene of "the City is ours, take that, Sow" would work fine without the air strike, but whatever.
Shepherd, who it turns out has been telling anyone who'll listen for 5 years that the Russians were planning something like this, is given over-all command of the response. He relocates to his base in Afghanistan, but decides first they need to string up Makharov. He splits the surviving members of TF141 into two teams to hit the last two known places Makharov was sighted. They hit the sites simultaneously, secure the arms caches and the intelligence on Makharov's plans, and return to the extraction point to report to Shepherd and his new "Shadow Company."
Shepherd takes the intel and shoots Roach. And for some reason, the American special forces who make up Shadow Company toss the bodies in a shallow grave and light them on fire rather than arrest Shepherd for Murder. At the same time, Shadow Company is attacking the rest of TF141. We skip to that...
Captains McTavish and Price and the last survivors of TF141 manage to evade both the Russians and the Shadow Company, which are shooting at each other as well as at SAS. They get ahold of the Russian Loyalists to call for a pickup, and have a terse conversation with Makharov who tells SAS that Shepherd's base is in Afghanistan. In a running gun battle on the runway, SAS manages to make it out with the Loyalists, but only the two Captains are still alive. The Russians inform them they they are now wanted fugitives, accused of international terrorism. The Captains go to Afghanistan.
After a lengthy chase through a mountain and cave complex (very Iron Man), they chase Shepherd in a boat to a waterfall, where he boards a chopper. Price (established previously a crack shot with a rifle) shoots the pilot of the chopper, causing it to crash. The boat then goes over the falls.
In a tense fight with Shepherd, McTavish gets stabbed in the chest. Shepherd reveals that, after this invasion, he'll have no shortage of patriots and volunteers to fill the ranks of the army. It'll be a better world. And I shall be invicibl... That's where Price attacks him. McTavish pulls the knife out and throws it through Shepherd's head. The Loyalists make the pick-up and we're now waiting for CoD7, Modern Warfare 3.
*****
So, I flagged a few. The numerous plot holes of MW2 have been pointed out by others. I'd like to hit a few others that relate to the first game as well.
First, what in the name of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch did Imram Zakhaev think was going to happen when he lured a MEU onto a nuclear warhead? I mean, good grief. What on earth did he think he was going to accomplish by vaporizing 1 MEU? It's not like we don't have six more where that came from (probably more given the setting).
Further, it having been established that the rebels of the Russian Federation slipped at least 2 nukes to Al-Saud so that he could lure an American Army onto a nuclear timebomb -when the Rebels took control of Russia, why, exactly, did we not nuke them? It's not like they'd demonstrated they could be deterred. The opposite, in fact.
Also, I buy that we can get the 2,200 Marines of an MEU anywhere in the world in a day. I want to know where the other 27,800 soldiers who got vaporized came from. But at least logistics are consistently easy in this universe. The Russian invasion is rediculously easy and fast. They slipped through our Radar using a stolen ACS module so that they could airdrop a punitive raid. I wasn't aware you could airdrop BMPs. And for that matter, where'd they get the artillery, air support, and helicopters? Those things have got to have naval support and I can't imagine that the entirety of Europe, Greenland, Iceland, Canada, England, and the United States missed it. And once they get there, where's the Atlantic Fleet? One hundred and eighty six ships, parked less than 200 miles from the invasion and they're nowhere to be seen. I'd blame Obama's defense cut-backs, but no one should be tarred by this lousy storytelling.
Alright, alright, we let it pass for the rule of cool. And they were trying to make a "war is hell, and how would you like it if someone invaded your country?" story. And as several have pointed out there's a distinct anti-war-on-terror undercurrent. I'd roll my eyes, except that they screwed it up, and that's just irritating. First off, if the attack on Zakhaev International Airport is 9/11, then makers of Modern Warfare 2 are Truthers of the worst sort. The ZIA attack is orchestrated by the rebels who run the government of Russia as an excuse to attack the USA. Second, the attack on ZIA precipates a punative raid on the USA -which is stupid, incidentally, you don't punitively raid people who can make you glow in the dark. For better or for worse, the US attack on Afghanistan and Iraq wasn't punitive. There's a lot of people who wish it had been, but we weren't there to kill people in revenge, we were there to topple oppressive regimes that encouraged terrorism in the hope that by doing so we'd be able to forego the punitive raids in the future. Good idea or not, these invasions were launched with the hopes of gaining permanent peace. So the developers are Truthers who missed the point of both invasions (I suppose I should be happy that the Russians aren't running around demanding our Coal Reserves to power their tanks...).
But then they missed several golden storytelling opportunities as well. At the beginning of the game, the Rangers force a bridge crossing, call in an airstrike to destroy a building housing rebels, and then drive through the town in their humvees, until they get rocketted from a school, which they then clear. During the invasion of DC, then, the Americans should have defended a river crossing from a building which got bombed by MiGs, from which they had to move to another building and launch an ambush on a convoy of Russian Armored Cars. I mean, if you're going to set up the parallelism, do it right!
And on a minor nagging point, the battle in Suburban, VA, a place I gather has very high gun ownership based on the voting patterns, should have had a whole slew of civilians in their homes shooting it out with their AR-15s. Not only would this fit the culture during the initial part of the invasion, and fit the level naming (Wolverines! a Red Dawn reference), it would also compelete the parallelism of the anti-war-on-terror point by showing that the people you shot in level 2 were just like the Americans in level whatever defending their homes. This point would have been stupid (the American civilians aren't going to go about murdering their neighbors and planning to bomb Russia with state support after the Russians leave), but at least it would have been well made. As it is, the point is completely lost because the Americans respond in uniform in accordance with the rules of war.
But finally, and the real reason for this lengthy post, and the reason I gave a plot synopsis: General Shepherd. Why is he the villain?
For starters, let me point out that he's right in all particulars. The speed and organization of the Russian invasion means they've been planning this for a while. They shot down an aircraft and cracked the ACS before the ZIA shootout. They were just waiting for an excuse to invade. They needed the Americans to move first. In fact, I think they've been trying to invade for 5 years. The reason Zakhaev lured an MEU onto a nuclear bomb was to provoke an American response that he could use to get the Russians to launch an invasion. And the reason he slipped the bomb to a no-name Middle-east dictator is because, if the Russians bombed an American target, the world would rightly blame Russia. But if Al-Saud bombs the Americans and the Americans bomb Russia, well now its our fault.
So, when Shepherd says that the Americans have been blind and stupid for 5 years, he's right. When he says the Russians are planning to attack the US, he's right.
Now, it's implied, though never stated, that he's been working with Makharov (why? silly writer, plot holes don't matter in this game...) and slipped the Russians both the ACS module and Joseph Allen in order to precipate the invasion... that was already coming. Geez, CIA, NRO, and NSA must be incompetent in this universe. And he's doing it for comedically bad super-villain reasons that are completely unnecessary given that he's right.
In fact, the whole thing reads like "we'd like to save Makharov for the last installment of the trilogy. Who's available for the dramatic ending villain in this game?" Or maybe a bad parody of "the complainer is always right," where the complainer is only right because he's also a traitor, except that the Russian's planning predates any of his known treachery.
And its all the more annoying because Shepherd has a perfectly good reason to break the rules to start a war. Five years ago his command was obliterated by the Russians, and when he wanted to go get revenge, Washington wouldn't let him. His consolation prize was TF141, which let him whack the Russians on occassion, but it wasn't the equivalent revenge he wanted. But to get his revenge all he has to do is unveil the Russian invasion plans, doing which might require some rule breaking along the way. Doesn't require working with Makharov, doesn't require shooting up ZIA. He just needs to do something Patton-esque to bait the Russians into shooting first.
Further, if we follow the story as is and ignore the insinuation that Shepherd was in bed with Makharov, his actions at the end of the story make perfect sense. He's trying to nail Makharov for the obvious reasons, but he also needs to clean up TF141 who, you'll recall, violated orders and nuked Washington, DC. Price and McTavish are terrorists now. Slightly understandable ones, but terrorists nontheless. And Roach helped them do it. The only questionable thing Shepherd did was not arrest and court martial the lot of them as soon as they reported back from the Submarine Raid, and that might be explained by expedience -I need people to do these raids and TF141 is available. The only thing he has to answer for then is why he tried to kill the terrorists of TF141 instead of arrest them -to which I can only suppose he figured that the ACLU or somesuch would make locking these dangerous terrorists up more difficult that its worth and so its better to shoot them and be done with it.
Sorta like Obama is doing with Predator drones.
In fact, the only thing I can think of that would make these games make any sense, is if Makharov and Zakhaev actually are patriots of their Republics, and have been running an elaborate false flag operation for 25 years to provoke the US into attacking the Russians to bleed out the Russian army so that the indigenous armies of the Republics can drive out the Russians and gain true independence. In other words, we're going to fight WWIII in the Modern Warfare Series because in 1946 the US sold Eastern Europe and Central Asia to the Communists -in the great irony of an anti-war game, in an attempt to... head off a war.
I should totally write that book.
0 comments:
Post a Comment