Duke4.net Forums: Modern Warfare 2-"No Russian" Revisited - Duke4.net Forums

When Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released in 2009, a great deal of scrutiny and controversy was stirred up by the level "No Russian", in which Army Ranger turned CIA-Deep Cover Operative PFC. Joseph Allen is made to participate in Vladimir Makarov's horrific massacre at a Moscow airport. Arguably, the game intends you to kill innocent civilians, and then the law enforcement that tries to restore order afterwards, all leading up to when Makarov kills you, revealing that he knew your identity all along, framing you for being responsible for the massacre.

Pundits were quick to attack the level as sick and depraved, briefly reviving specters of the worst of the 1990s mass hysteria about FPS titles as murder simulators, training one to kill and desensitizing them. This especially happened when Anders Breivik used the Modern Warfare titles as a scapegoat for the horrific massacre he committed in Norway. For their part, Activision and Infinity Ward explained how players had the chance to skip the level (if they don't disable that option during initial setup), and there are no achievements, trophies or points for this level, and that the airport is not a multiplayer or online map. They also stated how it was meant to set the mood for the narrative to follow through the rest of the game. That said, even with the initial fires quickly doused out, there were still criticisms of the level. When Call of Duty titles began to include branching out and alternate methods of progressing through the levels, "No Russian" was faulted for not doing so, offering more ideas than one specific path the level has in mind.

For my part, I disabled the skip option when setting it up, because I feel that the level is vital and important to the experience. By skipping it, it feels quite incomplete. I don't receive any gratification or excitement when I play through the level, because I am still completely aware of what the situation is, and what I have to do. I look at it as something to grind through before getting back to the game proper, but a grinding through that is necessary.

In the aftermath of future tragedies and incredibly horrifying attacks like Paris, Orlando and Las Vegas, how does "No Russian" fare in this context? How has it aged?

I Don't think its a bad Level, i mean Shooting people without a reason in both games and real life can be somewhat controversial.

I think the Level sets up the tone the game is gonna take specially once you approach the ending, its a nice foundation to make this Character Makarov seem like a Powerful and believable antagonist

And its one level that we haven't seen since MW2 to be honest, Yeah it left a shock in the audience but it worked, the whole point of the level was to shock you of what you were doing, and to hate even more Makarov.

I think it still holds up today for being a controversial and impressive level both in storyline and level design.

You had one job!

It's more an interactive movie than a game due to the extremely linear, scripted nature of the campaigns as well as the amounts of hits you can take before dying. And if it gets bad, just get to cover for a few seconds and it's as if you never were shot at in the first place.

What's also interesting about these campaigns is that they always show the US and their alliance as the good guys. Remember the name of the villain in the first Modern Warfare game? It was Al Assad. Predictive programming? And is it a coincidence that it was re-released a year or so ago?

Also, why is Russia always the bad guy? It's like everything perfectly lines up with the media narrative.

Fun fact: They use xbox controllers to fly drones. Who's better for this job than indoctrinated gamers who know these controllers so well it might as well be an extra limb to them?

It's quite a bummer to play these milsims and always be spoonfed the propaganda. I want a game where Russians are the good guys for example. You won't get that unless it's made in Russia.

 Maisth, on 24 October 2017 - 10:18 AM, said:

I still hate Makarov now even I were only played MW2 once, just like the scenes with aftermath of Nuclear explosion in MW1. I have to say that why I like MW1&2, but the third game just downfall...


And not all US and their alliance are good guy, remember General Shepherd and how poor Allen, Roach and Ghost end up.../sad

 Toxic34, on 24 October 2017 - 09:48 AM, said:

Pulling the trigger is your choice. This is critical to the setup. If you killed innocents, it's 100% on you the human behind the controller.

You know what's interesting about that level vs current events? The recent interviews with FBI explaining why sometimes they have to stand by and allow attacks to happen in their pursuit of a higher target. Interesting, eh?

 BestViking, on 24 October 2017 - 11:32 AM, said:

Absolutely not true. In MW2 the pivotal bad guys are American (including rank and file mercenaries) manipulating many people for their own benefit, though they got outsmarted from two different directions.

 BestViking, on 24 October 2017 - 11:32 AM, said:

Remember the motives the first game presented on his behalf? They weren't bad and the game clearly establishes his concerns. However his reaction required a response.

 BestViking, on 24 October 2017 - 11:32 AM, said:

Go back and play the first Call of Duty.

Also Nikolai in MW1. You understand the "bad Russians" in MW1 are a splinter group of "Ultra Nationalists"... not "Russians". This is why Price meets up with and works with an entire squad of Russians in one of the missions. The whole mission is you fighting along side "Good Russians". Who does "Ultra Nationalists" = BAD! more closely align with in the modern narrative agitprop?

I'm skeptical you really understand the factions in those games. Past MW2 they get even more foggy about who is "good" vs just "on one side or the other".

Should India be elevating the importance of putting out games with the British as the good guys? Are they failing somehow if whatever games/media they do make tends to have the British in an adversarial role?

Were you in charge of that mission, Weider?

 Sledgehammer, on 25 October 2017 - 10:23 AM, said:

Nope... that would be this obnoxiously talented dude. He was one of the rare designers there who built his geo and scripted his levels. Most of the work was split between a geo person and a script person. I was 100% on SpecOps scripting, no single player.

For MW:R I had a far more substantial role in the project, primarily grounded in the single player scripting needs, but my primary agenda was making sure the SP stayed as true to the original so creativity wasn't a priority (though we still snuck some stuff in via cheats/easter eggs).

 BestViking, on 24 October 2017 - 11:32 AM, said:

Enjoy.

 SeeJaneWun, on 25 October 2017 - 09:56 AM, said:

"Ultra Nationalist" is an umbrella term. Look at the current dichotomy: any national pride and you are branded a "nazi". All of these games are predictive programming. If you look at geopolitics, the modern Battlefield games pitch U.S, Russia and China against each other. Russia is constantly being agitated against because they support Syria and help Assad defeat the U.S and EU funded rebels(this was admitted even back in Obama days).

When you compare the narratives of the games to real world geopolitics, it makes sense as predictive programming. The plot details don't matter that much as long as people get the idea of those countries pitched against each other. That way they'll readily accept it in real life because they've already lived it in their minds through the games.

They let you play through it so everyone would talk about and they would sell more copies. That's the only reason.

 BestViking, on 26 October 2017 - 12:28 PM, said:

On that we agree.

 BestViking, on 26 October 2017 - 12:28 PM, said:

Kind of. In case you haven't figured it out, I make these games.

They pull from the headlines, and project forward. I've done it myself. I wrote a proposal for a level for MW3 regarding Ukraine that pulled heavily from current events and headlines around 2009/2010 (including many dramatic pictures) and projected forward possible outcomes. Based on the potential outcomes, I picked the ones that seemed the most compelling to experience from within a game world and started to develop both a circumstantial plot as well as a connection to the larger narrative of the previous franchise projects.

My projection for placing the player in the middle of the conflict in the Ukraine was "wrong" relative to what did happen in the details, but still deeply related to what ultimately wound up happening. Because my starting point was reality.

 BestViking, on 26 October 2017 - 12:28 PM, said:

Because pitching New Zealand, Paraguay, and Mozambique would be retarded. Yet FPS MilSims *do* still bring small regional conflicts into their narratives in part to try to break away from the Obvious Major Players that are Obvious Major Players for Obvious reasons. Have you forgotten about the South American factions in MW2? WTF, you racist or something?

 BestViking, on 26 October 2017 - 12:28 PM, said:

True question, are you Russian or a Russian Fanboy? I love Russia. As Russia for Russia.

 BestViking, on 26 October 2017 - 12:28 PM, said:

Are you genuinely saying the characters in MW1 were preparing for the Syrian war and not echos of the (at the time) real life activities? The nature of the factions have almost nothing in common beyond regional naming similarities. MW1 was an echo of criticism regarding the US and NATO aggression in the Middle East and offered as predictable (but turns out deeply incorrect) potential backlash.

 BestViking, on 26 October 2017 - 12:28 PM, said:

The only way to avoid this is either make zero "modern day" games, or make "modern day" games that are so implausible that nobody will want to play them because they are patently absurd and represent nothing they can, or want to, identify with. Not withstanding "modern day" zombie festivals, etc.

 Jess Renee, on 26 October 2017 - 01:18 PM, said:

There are several kinds of players...

• Those who disregard everything going on as fiction and utterly irrelevant.
  
• Those who take the game's premise seriously.
  
• Those who take the game's premise as a joke.

The first category generally can't remember what happened in the previous level. They are just coasting through. The second category are the interesting ones. The third category are the hilarious ones. Those who fall into the second category are the ones that made it so that this level had any relevance at all, as well as any sales potential activated more by offering to allow people to skip it more than the level itself.

Which is why the fundamental premise is not "OMG AIRPORT SLAUGHTER!"... but "You're in this position... what do YOU do?" MANY folks have tried to pawn off their personal responsibility and emotions onto the game itself in order to excuse... well whatever is really in their heart.

The entire point of this level is to evoke from those who take the situation seriously the internal question of "I think I'm supposed to, but should I? Do I risk not going along? What if I don't go along?" and whether they take that chance or not.

Because again, you don't have to do a single bad thing. If you DO act and shoot one of the bad guys, you die quickly (as you would in real life). So again, you're an agent on the side opposed, but dressed in the garb of the side you oppose.

Do YOU do what is expected and pull the trigger, or do you take a chance.

In terms of Sportsball Shooters (Quake, Unreal) this is irrelevant. In terms of Theme Shooters (Duke, Doom) this is irrelevant. In terms of situational narrative shooters (CoD, Bioshock) this circumstantial perspective and your interpretation is the entire point. When those circumstances let you go against the grain based on your own moral conviction without putting a clear "SHOOT INNOCENTS... OR NOT" prompt on screen, that's a money shot.

I haven't played that game in a long time but did you really have a choice not to kill innocents? I thought they forced you to do it unless you skipped the level completely. Then your points make sense instead of just showing us a movie of it.

Post it a 3rd time and then maybe it will magically become funny?

The instance in this thread was the first time it was posted. Second time posted was to buttress the point, not the humor.

 SeeJaneWun, on 26 October 2017 - 05:40 PM, said:

No, I want to see a triple-A game where USA is the bad guy. Just for once. Or a WWII game where you play as Germany, or just where their flags aren't censored. Until this happens, then it is pretty telling about the interests behind the funding for these games.

For some strange reason, this is too extreme. Yet, killing Russians, Arabs, Germans ad infinitum, and pretty much everyone except the U.S and their allies is perfectly fine and can never be done to death.

This taken into account in addition to these games always supporting the media narrative should make anyone skeptical, at least.

 SeeJaneWun, on 26 October 2017 - 05:40 PM, said:

You glorious bastard, so that's why nazis are black in new CoD, and are women.

 BestViking, on 27 October 2017 - 04:25 AM, said:

Your best bet would be Red Orchestra. Though technically you can play even as Germany in at least one CoD game. Just like you can play as Japan (which is why I decided to buy World at War), but yes, this is multiplayer-focused part, no singleplayer campaign. Arma series would be also a good choice, my favorite one even. Otherwise, keep dreaming.

Honestly though I see no reason why would you want another shitty AAA game where you can kill Americans or play as nazis, it's not like American gaming industry is the best out there, or entertainment industry at that matter, plus America would be the least country I'd ever trust with making games based on European conflicts or history as well. I mean, aren't small games enough for you? Want a game focused on Syria? Play Syria Warfare which is actually a good game and made by Russians. Want to play as nazis? Play some good RTS or RTT WW2 games made by Europeans and which are actually much better than many soulless AAA games from US. There are plenty of games to choose from thankfully and those have some love put into it as well.

However, Germany topic is quite different from Russia topic or any other topic at this point. Heck, CoD:WaW even has Soviet campaign in it.

I might be wrong, but in games Russians hardly tend to be real "bad guys" unless it's a Cold War focused game, but even in such games Russians are not portrayed as some kind of monsters, in some cases it's even hard to say who is really bad or who is good. The only exception was probably the latest CoH which brought an actual controversy unlike "Remember No Russian" click-bait articles which brought hilarious memes, while CoH2 controversy caused huge shitstrom which was forgotten soon, just like the game itself. Beyond that, not even the media itself hated Russia as much until recently when Trump won elections and the media just made a shitty "Russian hackers" narrative which no one bought into anyway, at least aside from crazy leftists. There was that Syria narrative too, but I wouldn't say it was really strong either.

What I can agree with is that killing 'mericans is definitely mauveton unless main protagonist is not American himself. But even then, there aren't a lot of American patriotic games made in US either and I would like you to keep this in mind. Ironically, the only games with somehow strong American patriotism I can think of are Japanese games, Metal Gear series is the most famous in my opinion, although there was some love even for Russia in there. I think that the best Americans can do to show their patriotism is to make a typical cliché WW2 game. However, I doubt that media narrative has anything to do with that either, if anything, media hates America and they surely support, say, islamic terrorists, for example. I bet majority of those "journalists" would praise a game where you're killing white American people and play as muslim terrorist. But I doubt that people who are buying games would like to play such game which is why big companies who like to play safe don't touch such sensitive themes. Also, you should not forget another important thing: just like America doesn't make games starring Russians that often (or at least when it comes to big companies) or any other nation other than the one they're somehow familiar with (stereotypes don't count), companies in other countries don't bother with games about America either. And to be fair, why should they? Unless we're talking about mindless fun games or just fiction it makes no sense and results would be likely bad because it takes some efforts to make historical research, English knowledge alone is not enough to do proper research to make historical media.

To make it shorter, this topic is rather complicated compared to the same portrayal of nazis in media. You can't just make "media narrative" conclusion and call it a day, especially when the only anti-Russian narrative nowadays is about Russian hackers. The only agenda those companies are busy with is diversity, something what the media in US strongly promotes to death so it became extremely ridiculous. The best example of it is Battlefield reboot which has black Russian woman and black Germans even though this game is focused on WW1. Same goes with upcoming CoD and its black nazis.

Yeah, I skipped BF1 for that reason. It's not like they couldn't find a historically accurate way to include blacks if they wanted to. But they just have to shit on history. It's so important to put blacks front and center on the cover. They are taking a giant dump on the millions of white Europeans who were dragged into the war that way by making it about blacks, who played a minor role in comparison. They simply can't help themselves. I haven't even watched the trailers for the upcoming CoD because I already know they will try to outdo the previous ridiculousness.

Buying Red Orchestra means giving money to Tripwire, which was all good until KF2 when everything went downhill. The predecessor was a fantastic game and it's baffling how they went from doing everything right to shooting themselves in the foot by fucking everybody over in the most ridiculous way. If you don't know the controversy, it's a long story dealing with early access microtransactions, revoking licences due to loosely defined "hate speech" and forum bans for criticising gameplay decisions during development of an early access game.

As for anti-Russian narrative, hackers is not the only accusation. U.S media accused them of somehow rigging the election. Probably because Trump has expressed positive sentiments towards cooperation with Russia. I'm not American, but "our" media constantly agitates towards Russia too. It all has to do with NATO and diplomatic ties in the middle east, as Russia sticks up for Syria and actually wants to fight the terrorists that were funded by the U.S. This doesn't go over well in Europe either since the EU has also been funneling money into the destabilization campaign to topple Assad.

The more I learned about these topics, the more I started to loathe the war games, knowing the motivation behind the narratives. It's an oxymoron to want a "moral" war game in the first place, but I think that when we look at tendencies and how things are portrayed, then it's reasonable to expect to hear the story from the other side too. Just for once even.

 BestViking, on 27 October 2017 - 08:00 AM, said:

And yet you're asking for more, from American AAA companies even. This game has Russian DLC, by the way, besides black Russian woman of course.

 BestViking, on 27 October 2017 - 08:00 AM, said:

Yeah, I actually learned about that several years ago, almost exactly when I became more fluent in English. Didn't save me from buying all of RO games though and I also pre-ordered RS because of Pacific War. But to be fair, I bought their games long before KF2 was a thing even.

 BestViking, on 27 October 2017 - 08:00 AM, said:

"Russian hackers" was generalization which obviously includes Russian election interference since it was the main part of this narrative.

 BestViking, on 27 October 2017 - 08:00 AM, said:

Now that you brought it, I think anti-Russian propaganda is much stronger in EU countries. Granted, I noticed that EU media was also much more aggressive when Trump won election, so maybe it's EU media thing. Europe is suffering much more than America from many problems caused by leftists, Europe was the first to fall.

 BestViking, on 27 October 2017 - 08:00 AM, said:

It's quite hard to express different point of view in society where people were fed with propaganda for many decades and since their entire youth. Heck, you can't even deny Holocaust in EU or promote National-Socialism in any way since it's against a law, for example, isn't it? "History is Written By the Victors", although you still can find some of the info from books and on the Internet if you dig hard enough.

Still, as for games, strategy games is your best bet for sure if speaking seriously. There are shitton of historical games in wargaming genre alone and I definitely advise you to get into them if you're desperate for historical games and if you already played games like Blitzkrieg or Men of War to death.

 BestViking, on 27 October 2017 - 08:00 AM, said:

The black man on the cover is supposed to be a member of the Harlem Hellfighters, a US Infantry Regiment that apparantly plays a role in the singleplayer campaign.

Odd that you would focus on his ethnicity rather than the flowing superhero cape or the mishmash of items he's carrying, but I guess that slant fits into the "narrative" you and others here feel compelled to weave on this board at every opportunity (or just out of the blue if there isn't one).
What's even stranger is the hubris contained in the notion that you can and should speak for the fallen in WWI and the fallacy that you would know what they would have thought about the front cover of a 2016 computer game and how it would have affected them.

Do those "others" also include myself? That would be the first time I gave Battlefiled 1 any kind of attention in discussion, the game is probably dead anyway now and became irrelevant quite soon, just like many other EA games. But if so (or if not), mind you, the first thing I noticed about him is that he's American and it's pretty known that Americans barely fought in WW1, the first day I saw the cover I found it quite ridiculous that instead of European soldier they went with American, but it didn't surprise me at all (we're talking about American company here, even EA's bitch DICE is from a country which didn't really participated in this war). Moreover, I'll go further and say that I did not expect good WW1 game from EA at all or from AAA company at this point.

And not going to lie, I could be careless about him being black or not, it's just that America was so unimportant in this war, I didn't care about them at all when I wanted to learn more about this war.

However, I didn't talk about that cover. I did say Russian woman for a reason, though I was a bit mistaken now that I looked at that Russian DLC artwork again (because the woman isn't really black as far as I can tell, just muddy, although it's quite odd to see one anyway, there barely was any woman in this war, Soviets had more of them for obvious reasons).

But there is much more amusing and ridiculous thing in this game which I found when I searched for that Russian DLC cover:

Anyway,

 X-Vector, on 28 October 2017 - 02:57 AM, said:

I explained it. It's taking what's basically a slaughter of white people and making it about blacks. Can you imagine if someone did the opposite? It is a part of a bigger trend of writing whites out of history. That's a whole other discussion, but relevant to why I made my point. Looking at E3 2017, we start to see a pattern:



I'm not the one with the agenda. Millions of Europeans were slaughtered in WWI and WWII and these marxist devs want to make it about black people? Can I play even one modern AAA game without being told how despicable I am for being white?

 BestViking, on 28 October 2017 - 04:31 AM, said:

"Written out", "Marxist", "despicable"?
Why don't you drop the doublespeak and admit that you're just shamelessly downplaying what in actuality amounts to genocide against white people.

Anyway, we're talking about a Battlefield 4 WWI reskin that features a US soldier on its cover, pointing a German Mauser pistol at the camera while carrying a British gas mask, A German MP18 submachine gun and what could be a Winchester 1895 sniper rifle manufactured for the Russians.

This game:



Sorry for the off-topic, folks.

 Jess Renee, on 26 October 2017 - 09:04 PM, said:

I think that's correct dude, while you are instructed to shoot civilians, it's not required to complete the mission.

MW2 is my favorite CoD (and any modern military FPS, for that matter) for two reasons.

The first reason is that America is invaded in MW2 and you get to fight in America (Yes, there's a NYC level in MW3 but it's surprisingly lame). Most of the time in military shooters (and just FPS in general) is that you either help defend or attack other people in other places like Afghanistan and City 17 and Hell, but rarely on good ole 'Murican soil. The American levels in MW2 are easily some of the best setpieces in a FPS by far with that amazing apocalyptic atmosphere. The Washington DC level is really fucking awesome because you get to assault the White House (Duke did it first, but he was 2.5D) and especially that final scene with the flares.

The second reason is how vivid and colorful it was. Unlike MW3 which is 50 shades of gray throughout, MW2 has all sorts of bright colors; from bright sunny Afghan to snowy white Russia to hellish orange America to the beautiful multicolored favelas and that Russian mountainside that Makarov's safehouse is on. It's really amazing how much color variety that this "generic modern military shooter" has.

I find it rather hypocritical when people say how MW2 is brown/gray without having played it, even though all the Quakes they worship is pretty much color-coded (Quake 1 is brown, Quake 2 is orange, Quake 3 is red, Quake 4 is green).


Oh yeah, and I almost forgot the amazing soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. It's a shame they couldn't get him back on board for MW3.

The multiplayer was pretty good until the hacking started. PS3 servers were apparently completely hacked. On PC there was also an epidemic of hackers, which eventually happen in most of these games. But until that happened, it was pretty fun, mostly due to the loadouts and nice mapping.

I'm playing BF4 now since I'm skipping BF1 for obvious, aforementioned reasons. There's the occasional hacker there too, but the problem seems to be less prominent. I think it was always easier for them to hack the CoD games, probably because they kept using, and are probably still using the old Quake 3 engine. They just candy coat it with cool shaders and resell the same thing. Bethesda does the same with ES and Fallout. "Volumetric lighting" and whatever else, running in the same clunky engine where characters float on the surface.

I was pretty impressed with the scripting in the CoD campaigns back then. It obviously took a lot of work to make. But the gameplay is as shallow as it gets, especially those "press F to win" cutscenes.

The last CoD I played was Black Ops 2, which I kind of liked, for the multiplayer.

You press F not to win but to pay respects.


To win, I believe you need to press X.