Spoils of War
November 19th, 2009
If you are intending to play Modern Warfare 2 and do not want the story ruined then you would be better off not reading this. Having said that it is unlikely that I can ruin the story as it makes little or no sense.To say I intend to include spoilers is a bit of an understatement. Reading this will leave you in no doubt of any plot twist however ridiculous. It is important to bear in mind that most of this is based on my hazy release day recollections and may not actually have happened.There is a common philosophy in game development to add the story as a bit of an afterthought. This is largely because developers have ideas for levels they want to make or have types of buildings they are really good at drawing. As a result stories are often absurd. This isn’t an accusation that relates purely to Modern Warfare 2 but there has been quite a lot said about the moral ambiguity of one level in particular. In a sense it was unfair for the media to extract the airport massacre level as it was fair to assume that the rest of game would provide context for it. In fact the developers said exactly this.I thought there might be some use in me writing down what I remember about the game as a whole and seeing if there is any context.To be fair to Modern Warfare 2 it is great. It is jingoistic nonsense of the first order where you do get to blow loads of things up in a modern setting. That’s all you can really ask of it.So what happens?+++++spoilers+++++++The most important thing to remember when looking at the story is that General Shepherd did it. Everything that happens in the game is largely his fault. This is the big twist that you won’t be expecting.The reveal of this twist is cunningly hidden behind the device of not much preceding it really having a grounding in reality.Act 1The game begins in the Afghanistan where you are selected by General Shepherd to join some sort of covert special forces group. He’s apparently selected you on your ability to run down a sort of assault course in about 50 seconds. Clearly his recruitment criteria is not too rigid.Before you can explore the terms of his job offer you must come to the aid of some undisclosed army unit that being attacked by generic terrorists. This sums up the problem with Modern Warfare’s interpretation of Afghanistan. It doesn’t look a thing like Afghanistan we’re used to seeing on the TV.It actually looks quite nice. It seems to have had some extensive urban development and has a relatively good road infrastructure. In fact it looks stunningly like the unnamed middle eastern country in Modern Warfare 1. I think it was actually a left over level from Modern Warfare and the developers had decided that it was very unlikely that anyone playing would have any idea what downtown Kabul looks like. Except it’s on the news most days so we do know what it looks like. It’s generally more broken.After blowing some stuff up General Shepherd asks you to join his secret group and off you go. Nothing sinister so far.The biggest problem with Modern Warfare is that it jumps round the world for no apparent reason and you’re constantly playing as someone different. I admit that I quickly stopped paying attention to who I was playing and what my motivation was.So we now pop up in Russia (possibly) as some sort of UK special forces. Apparently a satellite has crashed and we need to retrieve the ACS Module. I still have no idea what an ACS Module is.The rational solution to this would be to establish diplomatic relations and negotiate it’s return in exchange for some sort of cash oil deal. What we actually do is sneak into sovereign territory, execute their sentries and steal the ACS back. It is important to note that before we steal the ACS we decide to blow up their fuel supply. I have no idea why. It seems a bit spiteful. It’s a bit like those people who burgle your house and piss on your pillows.Despite the evident flaws it is very exciting and you get to shoot loads of people.At last we get to the, now, infamous airport level. The premise of this level stretches imagination a little bit. We are once again the American bloke from the first level and General Shepherd has persuaded us to go into deep cover within a Russian Terrorist group. I would assume that the intention would be to find out what atrocities the group is planning and thwart them. I have no idea what they could have been planning that is worse than executing thousands of innocent people in an airport but for some reason we are not allowed to stop the attack.So we wonder around the airport with this bloke called Makarov generally shooting people. It’s a bit gruesome but I must have no morals as I didn’t find it very shocking.At the end of the level Makarov decides to shoot us in the first of our shakey pot twists. Apparently knowing that we are undercover he hopes to leave a body behind to incriminate the US in the terrorist attack. In itself this is probably reasonable. We know later on that General Shepherd masterminded this so he probably could leak our real identity. It does leave a little bit to chance and is the first indication that Makarov isn’t a very good terrorist.Once that’s all sorted we are back again as UK special forces but this time in Brazil.Apparently the forensics from the airport indicate that the weapons used come from an arms dealer in Brazil called Rojas. I was interested to note that Rojas is younger than me; he seems to have done quite well for himself.We trail someone in a van until they meet Rojas’ friend. He goes a bit ape shit blowing stuff up but we valiantly chase him down by shooting him in the leg. Whilst our colleagues decide to torture him we are advised to go and hang around in favela in case Rojas turns up.This seems to be a little bit of a random plan but actually works out for the best. Whilst in the favela we quickly find out that Rojas has a very very big group of people working for him. It never really becomes apparent why he would need this many people working for him. As anyone will tell you in large organisations the biggest cost is generally labour. Relating labour to income is key to a profitable business. In Rojas’ case security would obviously be a large consideration but maintaining such a massive group of heavily armed people must be an economic drain. I imagine they were generally not required to do much on a day to day basis.Unfortunately on this day they were required to die on an almost genocidal scale. As you begin killing everyone that moves there is a vague warning about avoiding civilians. There isn’t a lot to worry about as there can’t be more than 6. This is a bit unusual in one of the most densely packed conurbations on earth.Eventually we catch up with Rojas’ who tells us that there is a man being held in a Russian Gulag that Makarov doesn’t like. A lot of people died for this completely pointless information. The futility of human life doesn’t concern us to much and we ask for some sort of immediate evacuation. Before this can happen we’re off again.Act 2This time we’re just in time to witness the Russian invasion of America. It seems the Russians weren’t too happy about their citizens getting killed and planned this as revenge. Using the codes obtained from the ACS they have disabled the US air defences. This is the first indication that the ACS even held codes. The Russians reaction also indicates that we should probably not have blown up their airfield in retrieving the ACS. They are clearly riled.There’s not much to say about this level. It’s a big war in an American town.It’s probably my favourite level of the game and it does nothing to develop the story.And now we’re back in Brazil. It seems that the war in the US has disrupted scheduled air travel and the helicopter can’t pick us up. Oh no.We also seem to have lost Rojas. I have no idea what happened to him after he gave us his rubbish bit of intelligence, we probably shot him. Unfortunately as the helicopter can’t pick us up from the large patch of open ground we have to battle our way up to some rooftops where it can pick us up. There is no rational for this and a substantial amount of human life (and chickens) could have been preserved if someone had been a bit firmer on the radio.There’s lots of jumping about and quite an exciting leap at the end.That’s the end of Brazil. We killed a lot of people and we learnt that Makarov doesn’t like a bloke in prison in Russia. Not a good return.Back in the US we aided in our fight against the Russians by a large vehicle called Honey Badger. It’s great at blowing things like anti-aircraft guns up. Just mindless destruction.Again this doesn’t add to the story until the last bit of the level. After blowing some guns up we’re diverted to a specific address where someone important is hiding in a panic room. We need to get there and rescue someone.On arriving we discover the important person gone and cryptically the bodies of some, apparently, unusual people outside of the door of the panic room. You would be forgiven that this little gem might be in some way relevant to the story. As far as I can work out it isn’t. I have no idea who we were rescuing or what happened to them.Based on the intelligence received from Rojas’ the full US military might of the US and UK are devoted to finding this bloke who’s imprisoned in Russia. There is absolutely no logical basis for this. As we will find out later we apparently know where Makarov lives so we could have just cut out the middleman and gone to his house. We don’t.Obviously before we can go to the prison we have to free some hostages on an oilrig. People who make these games really like oil rigs. I think this is because of Roger Moore’s 1980 classic North Sea Hijack. Classic might be stretching things a bit but every game I’ve played that includes the customary oil rig looks a lot like it.The Russian prison itself is fairly uneventful. It does have a lot of shooting people and it is good to see that the Russians have a startling ratio of guards to prisoners. Seemingly two or three hundred to every prisoner. Much like Rojas their costs must be astronomical.Clearly we’re all very excited to find out who this person is that has got Makarov so annoyed. It turns out it’s Captain Price. Yes, Captain Price from Call of Duty 4. I thought he was dead but I didn’t pay much attention to that one either.It seems he’s been in prison for five years. In all likelyhood it was for a crime he didn’t commit.On releasing Captain Price we tell him about the war in America and Makarov’s role in the airport and it is fair to say he is very very angry about it. He suggests that the only way to put out a fire is to light another bigger fire under it. He has been tortured for quite a few years so I’m not too surprised that he has forgotten some of the principles of fire fighting but this should have been an early indicator to not put him in charge of anything.Act 3There is now a quick level back in the US where we have to fight to secure a building. Lots of killing not much in the way of story.Despite the warning signs Captain Price seems to be in charge and he insists we all go to a submarine base. This would have been a good point to ask why?This bit really confused me. We fight our way, with Captain Price, to the nuclear submarine. Whilst he nips into the submarine we wait outside just killing. After a while there’s a bit of a panic and someone launches a nuclear missile which seems to be aimed at the US. I say someone as I still don’t understand who launched it.If it was Captain Price then this was a silly plan. Though he had been talking about bigger fires and all that, so it certainly could have been him.It could well have been the Russians panicking when they saw a very angry Captain Price coming towards them. I imagine that launching the missile wouldn’t have prevented Captain Price killing them as he seems to kill everyone he meets.I have no idea why we were even at the base let alone why someone decided nuclear weapons would make the situation better.Ironically it turns out that the explosion of the nuclear weapon over Washington creates an Electro Magnetic Pulse that knocks out the invading Russian helicopters. It is entirely possible that in the post war enquiry Captain Price could claim that this was his plan all along. Given the long term affects of radiation on the Eastern Seaboard I don’t think anyone will accept this was a very good plan.The loss of the helicopters in Washington gives the Americans just the break they needed to fight all the way to the White House which had previously been under Russian control. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to go there but it’s good fun and the post nuclear affects are quite good.After Captain Price’s plan goes horribly tits up someone remembers that they think they know where Makarov lives. It hadn’t occurred to them to mention this before now. Well it probably didn’t seem important.Everyone decides to split up and half the team will go to his supposed house whilst the rest of the team go to scrapyard in Afghanistan. Don’t ask me why.At Makarov’s house we discover he’s not in but he has left his computer there with lots of lovely intelligence on it. It must be an extremely heavy computer because we can’t carry it to the helicopter. No, instead we must copy the contents of the hard drive before we can leave. This gives Makarov’s men a chance to attack in waves. Many waves.It does take a long long time to copy the data but eventually we make our escape so we can be rescued by General Shepherd in his big helicopter. As you will no doubt guess, mainly because I ruined it earlier, General Shepherd is pleased to get hold of the data but less pleased to give us a lift. In fact he shoots us legs it.This is the point that we realise that General Shepherd has planned all of this from start to finish. We do not realise why on earth he would have come up with such a strange plan.The other team, in the scrapyard, realise that General Shepherd is not to be trusted. This is largely because there are large groups of his men and Makarov’s men having a massive fight. I do not know why they are there or why they have fallen out with each other.Captain Price is with the other team and somehow manages to get hold of Makarov and persuade him to give us a lift out of the massive fight. The one thing we know about Captain Price is that he doesn’t like Makarov (and he can’t be trusted with submarine based plan). The one thing we know about Makarov is that he doesn’t like Captain Price. We don’t know why. Despite this they have quite an amicable chat and Makarov agrees to pick us up in his plane.He also quite happily agrees to drop us off at General Shepherds secret mountain base.This means we wave goodbye to the terrorist we’ve tearing the planet apart looking for. He gets completely away with it.It also doesn’t explain why General Shepherd has a secret mountain base. It’s not a very good one. It has virtually no amenities but there are lots of heavily armed men there. It isn’t very clear what he was planning on doing there but we don’t stop to ask and rampage through it killing everyone in our way. General Shepherd fearing for his own life attempts to escape in a rubber boat. He doesn’t get far.Then we get the final explanation.It seems that General Shepherd is generally vexed by the recruitment crisis in the US military so he decided to engineer a Russian invasion. That’s it.It’s a massive amount of trouble to go to when this could have been largely resolved through a decent poster campaign.Anyway that’s all I remember about Modern Warfare 2.
If you are intending to play Modern Warfare 2 and do not want the story ruined then you would be better off not reading this. Having said that it is unlikely that I can ruin the story as it makes little or no sense.
To say I intend to include spoilers is a bit of an understatement. Reading this will leave you in no doubt of any plot twist however ridiculous. It is important to bear in mind that most of this is based on my hazy release day recollections and may not actually have happened.
There is a common philosophy in game development to add the story as a bit of an afterthought. This is largely because developers have ideas for levels they want to make or have types of buildings they are really good at drawing. As a result stories are often absurd. This isn’t an accusation that relates purely to Modern Warfare 2 but there has been quite a lot said about the moral ambiguity of one level in particular. In a sense it was unfair for the media to extract the airport massacre level as it was fair to assume that the rest of game would provide context for it. In fact the developers said exactly this.
I thought there might be some use in me writing down what I remember about the game as a whole and seeing if there is any context.
To be fair to Modern Warfare 2 it is great. It is jingoistic nonsense of the first order where you do get to blow loads of things up in a modern setting. That’s all you can really ask of it.
So what happens?
+++++++spoilers+++++++
The most important thing to remember when looking at the story is that General Shepherd did it. Everything that happens in the game is largely his fault. This is the big twist that you won’t be expecting.
The reveal of this twist is cunningly hidden behind the device of not much preceding it really having a grounding in reality.
Act 1
The game begins in the Afghanistan where you are selected by General Shepherd to join some sort of covert special forces group. He’s apparently selected you on your ability to run down a sort of assault course in about 50 seconds. Clearly his recruitment criteria is not too rigid.
Before you can explore the terms of his job offer you must come to the aid of some undisclosed army unit that being attacked by generic terrorists. This sums up the problem with Modern Warfare’s interpretation of Afghanistan. It doesn’t look a thing like Afghanistan we’re used to seeing on the TV.
It actually looks quite nice. It seems to have had some extensive urban development and has a relatively good road infrastructure. In fact it looks stunningly like the unnamed middle eastern country in Modern Warfare 1. I think it was actually a left over level from Modern Warfare and the developers had decided that it was very unlikely that anyone playing would have any idea what downtown Kabul looks like. Except it’s on the news most days so we do know what it looks like. It’s generally more broken.
After blowing some stuff up General Shepherd asks you to join his secret group and off you go. Nothing sinister so far.
The biggest problem with Modern Warfare is that it jumps round the world for no apparent reason and you’re constantly playing as someone different. I admit that I quickly stopped paying attention to who I was playing and what my motivation was.
So we now pop up in Russia (possibly) as some sort of UK special forces. Apparently a satellite has crashed and we need to retrieve the ACS Module. I still have no idea what an ACS Module is.
The rational solution to this would be to establish diplomatic relations and negotiate it’s return in exchange for some sort of cash oil deal. What we actually do is sneak into sovereign territory, execute their sentries and steal the ACS back. It is important to note that before we steal the ACS we decide to blow up their fuel supply. I have no idea why. It seems a bit spiteful. It’s a bit like those people who burgle your house and piss on your pillows.
Despite the evident flaws it is very exciting and you get to shoot loads of people.
At last we get to the, now, infamous airport level. The premise of this level stretches imagination a little bit. We are once again the American bloke from the first level and General Shepherd has persuaded us to go into deep cover within a Russian Terrorist group. I would assume that the intention would be to find out what atrocities the group is planning and thwart them. I have no idea what they could have been planning that is worse than executing thousands of innocent people in an airport but for some reason we are not allowed to stop the attack.
So we wonder around the airport with this bloke called Makarov generally shooting people. It’s a bit gruesome but I must have no morals as I didn’t find it very shocking.
At the end of the level Makarov decides to shoot us in the first of our shakey pot twists. Apparently knowing that we are undercover he hopes to leave a body behind to incriminate the US in the terrorist attack. In itself this is probably reasonable. We know later on that General Shepherd masterminded this so he probably could leak our real identity. It does leave a little bit to chance and is the first indication that Makarov isn’t a very good terrorist.
Once that’s all sorted we are back again as UK special forces but this time in Brazil.
Apparently the forensics from the airport indicate that the weapons used come from an arms dealer in Brazil called Rojas. I was interested to note that Rojas is younger than me; he seems to have done quite well for himself.
We trail someone in a van until they meet Rojas’ friend. He goes a bit ape shit blowing stuff up but we valiantly chase him down by shooting him in the leg. Whilst our colleagues decide to torture him we are advised to go and hang around in favela in case Rojas turns up.
This seems to be a little bit of a random plan but actually works out for the best. Whilst in the favela we quickly find out that Rojas has a very very big group of people working for him. It never really becomes apparent why he would need this many people working for him. As anyone will tell you in large organisations the biggest cost is generally labour. Relating labour to income is key to a profitable business. In Rojas’ case security would obviously be a large consideration but maintaining such a massive group of heavily armed people must be an economic drain. I imagine they were generally not required to do much on a day to day basis.
Unfortunately on this day they were required to die on an almost genocidal scale. As you begin killing everyone that moves there is a vague warning about avoiding civilians. There isn’t a lot to worry about as there can’t be more than 6. This is a bit unusual in one of the most densely packed conurbations on earth.
Eventually we catch up with Rojas’ who tells us that there is a man being held in a Russian Gulag that Makarov doesn’t like. A lot of people died for this completely pointless information. The futility of human life doesn’t concern us to much and we ask for some sort of immediate evacuation. Before this can happen we’re off again.
Act 2
This time we’re just in time to witness the Russian invasion of America. It seems the Russians weren’t too happy about their citizens getting killed and planned this as revenge. Using the codes obtained from the ACS they have disabled the US air defences. This is the first indication that the ACS even held codes. The Russians reaction also indicates that we should probably not have blown up their airfield in retrieving the ACS. They are clearly riled.
There’s not much to say about this level. It’s a big war in an American town.
It’s probably my favourite level of the game and it does nothing to develop the story.
And now we’re back in Brazil. It seems that the war in the US has disrupted scheduled air travel and the helicopter can’t pick us up. Oh no.
We also seem to have lost Rojas. I have no idea what happened to him after he gave us his rubbish bit of intelligence, we probably shot him. Unfortunately as the helicopter can’t pick us up from the large patch of open ground we have to battle our way up to some rooftops where it can pick us up. There is no rational for this and a substantial amount of human life (and chickens) could have been preserved if someone had been a bit firmer on the radio.
There’s lots of jumping about and quite an exciting leap at the end.
That’s the end of Brazil. We killed a lot of people and we learnt that Makarov doesn’t like a bloke in prison in Russia. Not a good return.
Back in the US we aided in our fight against the Russians by a large vehicle called a/the Honey Badger. It’s great at blowing things like anti-aircraft guns up. Just mindless destruction.
Again this doesn’t add to the story until the last bit of the level. After blowing some guns up we’re diverted to a specific address where someone important is hiding in a panic room. We need to get there and rescue someone.
On arriving we discover the important person gone and cryptically the bodies of some, apparently, unusual people outside of the door of the panic room. You would be forgiven that this little gem might be in some way relevant to the story. As far as I can work out it isn’t. I have no idea who we were rescuing or what happened to them.
Based on the intelligence received from Rojas’ the full US military might of the US and UK are devoted to finding this bloke who’s imprisoned in Russia. There is absolutely no logical basis for this. As we will find out later we apparently know where Makarov lives so we could have just cut out the middleman and gone to his house. We don’t.
Obviously before we can go to the prison we have to free some hostages on an oilrig. People who make these games really like oil rigs. I think this is because of Roger Moore’s 1980 classic North Sea Hijack. Classic might be stretching things a bit but every game I’ve played that includes the customary oil rig looks a lot like it.
The Russian prison itself is fairly uneventful. It does have a lot of shooting people and it is good to see that the Russians have a startling ratio of guards to prisoners. Seemingly two or three hundred to every prisoner. Much like Rojas their costs must be astronomical.
Clearly we’re all very excited to find out who this person is that has got Makarov so annoyed. It turns out it’s Captain Price. Yes, Captain Price from Call of Duty 4. I thought he was dead but I didn’t pay much attention to that one either.
It seems he’s been in prison for five years. In all likelyhood it was for a crime he didn’t commit. Needless to say, why is not explained.
On releasing Captain Price we tell him about the war in America and Makarov’s role in the airport and it is fair to say he is very very angry about it. He suggests that the only way to put out a fire is to light another bigger fire under it. He has been tortured for quite a few years so I’m not too surprised that he has forgotten some of the principles of fire fighting but this should have been an early indicator to not put him in charge of anything.
Act 3
There is now a quick level back in the US where we have to fight to secure a building. Lots of killing not much in the way of story.
Despite the warning signs Captain Price seems to be in charge and he insists we all go to a submarine base. This would have been a good point to ask why?
This bit really confused me. We fight our way, with Captain Price, to the nuclear submarine. Whilst he nips into the submarine we wait outside just killing. After a while there’s a bit of a panic and someone launches a nuclear missile which seems to be aimed at the US. I say someone as I still don’t understand who launched it.
If it was Captain Price then this was a silly plan. Though he had been talking about bigger fires and all that, so it certainly could have been him.
It could well have been the Russians panicking when they saw a very angry Captain Price coming towards them. I imagine that launching the missile wouldn’t have prevented Captain Price killing them as he seems to kill everyone he meets.
I have no idea why we were even at the base let alone why someone decided nuclear weapons would make the situation better.
Ironically it turns out that the explosion of the nuclear weapon over Washington creates an Electro Magnetic Pulse that knocks out the invading Russian helicopters. It is entirely possible that in the post war enquiry Captain Price could claim that this was his plan all along. Given the long term affects of radiation on the Eastern Seaboard I don’t think anyone will accept this was a very good plan.
The loss of the helicopters in Washington gives the Americans just the break they needed to fight all the way to the White House which had previously been under Russian control. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to go there but it’s good fun and the post nuclear affects are quite good.
After Captain Price’s plan goes horribly tits up someone remembers that they think they know where Makarov lives. It hadn’t occurred to them to mention this before now. Well it probably didn’t seem important.
Everyone decides to split up and half the team will go to his supposed house whilst the rest of the team go to scrapyard in Afghanistan. Don’t ask me why.
At Makarov’s house we discover he’s not in but he has left his computer there with lots of lovely intelligence on it. It must be an extremely heavy computer because we can’t carry it to the helicopter. No, instead we must copy the contents of the hard drive before we can leave. This gives Makarov’s men a chance to attack in waves. Many waves.
It does take a long long time to copy the data but eventually we make our escape so we can be rescued by General Shepherd in his big helicopter. As you will no doubt guess, mainly because I ruined it earlier, General Shepherd is pleased to get hold of the data but less pleased to give us a lift. In fact he shoots us legs it.
This is the point that we realise that General Shepherd has planned all of this from start to finish. We do not realise why on earth he would have come up with such a strange plan.
The other team, in the scrapyard, realise that General Shepherd is not to be trusted. This is largely because there are large groups of his men and Makarov’s men having a massive fight. I do not know why they are there or why they have fallen out with each other.
Captain Price is with the other team and somehow manages to get hold of Makarov and persuade him to give us a lift out of the massive fight.
The one thing we know about Captain Price is that he doesn’t like Makarov (and he can’t be trusted with submarine based plan).
The one thing we know about Makarov is that he doesn’t like Captain Price. We don’t know why. Despite this they have quite an amicable chat and Makarov agrees to pick us up in his plane.
He also quite happily agrees to drop us off at General Shepherds secret mountain base.
This means we wave goodbye to the terrorist we’ve tearing the planet apart looking for. He gets completely away with it.
It also doesn’t explain why General Shepherd has a secret mountain base. It’s not a very good one. It has virtually no amenities but there are lots of heavily armed men there. It isn’t very clear what he was planning on doing there but we don’t stop to ask and rampage through it killing everyone in our way. General Shepherd fearing for his own life attempts to escape in a rubber boat. He doesn’t get far.
Then we get the final explanation.
It seems that General Shepherd is generally vexed by the recruitment crisis in the US military so he decided to engineer a Russian invasion. That’s it.
It’s a massive amount of trouble to go to when this could have been largely resolved through a decent poster campaign.
Anyway that’s all I remember about Modern Warfare 2.
If you are intending to play Modern Warfare 2 and do not want the story ruined then you would be better off not reading this. Having said that it is unlikely that I can ruin the story as it makes little or no sense.
To say I intend to include spoilers is a bit of an understatement. Reading this will leave you in no doubt of any plot twist however ridiculous. It is important to bear in mind that most of this is based on my hazy release day recollections and may not actually have happened.
There is a common philosophy in game development to add the story as a bit of an afterthought. This is largely because developers have ideas for levels they want to make or have types of buildings they are really good at drawing. As a result stories are often absurd.
This isn’t an accusation that relates purely to Modern Warfare 2 but there has been quite a lot said about the moral ambiguity of one level in particular. In a sense it was unfair for the media to extract the airport massacre level as it was fair to assume that the rest of game would provide context for it. In fact the developers said exactly this (probably).
I thought there might be some use in me writing down what I remember about the game as a whole and seeing if there is any context.
To be fair to Modern Warfare 2 it is great. It is jingoistic nonsense of the first order where you do get to blow loads of things up in a modern setting. That’s all you can really ask of it.
So what happens?
+++++++spoilers+++++++
The most important thing to remember when looking at the story is that General Shepherd did it. Everything that happens in the game is largely his fault. This is the big twist that you won’t be expecting.
The reveal of this twist is cunningly hidden behind the device of not much preceding it really having a grounding in reality.
Act 1
The game begins in the Afghanistan where you are selected by General Shepherd to join some sort of covert special forces group. He’s apparently selected you on your ability to run down a sort of assault course in about 50 seconds. Clearly his recruitment criteria is not too rigid.
Before you can explore the terms of his job offer you must come to the aid of some undisclosed army unit that being attacked by generic terrorists. This sums up the problem with Modern Warfare’s interpretation of Afghanistan. It doesn’t look a thing like Afghanistan we’re used to seeing on the TV.
It actually looks quite nice. It seems to have had some extensive urban development and has a relatively good road infrastructure. In fact it looks stunningly like the unnamed middle eastern country in Modern Warfare 1.
I think it was actually a left over level from Modern Warfare and the developers had decided that it was very unlikely that anyone playing would have any idea what downtown Kabul looks like. Except it’s on the news most days so we do know what it looks like. It’s generally more broken.
After blowing some stuff up General Shepherd asks you to join his secret group and off you go. Nothing sinister so far.
The biggest problem with Modern Warfare is that it jumps round the world for no apparent reason and you’re constantly playing as someone different. I admit that I quickly stopped paying attention to who I was playing and what my motivation was.
So we now pop up in Russia (possibly) as some sort of UK special forces. Apparently a satellite has crashed and we need to retrieve the ACS Module. I still have no idea what an ACS Module is.
The rational solution to this would be to establish diplomatic relations and negotiate it’s return in exchange for some sort of cash oil deal. What we actually do is sneak into sovereign territory, execute their sentries and steal the ACS back. It is important to note that before we steal the ACS we decide to blow up their fuel supply. I have no idea why. It seems a bit spiteful. It’s a bit like those people who burgle your house and piss on your pillows.
Despite the evident flaws it is very exciting and you get to shoot loads of people.
At last we get to the, now, infamous airport level. The premise of this level stretches imagination a little bit. We are once again the American bloke from the first level and General Shepherd has persuaded us to go into deep cover within a Russian Terrorist group. I would assume that the intention would be to find out what atrocities the group is planning and thwart them. I have no idea what they could have been planning that is worse than executing thousands of innocent people in an airport but for some reason we are not allowed to stop the attack.
So we wonder around the airport with this bloke called Makarov generally shooting people. It’s a bit gruesome but I must have no morals as I didn’t find it very shocking.
At the end of the level Makarov decides to shoot us in the first of our shakey pot twists. Apparently knowing that we are undercover he hopes to leave a body behind to incriminate the US in the terrorist attack. In itself this is probably reasonable. We know later on that General Shepherd masterminded this so he probably could leak our real identity. It does leave a little bit to chance and is the first indication that Makarov isn’t a very good terrorist.
Once that’s all sorted we are back again as UK special forces but this time in Brazil.
Apparently the forensics from the airport indicate that the weapons used come from an arms dealer in Brazil called Rojas. I was interested to note that Rojas is younger than me; he seems to have done quite well for himself.
We trail someone in a van until they meet Rojas’ friend. He goes a bit ape shit blowing stuff up but we valiantly chase him down by shooting him in the leg. Whilst our colleagues decide to torture him we are advised to go and hang around in favela in case Rojas turns up.
This seems to be a little bit of a random plan but actually works out for the best. Whilst in the favela we quickly find out that Rojas has a very very big group of people working for him. It never really becomes apparent why he would need this many people working for him.
As anyone will tell you in large organisations the biggest cost is generally labour. Relating labour to income is key to a profitable business. In Rojas’ case security would obviously be a large consideration but maintaining such a massive group of heavily armed people must be an economic drain. I imagine they were generally not required to do much on a day to day basis.
Unfortunately on this day they were required to die on an almost genocidal scale. As you begin killing everyone that moves there is a vague warning about avoiding civilians. There isn’t a lot to worry about as there can’t be more than 6. This is a bit unusual in one of the most densely packed conurbations on earth.
Eventually we catch up with Rojas’ who tells us that there is a man being held in a Russian Gulag that Makarov doesn’t like. A lot of people died for this completely pointless information. The futility of human life doesn’t concern us to much and we ask for some sort of immediate evacuation. Before this can happen we’re off again.
Act 2
This time we’re just in time to witness the Russian invasion of America. It seems the Russians weren’t too happy about their citizens getting killed and planned this as revenge. Using the codes obtained from the ACS they have disabled the US air defences. This is the first indication that the ACS even held codes. The Russians reaction also indicates that we should probably not have blown up their airfield in retrieving the ACS. They are clearly riled.
There’s not much to say about this level. It’s a big war in an American town.
It’s probably my favourite level of the game and it does nothing to develop the story.
And now we’re back in Brazil. It seems that the war in the US has disrupted scheduled air travel and the helicopter can’t pick us up. Oh no.
We also seem to have lost Rojas. I have no idea what happened to him after he gave us his rubbish bit of intelligence, we probably shot him. Unfortunately as the helicopter can’t pick us up from the large patch of open ground we have to battle our way up to some rooftops where it can pick us up. There is no rational for this and a substantial amount of human life (and chickens) could have been preserved if someone had been a bit firmer on the radio.
There’s lots of jumping about and quite an exciting leap at the end.
That’s the end of Brazil. We killed a lot of people and we learnt that Makarov doesn’t like a bloke in prison in Russia. Not a good return.
Back in the US we aided in our fight against the Russians by a large vehicle called a/the Honey Badger. It’s great at blowing things like anti-aircraft guns up. Just mindless destruction.
Again this doesn’t add to the story until the last bit of the level. After blowing some guns up we’re diverted to a specific address where someone important is hiding in a panic room. We need to get there and rescue someone.
On arriving we discover the important person gone and cryptically the bodies of some, apparently, unusual people outside of the door of the panic room. You would be forgiven that this little gem might be in some way relevant to the story. As far as I can work out it isn’t. I have no idea who we were rescuing or what happened to them.
Based on the intelligence received from Rojas’ the full US military might of the US and UK are devoted to finding this bloke who’s imprisoned in Russia. There is absolutely no logical basis for this. As we will find out later we apparently know where Makarov lives so we could have just cut out the middleman and gone to his house. We don’t.
Obviously before we can go to the prison we have to free some hostages on an oilrig. People who make these games really like oil rigs. I think this is because of Roger Moore’s 1980 classic North Sea Hijack. Classic might be stretching things a bit but every game I’ve played that includes the customary oil rig looks a lot like it.
The Russian prison itself is fairly uneventful. It does have a lot of shooting people and it is good to see that the Russians have a startling ratio of guards to prisoners. Seemingly two or three hundred to every prisoner. Much like Rojas their costs must be astronomical.
Clearly we’re all very excited to find out who this person is that has got Makarov so annoyed. It turns out it’s Captain Price. Yes, Captain Price from Call of Duty 4. I thought he was dead but I didn’t pay much attention to that one either.
It seems he’s been in prison for five years. In all likelyhood it was for a crime he didn’t commit. Needless to say, why is not explained.
On releasing Captain Price we tell him about the war in America and Makarov’s role in the airport and it is fair to say he is very very angry about it. He suggests that the only way to put out a fire is to light another bigger fire under it. He has been tortured for quite a few years so I’m not too surprised that he has forgotten some of the principles of fire fighting but this should have been an early indicator to not put him in charge of anything.
Act 3
There is now a quick level back in the US where we have to fight to secure a building. Lots of killing not much in the way of story.
Despite the warning signs Captain Price seems to be in charge and he insists we all go to a submarine base. This would have been a good point to ask why?
This bit really confused me. We fight our way, with Captain Price, to the nuclear submarine. Whilst he nips into the submarine we wait outside just killing. After a while there’s a bit of a panic and someone launches a nuclear missile which seems to be aimed at the US. I say someone as I still don’t understand who launched it.
If it was Captain Price then this was a silly plan. Though he had been talking about bigger fires and all that, so it certainly could have been him.
It could well have been the Russians panicking when they saw a very angry Captain Price coming towards them. I imagine that launching the missile wouldn’t have prevented Captain Price killing them as he seems to kill everyone he meets.
I have no idea why we were even at the base let alone why someone decided nuclear weapons would make the situation better.
Ironically it turns out that the explosion of the nuclear weapon over Washington creates an Electro Magnetic Pulse that knocks out the invading Russian helicopters. It is entirely possible that in the post war enquiry Captain Price could claim that this was his plan all along. Given the long term affects of radiation on the Eastern Seaboard I don’t think anyone will accept this was a very good plan.
The loss of the helicopters in Washington gives the Americans just the break they needed to fight all the way to the White House which had previously been under Russian control. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to go there but it’s good fun and the post nuclear affects are quite good.
After Captain Price’s plan goes horribly tits up someone remembers that they think they know where Makarov lives. It hadn’t occurred to them to mention this before now. Well it probably didn’t seem important.
Everyone decides to split up and half the team will go to his supposed house whilst the rest of the team go to scrapyard in Afghanistan. Don’t ask me why.
At Makarov’s house we discover he’s not in but he has left his computer there with lots of lovely intelligence on it. It must be an extremely heavy computer because we can’t carry it to the helicopter. No, instead we must copy the contents of the hard drive before we can leave. This gives Makarov’s men a chance to attack in waves. Many waves.
It does take a long long time to copy the data but eventually we make our escape so we can be rescued by General Shepherd in his big helicopter. As you will no doubt guess, mainly because I ruined it earlier, General Shepherd is pleased to get hold of the data but less pleased to give us a lift. In fact he shoots us legs it.
This is the point that we realise that General Shepherd has planned all of this from start to finish. We do not realise why on earth he would have come up with such a strange plan.
The other team, in the scrapyard, realise that General Shepherd is not to be trusted. This is largely because there are large groups of his men and Makarov’s men having a massive fight. I do not know why they are there or why they have fallen out with each other.
Captain Price is with the other team and somehow manages to get hold of Makarov and persuade him to give us a lift out of the massive fight.
The one thing we know about Captain Price is that he doesn’t like Makarov (and he can’t be trusted with submarine based plan).
The one thing we know about Makarov is that he doesn’t like Captain Price. We don’t know why. Despite this they have quite an amicable chat and Makarov agrees to pick us up in his plane.
He also quite happily agrees to drop us off at General Shepherds secret mountain base.
This means we wave goodbye to the terrorist we’ve tearing the planet apart looking for. He gets completely away with it.
It also doesn’t explain why General Shepherd has a secret mountain base. It’s not a very good one. It has virtually no amenities but there are lots of heavily armed men there. It isn’t very clear what he was planning on doing there but we don’t stop to ask and rampage through it killing everyone in our way. General Shepherd fearing for his own life attempts to escape in a rubber boat. He doesn’t get far.
Then we get the final explanation.
It seems that General Shepherd is generally vexed by the recruitment crisis in the US military so he decided to engineer a Russian invasion. That’s it.
It’s a massive amount of trouble to go to when this could have been largely resolved through a decent poster campaign.
Anyway that’s all I remember about Modern Warfare 2.
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