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Call of Duty Modern Warfare blames Russia for the Tariq Almawt' bombings (AKA Highway of Death)
- Thread starter Deleted member 51539
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I do concede your point, as movies do create (at least a sense of) knowledge but even heavily direct reiterations of events are dramatized for the sake of the good story. I do think people need to separate fact (real world) from fiction (as told by a fiction movie, book or game) more even if it means itself completely on a real thing.
But yeah using allegory or misframings is uncanny, much like David Cage appropriating black life movements and apartheid as "Androids"
Tbf, having the antagonist being systemic evil would very boring if you ask me
COD is indeed jingoistic garbage.
These developers are ridiculous and toothless, to say the least.
Interviewer: What's the story about?
Dev: A very relevant contemporary war story.
Interviewer: Is this game political?
Dev (with a straight face): No
Interviewer: Really?
Dev: No
Interviewer: Really?
Dev: No, we're just making games
Interviewer: That seems insane!
Dev (same straight face): It seems insane to get political to me
So you see, this game is totally not about a proxy war between Russia and US fought in the midst of a civil war in Syria. Because it's actually set in a fictional Middle Eastern country called Urzikstan, which is undergoing a civil war where Russia and US are fighting a proxy war and there's a power hungry Russian leader. But you see the leader is a military leader and not a political leader. So it's all 100% fiction and entirely non political obviously.
IW pls
These developers are ridiculous and toothless, to say the least.
Why? It place the protagonists in a position where they have to choose to destroy the system and all those who rely on it. Even the normal people just trying to live their lives.
The Russians we see are basically all under the leadership of an evil rogue
As far as Middle Eastern characters, there are two factions fighting the Russians,
1 good, 1 bad. Bad will basically go to any lengths to defeat their enemy, good faction swears off stuff like chemical weapons and leaving their boarders to fight elsewhere as its strictly about their home.
Farah was a pretty good character imo.
Got to admit it felt different to be using IEDs and personal drones strapped with explosives like it was nothing.
The quotes being contradictory have been unintentionally hilarious since forever, classic case of ludonarrative dissonance.
In one of the last Black Ops you killed a Dictator in game and that dude is still alive in the real world, It's a game and pure fiction that takes elements of the real world and changes it, It's a video game is just what it is, no logic to hating it for that.
How did killing them achieve that goal? They were fleeing Kuwait. Wouldn't just letting them flee back to Iraq accomplish that goal?
If you pull the trigger and the Butcher finds out you don't have a bullets, Price will give them to you. Than you are able to kill all three or no one. It's up to you.
It's a pretty baller move to take an American war crime (yes its fiction in COD, but it's basically the same event with some minor tweaks), borrow the exact same name in English and Arabic, and then then balme it on Russia.
Astounding, even for COD, a series with a history of garbage politics.
Astounding, even for COD, a series with a history of garbage politics.
Interviewer: What's the story about?
Dev: A very relevant contemporary war story.
Interviewer: Is this game political?
Dev (with a straight face): No
Interviewer: Really?
Dev: No
Interviewer: Really?
Dev: No, we're just making games
Interviewer: That seems insane!
Dev (same straight face): It seems insane to get political to me
So you see, this game is totally not about a proxy war between Russia and US fought in the midst of a civil war in Syria. Because it's actually set in a fictional Middle Eastern country called Urzikstan, which is undergoing a civil war where Russia and US are fighting a proxy war and there's a power hungry Russian leader. But you see the leader is a military leader and not a political leader. So it's all 100% fiction and entirely non political obviously.
IW pls
Despite Political Overtones, David Cage Says Detroit Is Mostly About Androids
Near the end of the Detroit: Become Human demo I saw during E3, renegade android Markus and his partner North incite a riot among recently freed androids. If you choose to set things on fire, North triumphantly declares, “Now the humans will have no choice but to listen to us.” Main character...
kotaku.com
It's hard not to draw parallels to slavery, racism and events going on around the world. Despite this, however, director David Cage told me that he's not trying to make a game with an overtly political message, nor is he heavily drawing on real world history or politics as influences.
Not heavily drawing on real world history. Not at all.
I mean... you are 110% wrong OP. The game sets that area as the Russians bombing fleeing civilians from a city they captured. It has nothing to do with the Gulf War.
Except they are using a real life events, even name them same and put them in their fictional backdrop. It's still complete bullshit.
I know, but in my case by the time I finished reloading he had already spilled everything. So they just left them there unharmed, yet the cutscene that followed later was made in a way as if I actually did hurt them.
Younger posters might be more familiar with the event from Jarhead.
They didn't even bother to make up a fake name for the city. It'd be like looking at Arma 2's Takistan and going "it has nothing to do with Pakistan, it's all fiction!"
Do a few letters' change leave you completely unable to see the parallels between the two? Posters are acting that a slight tweak in the name means you may as well be comparing Iraq to Krypton.
They didn't even bother to make up a fake name for the city. It'd be like looking at Arma 2's Takistan and going "it has nothing to do with Pakistan, it's all fiction!"
Do a few letters' change leave you completely unable to see the parallels between the two? Posters are acting that a slight tweak in the name means you may as well be comparing Iraq to Krypton.
Yeah all those people who base their knowledge of history off of Call of Duty will be misinformed. If it wasn't for this, those individuals would have otherwise done diligent research.
It's a fictional game and letting it impact one's understanding of history is in itself ridiculous.
A lot of our world and culture is shaped by fictional media. It's not ridiculous in the slightest.
War is the perpetuation of politics by other means, politic is not a cursed word ffs. I dunno why all these studios always take it "I am afraid to be outed as a con/dem".
Take a look with what I/O Interactive fills every Hitman maps : crude dialogs about organs trafics, tax heavens, collusion between big business and organized crime, corrupted populists, classes struggle etc.
And because it's frankly stated and cleverly integrated to the story (like in any good novel or movie ), it's not moralistic. The moralism comes when you feel the need to point it and say "HEY LOOK HOW IT'S BAD".
Of course it's possible to problematise such subjects to implicate the player, but never do it to offer to you a moral certificate. Honesty and veracity are enough, let the players judge or ignore it. But as we say in french "don't try to hide the poo to the cat".
Take a look with what I/O Interactive fills every Hitman maps : crude dialogs about organs trafics, tax heavens, collusion between big business and organized crime, corrupted populists, classes struggle etc.
And because it's frankly stated and cleverly integrated to the story (like in any good novel or movie ), it's not moralistic. The moralism comes when you feel the need to point it and say "HEY LOOK HOW IT'S BAD".
Of course it's possible to problematise such subjects to implicate the player, but never do it to offer to you a moral certificate. Honesty and veracity are enough, let the players judge or ignore it. But as we say in french "don't try to hide the poo to the cat".
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Putting developers who use fictionalised depictions of real life events off the hook with no responsibility is ridiculous.
It's all fictional, why not have the US as the bad guys? There could be an American general instead of a Russian?
They don't name them the same, it's nicknamed "highway of death" by the locals, it's not called Tariq Almawt.
Edit: Whoops, I missed that was a literal translation. Regardless it doesn't change a damn thing. This isn't an issue.
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You mean like Modern Warfare 2?
It's a fictional country with a fictional conflict that is based loosely on Syria, which Russia has had its fingers in for decades.
The opposite. It seems like they wrote the game script using the real names, then pasted fictional names over some of them to present the veneer of being non-political and fictional.
When will we see Americans being portrayed as the evil ones? Killing innocent civilians in Iraq?
There is no moral ambiguity, no levels of gray as the devs so proudly claim. Just typical rah rah American propaganda.
I'm not sure why I expected more from a COD game.
I can't really remember in what way the US was the bad guys in MW2, was too long since I played it.
I was more talking about replacing the Russians with Americans, so you'd be fighting American soldiers.
Never. At best, they'll say "oh, its a guy or group that went rogue" who did it. These games have never not been propaganda.
Now I'm kind of expecting this game to have a mission where you fight gay mutant frogs caused by the previous administration putting chemicals in the water.
This was legitimately one of my biggest issues with the game's campaign and it's insane how the plot brushes that off after letting the player know in the VERY FIRST MISSION the international ramifications of killing Russian soldiers. I suppose cuz they're under the command of a rogue general it's okay? Still, the player has no way of knowing that until halfway in. So until then you're controlling an American killing a bunch of Russians with US UAVs and other drones wondering to yourself if this is going to cause an international incident. So dumb.
Portraying Russians as video game baddies with fictional settings is very common.
What surprises me from the examples the new MW features, is the length the devs went to include real-life incidents. They could have made up stuff as easily but went with reality.
Quasi-reframing real-life guilty parties has a bad smell. Only understandable people are crying propaganda. Not American, so I don't know how "alive" propaganda in USA is.
Imagine mixing fictional story with real incidents but doing the heaviness of it justice akin to Spec Ops. Self criticism included. That would deserve a lot more credit.
What surprises me from the examples the new MW features, is the length the devs went to include real-life incidents. They could have made up stuff as easily but went with reality.
Quasi-reframing real-life guilty parties has a bad smell. Only understandable people are crying propaganda. Not American, so I don't know how "alive" propaganda in USA is.
Imagine mixing fictional story with real incidents but doing the heaviness of it justice akin to Spec Ops. Self criticism included. That would deserve a lot more credit.
Potentially the best post in the thread.
I had a great time with this campaign. Are there some potentially problematic things in it? Sure, same as any game that is depicting war. At the end of the day, though, I'm an adult capable of critical thinking who can separate fiction from reality.
