Especially the campaigns, and especially how certain characters and moments are presented in the campaigns.
It's like right on the borderline of being a chuddy glorification of the military and being an absolute pisstake of things that chuddily glorify the military, and I genuinely can't work out which way it's trying to go with it.
It's not intentionally subversive, but you can hardly describe any mission in the latest one without sounding like you're satirizing American cold war beliefs, like the soviets having a super secret facility in the middle of Siberia, except it turns out it's actually a sound stage where they plan Red Dawn style invasions of small Midwestern towns.
Or every single Vietnamese person having a machine gun or RPG ready to shoot down your helicopter, including random people who were canoeing down the river or just standing in the middle of rice paddies.
Or the very first mission where some guy just shows up in a bar in belgium and is like "Hey, I got the address of some bad guys", and you sneak up to the back window of some random apartment and just start machine gunning a bunch of dudes watching a soccer game.
Or the very first mission where some guy just shows up in a bar in belgium and is like “Hey, I got the address of some bad guys”, and you sneak up to the back window of some random apartment and just start machine gunning a bunch of dudes watching a soccer game.
Dude...
Holy shit is COD implying that the Brabant Killers are confirmed CIA Gladio op? That's honestly kinda based.
That's the thing, they justify it by everyone within 3 blocks trying to kill you afterwords because it turns out they were trying to help Turkey sell weapons to East Germany (yeah, it makes no sense).
Other 'almost satire' moments include:
The US hiding h-bombs in every single European city (and trying to smuggle one into Saigon just before the end of the war)
The US torturing and MKultra'ing the player, then torturing and almost killing them again, then asking for help, then killing them to tie up loose ends.
Ronald Reagan respecting your pronouns and questioning the legality of his actions as he asks you to protect democracy by invading Cuba and killing their scientists.
I suppose these mult million dollars games are written by Committee™ so that's probably why all of this sounds weird af lol
they at least had better politics in the earlier games
MW2 is about nationalists conspiring to manufacture false flag attacks and justify WW3
and WaW is surprisingly sympathetic to the Soviets to the point of glorification at times, like the game's climax literally has you raising the red banner over the reichstag while the Soviet anthem plays
WaW isn't that sympathetic, the only shocking moments after the fountain opening in the entire Soviet campaign are about Soviets executing PoOr NaZiS! For no reason!! The only German war crimes I remember is the fountain and maybe one Soviet soldier executed, from the mission before the tank mission. Then it just shoves like 5-6 scenes of Nazis getting the wall in your face (that you can shoot yourself- based) with zero historical context as to why that's actually a good thing. The game wants you to think it's bad.
I swear MW2 is like, almost there, but no, they're playing it straight, which is kind of incredible in its own way, in retrospect. MW2 having a disgruntled critic of the invasion trying to get whatever they could past the CIA and MIC editors is a particular brainworm of mine that I like to entertain, though.
CoD4 was easily the most blatant jingoistic hoorah bullshit of the series, but the later games (especially post-2007 when the invasion really started to sour for the general public) made a point of drifting way more into historical fiction and campy scifi cold war stuff to avoid having a Six Days in Fallujah situation.
I swear MW2 is like, almost there, but no, they’re playing it straight, which is kind of incredible in its own way, in retrospect. MW2 having a disgruntled critic of the invasion trying to get whatever they could past the CIA and MIC editors is a particular brainworm of mine that I like to entertain, though.
to this day I'm convinced MW2 was supposed to have an entirely different campaign that they somehow cut up in the very last minute. There are so many scenes from the trailer and entire levels like that bridge that's under a drone attack that never made it into the campaign, but were clearly meant to be single player levels. Or that weird nuke suitcase chase through the suburbs or whatever that was - went nowhere! There's absolutely no story payoff to that! Also the whole Shepfer turning evil and you having to chase him through Afghanistan felt weird and fake, like wtf there just plain are no fucking aircraft boneyards in AF, and also no shadow US Spec Ops Army could like hide out there, like why would they even do that and all.
No, it was supposed to be an entirely different game and I'd really like to know who fucked up and when.
Sorry for rambling, just had to get that out of my mind, I turn 40 this year. Fuck.
CoD4 had shades of being anti-war at times. MW2 was where they cannonballed into full-blown jingoism what with the Russians launching a suicide invasion of the East and explicitly stating they want to kill civilians.
I need to replay it to refresh myself on details of the story, just to see how fucking nuts it is through the lens of 2021.
I had honestly forgotten about the parts focusing on the actual Russian military forces, because most of that stuff made no god damn sense anyways. They can barely annex a postage stamp off the corner of an ally nation without almost starting a world war, the fuck kind of advance planning are they gonna secretly do to conquer like five times their own habitable landmass so quickly that the US military is unable to respond effectively?
EDIT: Nevermind about invading the way I mentioned, they invaded the eastern coast of the US? How the hell does that make any sense?
MW3 was even more absurd in that it portrayed Makarov as a terrorist unaffiliated with the Russian government, that the Good Russian President actually wanted to make peace, but also the Russian Army was launching a massive simultaneous invasion of every major city in Western Europe preluded by chemical weapons attacks staged by Makarov's terrorists.
Basically they kept doubling down on the plot making absolutely no logical sense. The plot became the filler that linked together a series of Cool Setpieces.
Even COD 4 was walking on eggshells at the time considering one of the factions was the soviet union
No. What it is is a high budget piece of capitalist mass media produced through the combined efforts of anywhere from a hundred to a thousand people on a tight 1.5 year development cycle. Those who make artistic decisions (only some of whom would be classified as "creatives") are under a myriad of conflicting pressures:
- To make no strong political or philosophical statement that would upset the major consumer markets of North America, Brazil, Europe, China, or Saudi Arabia
- To maintain good working relationships with the cultural programming wings of the US military and CIA
- To make a product that the average over-caffeinated 16 year old will find totally engrossing
- To outdo the shocking moments in the last game and provide enough grist for the gaming press to write articles titled something like "The New Call of Duty's Most Controversial Moments, Explained"
- To each individually deal with their anxieties that their artistic output is meaningless and that it's in support of the gruesome, fundamentally evil business of war and empire
I mention this every chance I get, but a fun fact about Modern Warfare 2019 was that, before the list of death quotes was finalized in development, it included quotes from Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald about who counts as a "terrorist" or "enemy combatant," as well as statistics for civilians killed in US drone strikes.
I'm 100% convinced they want to allow both interpretations just to be able to sell to the largest audience they can.
Black ops 2 is kinda hilarious because they do a terrible job painting Menendez as anything other than a flawed anti-imperialist. You're supposed to hate him because he fought literal CIA in angola/panama and disabled America's drone system via cyberattacks. After the entire game it turns out his evil nefarious overarching plan was to inspire an internet revolution to form an uprising against the 1% and destroy NATO
Not to mention the fact that
spoiler
the one other Latin American main character (who wasn't portrayed as a murderous power-hungry animal) turns out to be a traitor who works for Menendez at the end. Also isn't it projection that they showed Cuba using child soldiers in Angola?
It's more of a case of passing the border to chuddy military glorification so far it loops back to the point where it can be taken as satire, really.
The US military has to approve them beforehand so it's definitely not satire.
CoD is straight up recruitment propaganda working hand in glove with the military. The military even hires Twitch streamers to pipeline players into enlisting. If there is a hint of satire, it's only as obfuscation of their real goals.
Just play the multiplayer because they are absolutely playing it straight they actually have us military liasons for there story modes and get tax breaks or incentives because of it
Listening to Felix/matt talk about Sons of anarchy made me realize that I used to think shows like that couldn't possibly be 'taken seriously' by their viewers but what does that even mean lol I am a doofus
It is kind of interesting how people can find the same thing entertaining for such completely different reasons. I didn't really like Sons of Anarchy but it was something to watch. I think at the time I was pretty into prestige TV and just thought it was lackluster. I wasn't ready to enjoy something that sucks. But there are guys out there who just think it's cool and want to wear Sons of Anarchy jackets and shit. Probably the same guys who think The Sopranos is about cool guys hanging out and making money rather than the downfall of American empire.
The number of random dudes with Scarface posters in their rooms because they see Tony Montana as an inspiration would say yeah that's completely true.
Haha at least scarface is kind of a fun movie. I remember these dipshits I knew in college had a huge poster of that scene in Blow where they have all that cash stacked up in their house.
american foreign policy is indistinguishable from satire, so its a bit tough to convey
