Once again, I’m going to preface this by warning anyone who may be reading this that wants to play the story of CoD:MW2 that I will be talking about the story. I will try to not go more in-depth than is necessary for discussion, but be warned nonetheless.
Modern Warfare 2 has a story that is best described as interesting. It is by no means a great piece of fiction, interactive or otherwise, but players can see and appreciate its attempts to be more than the game equivalent of “popcorn flick.” It’s a globe-trotting experience with the amount of plausibility of an episode of 24, but like the Kiefer Sutherland show the overall story is enjoyable enough where it is difficult to care that the chance of everything happening in real life is slim.
Part of what makes the story so interesting to play is the way Call of Duty games always tell their stories: by putting the player into the shoes of multiple characters in different parts of the world. An element that Infinity Ward introduced to this style of story-telling with their last game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, is the potential for your character to die. Unfortunately, this sort of storytelling makes it difficult, if not impossible, to gain any sort of attachment to the characters you embody.
An example of this is where you take control of Private Joseph Allen. You are hand-picked by a general to join a CIA task force to infiltrate the ranks of a Russian dictator. You are warned that in your mission, you may lose part of yourself. As Allen, your first experience in this situation is working with the dictator in the massacre of the population of an airport. If you watch any of the 24-hour news channels, you have probably seen a news story about this level. What those stories probably never mentioned is that, as the player, you can actually choose to either skip that entire scene as a playable mission or, if you choose to play it, you can choose to not participate in the slaughter. You are not allowed to attack any of the terrorists, so you are still forced to watch the civilians get killed. On the surface, this is a powerful story-telling tool. In practice, it feels sort of empty as it seems that Infinity Ward tried to push the envelope, so to speak, without pushing it very far. They could have had one of the terrorists force the player to shoot a civilian, or do something. Also, any distress the player may have felt over participating in this is made void by the dictator killing Allen at the end of the mission, which somehow triggers the Russia vs. US war that most of the game focuses on.
Modern Warfare 2 shows both the potential for what can be done with first-person interactive stories, but also the hindrances of trying to do so while also making a product that sells over 4 million copies on its first day of release in the US and UK.
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