A Look Back at... Call of Duty 4

Today I’m debuting our first of several on-going segments - A Look Back, where I… well, take a look back, duh. Specifically, we’re gonna be discussing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. 

For starters let’s get into what kind of world we were living in when Modern Warfare exploded onto the scene. We were four years into the War on Terror, and six years out from 9/11. Two world changing events whose ramifications and influence crept their way into every aspect of culture - film, television, literature, comic books, and yes, VIDEO GAMES. 

War and its particular brand of brutal violence became a sort of norm, rather than a niche interest, in the world of gaming. You couldn’t throw a stone five inches without hitting a game about MASCULINE, OLD FASHIONED AMERICAN MEN FIGHTIN’ THE GOOD FIGHT AGAINST THE FOREIGN AGENDA. 

Even if the games weren’t necessarily set on Earth or fixated on stereotypical images of terrorists, the imagery and themes on display - ranging from widespread urban destruction, to the prospect of civilian casualties, to desert-set combat against foes better suited to the environment - definitely knew where to point when people asked, “Wait, why does this feel so… provocative?”

It’s not the main reason Call of Duty 4 blew up in popularity - its industry-redefining multiplayer, tight action-oriented campaign and overall polished nature managed that largely on their own - but the subtext is hard to ignore. Whether consciously or not, the thinking at play here seems to have been, “How do we take an unknowable, oftentimes alienating subject like full-scale modern combat and turn it into an easy-to-swallow, black-and-white piece of entertainment?”

(Side note: yes, making fun games out of real wars where real people fought and died is toeing the line of good taste big time. No question, it's kinda uncomfortable when you start to think about it. BUT - there's something to be said for knowing your goal and knowing your audience, which Modern Warfare got right on both counts.)

So - what exactly did we get in Call of Duty 4 that makes it worth revisiting?
Well…

It’s the near-future for 2007 and the world’s in rough shape; the Russian Federation is in the midst of a power struggle between a Loyalist faction and an Ultranationalist group, there’s tensions growing in the Arabian Peninsula, and overall there’s an air of uncertainty. Enter Sgt. “Soap” MacTavish, the newest (and for this instalment, most silent) recruit for the 22nd SAS Regiment, who arrives right in time for the game’s opening set-piece: a raid of a cargo ship crossing the Bering Strait.



In what turns out to be a sly bit of foreshadowing, the SAS team - led by Captain “Badass McAwesome Pants” John Price - discovers documents written in Arabic, as well as evidence of nuclear material in play. Shortly thereafter we’re treated to a particularly tense first-person sequence in which the president of an as-yet unnamed Middle Eastern country is brought before a group of terrorists and executed live ON CAMERA for the entire world to see (it bares saying - this entire sequence is enough to A) justify the existence of this game BEFORE the action actually gets going, B) show how you do world building & tone setting properly in modern action games and C) setup the “ripped from the headlines” stuff that comprises much of Act 1).

To that end - America, not being the sort of country to ignore such a brutal scene (or the opportunity to play the “hero”), sends in the cavalry; specifically, the Marine Corps’ First Force Recon. For the most part, Modern Warfare’s first act stays in this zone; having us duck and weave through the carnage of this ongoing invasion, whilst keeping the proverbial carrot (ie. the capture of the supposed terrorist leader Khaled Al-Asad) just close enough that there’s an actual sense of being able to succeed… but because this is the first act in a video game, AND because the game’s surprisingly crafty design demands a brutal turn of events, things do not go as planned. 

During a full-on assault of the invaded country’s capital, all bets are off: helicopters and tanks are deployed in ludicrous numbers, you’re given access to high-powered weaponry, there’s a whole triumphant moment of rescuing a downed helicopter pilot just in the nick of time - and then, in one of the finest examples of cruel “Gotcha!” twists that gaming has to offer, a nuclear warhead detonates that wipes out the entire American strike force.


WOW. “If you invade other countries in such vast numbers all on the pretense of trying to “restore order”, it will only lead to devastation and turmoil” is quite the aesop to drop on the player only a third of the way through your game. Granted, the entire experience is filtered through the mould of a by-now archetypal action game, but the implicit message here is most certainly NOT a vote of support for the Bush-era mentality around war (or modern American warfare, period) and it comes across very clearly when you look at the big picture. 

But it doesn’t end there. Our British lads then embark on a quote-unquote “investigation” to track down Al-Asad and bring him to justice (meaning they intend to blow through Ultranationalist forces building by building until they can find their man). And find him they do, with Price taking the lead on beating him senseless for “answers” (seriously, Price is fascinating enough that I’m thinking of doing a video JUST on him). 

Only - TWIST TIME: turns out (by way of a very untimely phone call) that Al-Asad wasn’t our primary villain - that title belongs to one Imran Zakhaev, an arms dealer who became leader of the Ultranationalists (and, as revealed in a two-mission flashback, was presumed dead at the hands of Price fifteen years prior).

Things only escalate further when, in an attempt to find leverage against Zakhaev, the SAS and the newly-humbled survivors of the 1st Force Recon go after Zakhaev’s son Viktor who… promptly kills himself upon being cornered. Suffice to say, Zakhaev Senior does not take this well; to wit, in a sequence that offers a shade of nuance to an otherwise flat action game antagonist, he declares his intent to take over nuclear silos and launch ICBMs targeting the East Coast of America out of a desire for vengeance. To which I presume discerning players’ responses were “Holy shit!”

The British and Americans mount one final offensive, charging into the military complex and retaking the place just in time to safely detonate the warheads.
Problem solved, right? Well, not quite - Zakhaev’s assembled a large number of soldiers, and Price opts for a “Go out in a blaze of glory” approach to death. So the joint American/British task force hops aboard a number of commandeered trucks and takes to the mountains, battling Ultranationalist trucks and helicopters in an intense on-rails gunfight that seems like it can only end in a narrow escape from turmoil. 

And that’s when Infinity Ward drops its ace-in-the-hole: the team doesn’t get away.




A car wreck and some unconsciousness later, our heroes are trapped between a due-to-explode tanker and the unceasing Ultranationalist army, barely holding their ground, hoping and praying that reinforcements arrive. They’re tired, they’re broken, they’re running out of ammo and time, and that’s before the team is blindsided by Zakhaev’s arrival on the scene - incidentally, while I enjoyed the randomness with which Zakhaev and his cronies appeared to ruthlessly put down Soap and company, it does make me wish we got to see a bit more of Zakhaev in action. He’s got this imposing presence that can only come of a character who has seen and experienced a lot of shit. 

But I digress. All is not lost - the Russian Loyalists arrive to cause trouble, just in time for good ol’ Captain Price to dramatically slide his pistol to Soap, whose positioning is just convenient enough to let him kill Zakhaev once and for all. 

The villain’s dead, his plot to kill millions of Americans foiled. And yet the ending is bittersweet, very much by design. Even though Zakhaev and his posse are no longer in play, ending dialogue implies that the public at large may not be aware of the Ultranationalists’ misdeeds. Most of the people that fought against Zakhaev are dead, Price’s fate is left ambiguous, and it’s unclear at that point if the final shot is meant to suggest Soap is dead too. For all intents and purposes, anyone who could testify to the truth of the situation regarding Zakhaev’s operations, his ties to Al-Asad, his control of nuclear weapons, etc. is no longer in play. You, the player, may have killed the villain, but in the end the world is still very much on the brink of disaster - you’ve but delayed the inevitable.

On top of being a powerful subversion of the idea that the player’s success means only good things for the game world at large, it’s also a quietly skillful deconstruction of player agency and the idea of single-minded soldier characters being the fix for all the story’s troubles. By Modern Warfare’s logic, all of Price, Soap, etc’s talent and experience - no matter how badass in battle - cannot change large-scale social-political movements. In fact, the carnage produced from the conflict may (and ultimately does) aid the Ultranationalists in convincing the rest of Russia that foreign powers are a threat to national security - thus giving them the means to exert more power over the Russian people. 

That, in the end, is what I feel is the intended takeaway - you cannot meaningfully change the world by wielding a gun, nor can violence beget anything BUT violence. At the very least, it feels very much like Infinity Ward wanted to use their position as a budding icon of AAA development to engage in some subtly-encoded commentary, while not taking away too much from the intended thrills of Modern Warfare’s campaign. A game that’s gripping, intense, and has something to say about itself and its premise - who woulda guessed?