Modern Shooters Played Out (CoD)

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Modern Warfare never answers whether anybody gives a fuck about killing Makarov anymore, whether it is going to undo the damage caused so far or whether it even has the potential to stop future damage, but it's what the protagonist wants so the world be damned, he'll get it. Spec Ops points out that this shtick, in real life, would be reserved for villains: people getting what they want without regard for others is Really Bad Shit.

Hey, remember how MW3 ends with you mercilessly gunning down dozens of Dubai cops?

Apparently nobody felt this was, well, WRONG.

Nobody thought so, because all military shooters that followed in the steps of MW1 are quite blatant about their message: Americans are never wrong for pulling the trigger. If you're not an American (like Price), you'll be aiding them and serving their interests anyway. This was also a staple in WW2 shooters, but the historical situation allowed for it. Transplanted in the modern era, it simply creates monstrosities. Monstrosities that need to be taken down a peg or two.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not trying to totally negate the broad thesis here, but I'm curious as to how you square that with the real villain from Modern Warfare 2 being a renegade American general who provokes a massive war.

[Metahive]

The "fallen former good guy" trope isn't exactly new. It goes as far back as friggin' Satan. I mean Darth Vader being a traitor to the Jedi Order just like General Shepherd is to the US doesn't break the Black and White Morality of Star Wars, does it?

[Vendetta]

I'm not trying to totally negate the broad thesis here, but I'm curious as to how you square that with the real villain from Modern Warfare 2 being a renegade American general who provokes a massive war.

It's of no significance.

The point is that in modern shooters all construct their narratives so that the player can be the Hero, everything that happens does so so that the player can feel like they've got a big dick. Whoever they shoot was the right person to shoot, whatever they are shown to do is justified because they are the hero, and in the end it was all justified because there was an evil general who started a big war and so all those people you shot was totally justified.

Spec Ops is a deconstruction of that specific theme in shooter narrative.

Hell, it didn't even really happen in the world war 2 games because there wasn't really a narrative there beyond "here is a fictional WW2 battle". The player wasn't a crusading hero with a moral imperative to shoot Nazis in the face, he was just a soldier in world war 2.

[Civil War Man]

I'm not trying to totally negate the broad thesis here, but I'm curious as to how you square that with the real villain from Modern Warfare 2 being a renegade American general who provokes a massive war.

I remember Yahtzee doing a review of one modern shooter (one of the Modern Warfare games, I think) where he says it has you fight all of America's favorite punching bags. Namely, Middle Easterners, the Chinese, and other Americans.

We've long since past the point where the only thing more despised than the sinister nebulous Other is the Traitor and the Appeaser. In that sense, MW2's villain being a renegade American general fits with the thesis perfectly. By going renegade, he is no longer American in the sense that Trainwreck was talking. Which actually makes him worse than the foreign enemies, because he experienced Freedom™ and consciously chose to join the forces of Evil anyway.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I'm not trying to totally negate the broad thesis here, but I'm curious as to how you square that with the real villain from Modern Warfare 2 being a renegade American general who provokes a massive war.

Vendetta answered quite well. It doesn't matter that he happens to be American: on the players' level he still is a dick that the hero is personally justified in shooting, while on the 'political' level he still is the guy you must shoot for America's sake. And please don't tell me that the developers didn't intent to promote this political message, because there is something more important than author's intent and that is the narrative on its own. And your usual modern-shooter narrative says emphatically "shooting America's enemies=good".

[TheFeniX]

Shepard isn't a renegade. He fully believed in the superiority of America and is basically a dig at warmongering conservatives. He's also pissed a whole shit-load of his soldiers got nuked in somewhereistan.

Price is always extremely critical of everyone and is only working with Shepard due to his vendetta against Makarov. Most of his tirade about bringing Shepard to justice is bullshit since he's pretty much all motivated by revenge at that point and killing Shepard won't solve anything (Shepard is later buried as a war hero and Price and Soap are wanted terrorists). It isn't until the events of MW3 that he's exposed for what he is (that part I got from the wiki because MW3 was so forgettable, I can't even be bothered to remember anything about it).

At that point, killing Shepard is pretty counter-productive to American interests since his damage is done and he will do everything he can to ensure American dominance in the near future.

The problem isn't that CoD's story glorifies the "oora," it's that all the gameplay does. As much attention as "No Russian" got, everyone ignores that the soldiers you are killing at the end of MW2 are just American's doing their job and have no idea that Shepard instigated pretty much everything. But there had to be waves of "bad guys" to kill to get to Shepard.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I agree, even though I don't understand how Shepard became so important that we have this whole tangent over the matter. He's one character in one installment of one franchise.

On another note, have you grabbed Spec Ops yet? For me, it was kinda shameful that I lost myself in googling and had everything spoiled before I even installed it, but I found it worth it.

[TheFeniX]

I agree, even though I don't understand how Shepard became so important that we have this whole tangent over the matter. He's one character in one installment of one franchise.

He's a pretty good example of how CoD still delivers at least somewhat interesting characters and stories. Yes, he's cliche, but he's not boring. He's a good example of why the modern shooter is played out: the story can be as interesting as you want, but you can't just update a few gun models and send the player on his way to slaughter more nameless bad guys. The formulaic "Oora," sniper/stealth, big battle, flying parts have become stale. It's become way to cookie-cutter.

MW3 finally broke me because the gameplay was played-the-fuck-out by that time, but the story just went completely bland as well: "This time, it's personal... just like last time... and the time before that. Also, favela is a word and it sounds cool, but you'll hate the level and everyone who designed it."

On another note, have you grabbed Spec Ops yet? For me, it was kinda shameful that I lost myself in googling and had everything spoiled before I even installed it, but I found it worth it.

That's going to be like mid-February. I get pretty stingy when I'm paying $15/month for WoW and it's even worse since I'm living in my parent's guest room while our house finishes building. Yea, I'm weird like that.

[Simon_Jester]

It's of no significance.

The point is that in modern shooters all construct their narratives so that the player can be the Hero, everything that happens does so so that the player can feel like they've got a big dick. Whoever they shoot was the right person to shoot, whatever they are shown to do is justified because they are the hero, and in the end it was all justified because there was an evil general who started a big war and so all those people you shot was totally justified.

Spec Ops is a deconstruction of that specific theme in shooter narrative.

Ah, now this really does identify and isolate the crux of the argument. I think it's actually made stronger by not making it explicitly about "Americans are always right to pull triggers," and more about "protagonists are always right to pull triggers."

Most if not all such games are in fact America-centric and America-jingoistic, and the protagonist is thus basically always American. But somehow I suspect that a first-person shooter genre in a world where America did not exist would tend to evolve in the same direction. The real problem is that the player desires a sort of release and permission to commit violence by proxy in the game world.

That's not just a "modern shooter" genre convention, either- it pops up in a lot of war-based games.

I'm not trying to totally negate the broad thesis here, but I'm curious as to how you square that with the real villain from Modern Warfare 2 being a renegade American general who provokes a massive war.

Vendetta answered quite well. It doesn't matter that he happens to be American: on the players' level he still is a dick that the hero is personally justified in shooting, while on the 'political' level he still is the guy you must shoot for America's sake. And please don't tell me that the developers didn't intent to promote this political message, because there is something more important than author's intent and that is the narrative on its own. And your usual modern-shooter narrative says emphatically "shooting America's enemies=good".

Actually, I think Vendetta hit on something important, which is that "the antagonist is a dick you are personally justified in killing" is the thing that is REALLY universal in "modern shooters," and for that matter a lot of other video games.

In the modern shooter genre in particular, "is a security threat to America" is usually used as a proxy for "is a dick you are personally justified in killing." But I think there's two separate things to analyze here: why the games are America-centric, and why they work so hard to make you feel justified in killing whoever you please.

I agree, even though I don't understand how Shepard became so important that we have this whole tangent over the matter. He's one character in one installment of one franchise.

I thought he might make an interesting counterpoint to the idea that all modern shooter plotlines reduce to America beating up an Evil Foreign antagonist. This is not to say that they don't reduce to that in general, but examining exceptions to a rule tells us a lot about the rule.

[TheFeniX]

I'd also like to mention that it's not really irrelevant that many of the heroes in CoD are British (Soap being Scottish IIRC). Price makes numerous humorous and not so humorous quips about the Americans and working with them and does not think all that highly of America brass, as opposed to his respect for other men on the ground, American or not.

Further, Ramirez and Griggs break from the normally white head-shaved protagonists in many games, Griggs in particular being more than just a silent PC. Even the dude-bros segment of gamers don't seem to mind that minorities and foreign nationals are saving the day while all the red-blooded white Ameridudes are busy getting themselves killed.

I still think Jackson's death while gallantly saving a female helicopter pilot by running through a hail of gunfire was a dig at certain demographics, but I offer nothing to back it up.

The game seems to take a much more Aliens approach to the storytelling, mirroring Vietnam, in that the superiors are busy screwing things up, either intentionally or unintentionally, while the grunts get all the actual work done. As opposed to "American Freedom saves the day, oora!"

[Vendetta]

Err, yeah. That's exactly the criticism. The games are designed to make you feel like the big swinging dick hero, and one of the ways to do that is to reduce the contribution of your superior officers.

Modern military shooters are hero fantasies, but actual warfare is complicated and messy and wars are not won by big swinging dick heroes personally shooting the big enemy boss. Especially in modern war, where there aren't even the moral certainties of fighting against a totalitarian aggressor.

FPS games infantilise war. Spec Ops turns that on its head by having all the personal hero fantasy elements invariably be futile and self defeating.

[bilateralrope]

On another note, have you grabbed Spec Ops yet? For me, it was kinda shameful that I lost myself in googling and had everything spoiled before I even installed it, but I found it worth it.

That's going to be like mid-February. I get pretty stingy when I'm paying $15/month for WoW and it's even worse since I'm living in my parent's guest room while our house finishes building. Yea, I'm weird like that.

Why February ?

I'd be surprised if it doesn't get at least 75% off on Steam over the Christmas sale.

[TheFeniX]

Err, yeah. That's exactly the criticism. The games are designed to make you feel like the big swinging dick hero, and one of the ways to do that is to reduce the contribution of your superior officers.

That's a "criticism" I could level at pretty much any video game, a Hell of a lot of interactive media, and even most non-interactive fiction. You say it like there's something inherently wrong with it.

Modern military shooters are hero fantasies, but actual warfare is complicated and messy and wars are not won by big swinging dick heroes personally shooting the big enemy boss. Especially in modern war, where there aren't even the moral certainties of fighting against a totalitarian aggressor.

They are still fantasy games, just because you use an M-16 and say "tango bravo" rather than shooting a +5 bow and yelling "Magic Missile" doesn't change that. I've never understood the idea that just because a game takes place in a modern setting (no matter how far out from reality), it has to deal with issues character would have to in reality.

FPS games infantilise war. Spec Ops turns that on its head by having all the personal hero fantasy elements invariably be futile and self defeating.

This is basically the KOTOR and KOTOR2 divide. The issue is that no one is bagging on CoD for being an "oora" game because there's nothing wrong with that and, at least in the past, it wasn't boring. It's played out because it's gotten stale. Focusing on the complications of war while throwing the same tired gameplay and cookie-cutter missions at the player isn't going to change that.

Being a deconstruction of a genre doesn't inherently make your product better or worse than what you're deconstructing. Futher, Spec Ops doesn't even deconstruct the horrors of war, merely fantasy games in the "modern shooter" genre and the people who play it.

[Vendetta]

That's a "criticism" I could level at pretty much any video game, a Hell of a lot of interactive media, and even most non-interactive fiction. You say it like there's something inherently wrong with it.

It's certainly a problem with videogames (not that the hero fantasy story is a problem in itself, but that it's the only story), but if you think hero fantasy is as predominant in other media then your horizons are cripplingly narrow. I mean look at american TV. Just about all the biggest names in US TV for the last ten years or more have featured deeply flawed and certainly not heroic characters. The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and so on to the end of time. When watching those shows you don't want to be the characters, as compelling as it might be to watch them.

They are still fantasy games, just because you use an M-16 and say "tango bravo" rather than shooting a +5 bow and yelling "Magic Missile" doesn't change that. I've never understood the idea that just because a game takes place in a modern setting (no matter how far out from reality), it has to deal with issues character would have to in reality.

Because the alternative is stagnation. Which, quelle surprise, is the point of this thread. Modern shooters are narratively stagnant because they rely on one mode of story, hero fantasy. And even when they have mechanical innovation (like Blops2, which had all manner of different things like wingsuits) they don't develop them because they don't want to disrupt the oorah fantasy too much, and so they're mechanically stagnant as well.

Being a deconstruction of a genre doesn't inherently make your product better or worse than what you're deconstructing. Futher, Spec Ops doesn't even deconstruct the horrors of war, merely fantasy games in the "modern shooter" genre and the people who play it.

No, but if you do it right it makes your product interesting. Certainly more interesting than an otherwise stagnant genre. (Also, deconstruction is a critical technique aimed at work or body of literature, the sentence "Spec Ops doesn't even deconstruct the horrors of war" doesn't actually make sense.)

[Thanas]

Mafia I and II were pretty good in that regard. The games were fun despite you definitely not wanting to be the protagonists.

[Cykeisme]

From reading the last page of this discussion, I noticed something that I thought was interesting.

Don't almost all games that involve violence usually portrays you as "the hero", who is killing the correct people.. the people who need to be killed? This applies to almost any genre, though of course in fantasy and sci-fi sometimes those people are not humans, but it's still always the same thing.

However, there are other things that can keep non-modern military shooter games fresh, such as a new fictional fantasy or sci-fi setting, with new superhuman powers and new ways to portray magic and technology.
The problem is that modern military shooters can't change the weapons, "powers" and technology that much.. so they're stuck with the same thing over and over again. It is the only setting that attempts to (loosely) portray conflict as it is in the real world, and I think that is what gives it appeal, but it also saddles it with the problem that it's stuck with the same stuff permanently.

So I think it just boils down to the fact that it's totally overdone. The genre has the distinction of being the realistic (or pseudo-realistic) setting, which is what made it popular.. and then made it over-popular, thus developers have done and re-done to death.


Also, interestingly, the ending of MW2 was actually about two foreigners killing a 'murrican.. Soap and Price were both British.
So it's probably less "murrica fuck yea" and more "you are a hero who goes around killing the people who are bad".

[Vendetta]

Don't almost all games that involve violence usually portrays you as "the hero", who is killing the correct people.. the people who need to be killed? This applies to almost any genre, though of course in fantasy and sci-fi sometimes those people are not humans, but it's still always the same thing.

Until actually quite recently shooters didn't really attempt enough of a story for that. The player character was generally just a cog in the military machine who happened to get shit done, rather than a special snowflake who had to save the world America, and the overall theme was one of genuine conflict with nazis or stroggs or whatever, not "suddenly, South America!".

[Siege]

I'm with Vendetta here: the main issue with modern FPS is that studios insist on delivering a 'cinematic experience' full of cutscenes and hysterical set pieces, but their writing is so atrocious it wouldn't even rate a terrible B-movie in Hollywood. That might not be a problem if these games realized their story was awful and embraced it like a cheesy '80's action movie, but they don't. Instead they're in full-on tryhard mode and the predictable result is the range of dreary modern shooters full of Gruff Men making Hard Decisions in Tough Circumstances. They're Death Wish II when they could have been Commando.

Games like Battlefield: Bad Company or Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon are a breath of fresh air exactly because they don't take themselves so goddamned seriously. And Sergeant Rex Power Colt is still a better realized character than anybody from the latest editions of Call of Duty or Battlefield, which is sad as hell.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Man, the ending of all MW games was hilarious. "Finally, your grand journey will be rewarded with... an interactive cutscene! What? No I'm not a fuckface, just press a button to shoot the guy."

[TheFeniX]

It's certainly a problem with videogames (not that the hero fantasy story is a problem in itself, but that it's the only story), but if you think hero fantasy is as predominant in other media then your horizons are cripplingly narrow. I mean look at american TV. Just about all the biggest names in US TV for the last ten years or more have featured deeply flawed and certainly not heroic characters. The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and so on to the end of time. When watching those shows you don't want to be the characters, as compelling as it might be to watch them.

TV writers are barely above that of Gaming writers. Further, you can't compare HBO programming to that of regular or network television, it's not even fair to TV writers. And I don't watch a lot of TV anymore because it's garbage. However, HBO routinely does a great job showing us characters who are just above "another cog in the machine" who are still extremely interesting and entertaining characters.

And since we're back to full circle with comic book movies in Hollywood: the big dick hero is all we're getting for quite some time.

That said, we have a different view on the big dick swinging hero because you don't have to be a "good guy" to be the primary mover in a story and/or the only competent person on the planet/galaxy. Even playing as Dark Side in a KOTOR game puts you firmly in the driver's seat. Characters with their own motivations who got by just fine before you came along are now beholden to how super-special you are and follow your every lead.

There are plenty of games that offer you the option to play morally questionable (or flat-out bankrupt) characters and still hold true to this cliche. Just because you play the "insane fucked-up" version doesn't make your product more deep. Fable is a good example of the older definition of "Hero" and "Heroics." Unfortunately, it wasn't good for much else.

Because the alternative is stagnation. Which, quelle surprise, is the point of this thread. Modern shooters are narratively stagnant because they rely on one mode of story, hero fantasy. And even when they have mechanical innovation (like Blops2, which had all manner of different things like wingsuits) they don't develop them because they don't want to disrupt the oorah fantasy too much, and so they're mechanically stagnant as well.

Then our only real argument is the amount of emphasis we put on story vs gameplay. I firmly believe that CoD is stale due primarily to gameplay, which also affects the narrative because there's only so many stories you can write when it's the player doing everything.

No, but if you do it right it makes your product interesting. Certainly more interesting than an otherwise stagnant genre. (Also, deconstruction is a critical technique aimed at work or body of literature, the sentence "Spec Ops doesn't even deconstruct the horrors of war" doesn't actually make sense.)

That's true. My problem is that giving CoD shit for not diving into the horrors of war is the same as bagging on Commando for not emphasizing the emotional turmoil and negotiation required when dealing with kidnappers. Spec Ops seems like Commando except with Arnold crying on the phone with the kidnappers while gunning them down at the same time. And everyone dies.

I think you're giving CoD (at least 1 and 2) too little credit in the writing though. There are very few times in either game I felt "heroic." There are multiple times I felt like a badass though. Even times when you're supposed to be just another cog in the machine, the gameplay can't facilitate that because it'd make the game easy/a movie. This was a complaint I had with Gears 3. The AI would almost win the fucking game for you, even on harder difficulties. They would constantly push up, flank, and revive downed teammates. It was a nice diversion for the usually worthless teammates. This however made the game even more boring. Contrast to Halo: CE where, on Legendary, the marine AI was vastly improved (along with the covenant) leading to marines who did all they could to help you, but were still outmatched and dying horribly.

CoD's biggest problem is that the narrative and gameplay constantly clash which each other, not that they are necessarily stagnant or are full of hero worship.

Man, the ending of all MW games was hilarious. "Finally, your grand journey will be rewarded with... an interactive cutscene! What? No I'm not a fuckface, just press a button to shoot the guy."

Suits don't like boss fights (too videoy gamey) and developers forgot how to do them years ago with a few exceptions.

[Civil War Man]

On the topic of Spec Ops, I grabbed it on Steam a couple days ago since, unless there's a flash sale that drops the price even lower, you can get it for half off until early January. Ran through it in a couple sittings, and I definitely agree that it's one of those games that should be played for the story alone. I had already been semi-spoiled on some of it, so the big twists didn't have as much shock value as they could have, but that's never spoiled my enjoyment of a story. I actually intentionally went with some of the more violent and impulsive options, even knowing that there were other ways to handle the situations, simply because I felt it would add more to the story. The whole idea that everyone is evil, especially Walker, really supports the interpretation that some or all of the game literally takes place in Hell.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I actually recently found my old copy of CoD 1 and decided to replay it on a whim. The contrast between it and, say, MW3 is fairly large. Being a WW2 shooter means that you aren't getting the 'you are the hero, you will end the war' feeling you get from later games by default, but its another thing to play it. Despite the AI dying in droves (and leaving me to do the heavy lifting), it actually felt more like I was playing an individual soldier in a larger war, instead of a special guy who has to go shoot the enemy leader in the face (or hang him from a Dubai roof).

The most I got that feeling from was stuff like the Tirpitz mission with Captain Price 1.0. Even that wasn't any more special than stuff in the early Medal of Honor games really. Comparing that with Blops or MW was certainly interesting. In the first CoD (and early MoH games) even the commando missions aren't quite the same as later games, since none of these missions are of the 'end the war!!' type. Going to sabotage the defenses of a dam or a Nazi Battleship? Sure, impressive but it isn't any more impressive than other commando raids.

Compare this with MW3 that has you hijacking a Russian sub and using it to blow up half their fleet. Or Blops sending you to shoot Castro in the face.

As for Spec Ops, I haven't had the chance to play it. The thing certainly sounds interesting though, so I probably should pick it up at some point or another.

[Darksider]

Shit man. You don't even have to go back that far. Compare the Jackson and early Soap levels from CoD 4 to any level from MW3 or Ghosts. It's a bit more personal than the WWII stuff, but you still get the feeling that you're just a soldier caught up in these events rather than the crusading superhero who must single-handedly halt the villains plans.

[Skywalker_T-65]

True. I was more comparing it to CoD 1 since that's what I've played most recently (I don't have a copy of CoD 4/MW1 unfortunately).