Funny. I just realized, after finishing the latest Call of Duty Singleplayer, that I already blogged about this before. Just not so specific. No, this isn’t going to be another review about Modern Warfare 2, because there are plenty of those. No, this one will be a lot more specific: the idea behind the story (or at least, the thing I think to be the idea behind it. After all, I got the game yesterday!).
Basically, you are a part of the US Army and fight a battle against the Russians. Not just the Russians but the Russian Terrorists. In the second (or was it third?) part of the game, you go deeply undercover (in a very cruel scene) and infiltrate the terrorists. You kill dozens of civilians and it’s really unethical. In the end you get killed by one of the terrorists, and they get away.
It’s very clear that the most important quote in the game is “History is written by the victors”. This is said on the intro, and the developers even dedicated a complete mission to it, where you have to kill the person telling lies about what happened and get it all right. After all, when you kill that person, you are the victor, and then you are the one writing history, right?
What makes it even more clear that that the most important thing is, is the fact that, in the credits, you are in a museum. You go through all places you have been through. At first you wouldn’t notice, but slowly you will notice that things look better than they were. For example, there’s a part of the museum dedicated to the scene where you were trapped in a chamber that would explode in 10 seconds. This part is true. However, the museum displays it as 2 persons being constrained with ropes on chairs, with a 10 second timer behind them. In the real (it’s just a game, I know) version, they weren’t constricted to chairs and they got out very easily.
Another example is the terrorist scene I mentioned a bit above. Basically the most failing mission in the game (you failed because you got killed, it’s not about the quality of the game here!) was pictured as a great victory, and all the civilians that were killed there was unavoidable.
It was just a game, I know. But don’t forget that games can get really close to reality, not only by graphics. I’m no expert, but I think that a part of this game is targeted at getting people to realize that what is published, is not always true. And, to be honest, I think they are right. History is written by the victor.