“Alex,” Ghost mutters within the cinematic that introduces Modern Warfare’s third season. “Thought you were dead.”
We all did, actually: gamers of Modern Warfare’s single-player marketing campaign made their goodbyes to the charming CIA operative within the closing moments of the marketing campaign. Yet there he’s, standing astride the tower of Gunfight’s Rust map in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Season 3, a transfer that might get you killed in a short time in 2v2.
Reassuring as it’s to see his simple American smile and regular moustache once more, maybe Alex ought to have stayed lifeless. The new Infinity Ward’s shooters – the return to type that began with the underrated Infinite Warfare – are all about prepared sacrifice, and it’s a disgrace to see their message undone for the sake of a multiplayer pores and skin.
It’s honest to say the early Call of Duty games, for all the bottom they broke in first-person storytelling, weren’t identified for his or her nuanced character work. The digital camera tended to zoom out, telling tales of geopolitical strife and revenge wrought by way of intercontinental missile; a Greek tragedy of violence begetting violence. But since Infinity Ward rebuilt itself with a dose of Naughty Dog DNA, Call Of Duty has turn out to be a extra intimate affair through which the principal solid will be seen to alter and develop.
That change, and the theme of sacrifice, is finest noticed in Captain Reyes, protagonist of Infinite Warfare. Played with typical stoicism by marketing campaign co-writer Brian Bloom – maybe higher often known as BJ Blazkowicz – Reyes is a person fighting horrible accountability.
As the game opens, Earth’s mixed defence fleet is crippled by a shock assault from a separatist faction primarily based on Mars – a daft conceit performed straight, to surprisingly highly effective impact. Faced with the prospect of shedding the planet, Reyes’ commander orders a determined ramming manoeuvre, damaging the Martian flagship and ending the battle within the course of. The transfer buys Earth time to patch wounds and counterattack, however at horrible value – a whole lot of the pleasant ship’s crew members die within the collision.
In the aftermath, our hero storms to the command deck to carry the captain to account for his choice, solely to find that his superior officer is toast too. Reyes is promoted on the spot, and the remainder of the game is devoted to filling these huge area boots. By the top of the marketing campaign, Reyes has to come back to phrases with not simply sacrificing himself – as all troopers do – however the hundreds of others beneath his command. It’s a psychological gulf larger than any leap throughout the Solar System, and but he should cross it.
He’s helped within the course of by Mac, the ship’s chief engineer. Mac as soon as commanded her personal ship, we’re advised, however couldn’t dwell with the prospect of sacrificing her crew for the sake of the mission. Yet she understands the worth of that sacrifice.
“Look, the strength of the pack is in all the wolves, Captain,” she tells him. “All in, no matter the cost. They were ready. Now if you don’t have the will to make that kind of choice, then like me, you have no place being in command.”
The story of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is very different – not least as a result of it’s break up between a number of protagonists – but it returns to sacrifice time and again. For new SAS recruit Kyle Garrick, the fee is ethical; the query whether or not he can dwell with the issues he does within the shadows for the sake of Londoners sleeping soundly again dwelling. For insurgent chief Farah, the value is household; the data that compromising her ideas for the sake of her brother will take her down the trail to indiscriminate terrorism.
The game’s ultimate protagonist, Alex, is a peculiar case. An operative for the CIA, he begins the game with no ideas: his job is to implement the desire of US intelligence, working with whichever unsavoury drive serves the nation’s pursuits overseas. Over the course of the game, nevertheless, he involves admire Farah’s conviction, finally defying orders by becoming a member of her military as soon as it’s reclassified as a terrorist organisation.
Ultimately, when Alex is given a chance to sacrifice himself for Farah’s trigger, he seizes it with each palms. Like the troopers beneath Reyes’ command, he’s desperate to go to a significant demise. “I’ve been on assignment my whole life,” he says. “This is one I believe in. Give me the order.”
It’s arduous to think about that, when Infinity Ward wrote that line, they supposed Alex to sell a battle pass six months later. In one other game it may not matter, however the studio has insisted in folding multiplayer into the overarching story of Modern Warfare. And so canonically, Alex is now alive once more.
Though his face is welcome in Warzone, and his new prosthetic leg a much-needed touch of diversity in a roster dominated by identikit army blokes, I’m sorry to see Alex’s sacrifice unmade. The themes of the marketing campaign have misplaced a bit of their resonance within the course of.
