I personally found that Modern Warfare (2019) took some inspiration from the “guts” they had back when World at War came out. Sure, it’s still adapted to a Western audience and primarily sucks up to the generic narrative, but it came across as being extremely gritty and realistic in some aspects, especially with regard to who’s “fighting the good fight”.
I felt it really set out a scene for players to think “hey, maybe we aren’t really the inherently good guys after all here in the West” over various cues and I was fairly content with that perception, even though your average player would miss the point completely (which is ironic) and keep on parroting their “oh yeah, spec ops, badass, U.S. Marines take the lead! hoorah!” shenanigans.
Also, even though Modern Warfare 2 (2022) was by comparison a bit worse, the raid scene where the containers (and their origins) are discovered? That also felt pretty impactful, even though, again, most would sadly not bat an eye or be able to figure it out.
Didn’t the 2019 modern warfare blame the Highway of Death on Russia, and portrayed the American occupation of Afghanistan as being committed by the Russians too?
That yes, politically that’s all skewed, but I’d sooner be looking at things like: (off the top of my head)
spoilers?
unsanctioned black ops
torture as means of interrogation
mock execution as means of interrogation
use of banned weapons
police not acting upon upcoming terrorist attack intelligence
Hadir releasing the gas (and you can kind of understand why)
& in 2022, the highlight was pretty big on how PMCs are terrible (although, well, it was specifically just the Shadow Company; coming to the idea that they are generally bad may be harder)
as well as the missiles belonging to the United States, and so on.
It’s not much, but it doesn’t feel like it paints the West in a squeaky clean light like games usually tend to; a game where they wouldn’t do that nowadays would probably be amazing (but sadly not sell very well or even be allowed to launch I’d imagine).
I personally found that Modern Warfare (2019) took some inspiration from the “guts” they had back when World at War came out. Sure, it’s still adapted to a Western audience and primarily sucks up to the generic narrative, but it came across as being extremely gritty and realistic in some aspects, especially with regard to who’s “fighting the good fight”.
I felt it really set out a scene for players to think “hey, maybe we aren’t really the inherently good guys after all here in the West” over various cues and I was fairly content with that perception, even though your average player would miss the point completely (which is ironic) and keep on parroting their “oh yeah, spec ops, badass, U.S. Marines take the lead! hoorah!” shenanigans.
Also, even though Modern Warfare 2 (2022) was by comparison a bit worse, the raid scene where the containers (and their origins) are discovered? That also felt pretty impactful, even though, again, most would sadly not bat an eye or be able to figure it out.
Didn’t the 2019 modern warfare blame the Highway of Death on Russia, and portrayed the American occupation of Afghanistan as being committed by the Russians too?
That yes, politically that’s all skewed, but I’d sooner be looking at things like: (off the top of my head)
spoilers?
unsanctioned black ops
torture as means of interrogation
mock execution as means of interrogation
use of banned weapons
police not acting upon upcoming terrorist attack intelligence
Hadir releasing the gas (and you can kind of understand why)
& in 2022, the highlight was pretty big on how PMCs are terrible (although, well, it was specifically just the Shadow Company; coming to the idea that they are generally bad may be harder)
as well as the missiles belonging to the United States, and so on.
It’s not much, but it doesn’t feel like it paints the West in a squeaky clean light like games usually tend to; a game where they wouldn’t do that nowadays would probably be amazing (but sadly not sell very well or even be allowed to launch I’d imagine).
I’m pretty sure any morally dubious positions or actions attributed to the west are only in the game to normalise those positions and actions.
I actually haven’t considered that perspective before but that could also very well be an angle!