WARNING: MODERN WARFARE 2 SINGLE-PLAYER CAMPAIGN SPOILERS AHEAD.
The screen is black. All you hear is the unzipping of duffel bags, the clicks of weapons being loaded and cocked, and the ding of an elevator. When the scene comes into focus, you find yourself in that elevator, surrounded by men dressed in suits, wearing body armor and carrying heavy machine guns. One of them, a young man with black hair and pale skin, looks at you and says “Remember, no Russian.” You only now realize that you are holding a gun.
The elevator dings again and the doors open. The men calmly file out; you follow them. The scene is easy to recognize: an airport. Tired-looking travelers stand in line, waiting to get through security. The familiar sounds of an airport are everywhere: chatter, the echo of an announcement over the PA system, the distant exhale of a jet engine.
One of the travelers notices you and the men you are with. They get the attention of the person next to them, and soon everyone is looking at you. They look confused and scared, but they don’t run; before they even have the chance, you are holding your trigger down, tearing them to shreds with machine gun fire.
It all gets worse from there.
Every serious gamer in the country has probably finished the single-player campaign in Modern Warfare 2 as of now, so it’s a good time to address the level “No Russian,” wherein the player-character–a United States soldier infiltrating a Russian terrorist organization–participates in a terrorist attack. The character does so not out of any hatred, political agenda, or blind vengeance; they are working to gain the trust of their enemy so that they may learn of their actions and ultimately save more lives. So no: the game does not have you “playing as a terrorist,” as some critics have decried: you’re playing as a loyal American pretending to be a terrorist for intelligence-gathering purposes. There is a very specific narrative reason why this level exists. Not for shock value, but to advance the plot of the game’s story–and to advance it in a meaningful way.
Sure, Infinity Ward could have told this narrative segment by way of a cutscene, telling the player about the atrocities they committed in the name of the greater good instead of having them commit them personally, but what kind of impact would have that had? None, whatsoever. Instead, you step behind the gun and see the carnage first-hand. You hear the screams, you see the wounded desperately crawl for safety, you see the confused straggler fall to their knees and throw their hands into the air and beg for mercy–and then watch as one of your comrades deny them that mercy. Or, knowing that you must do what must be done, pull the trigger yourself.
This level brings us closer to the actual carnage of a terrorist attack than anything else ever has, and it does so from the most terrifying point-of-view possible: that of the attacker. It’s a brutally honest experience, and dares the gamer to confront a harsh reality often overlooked in fiction.
We love to talk about heroism, and we should love to talk about heroism. But we often ignore the evils that inspire that heroism. We’ll gladly talk about the tragedies of September 11th, 2001 but we like to keep the screams and the blood at a comfortable distance. There is no shortage of talk about our noble causes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the closest we come to the carnage in the streets is an occasional update on our death toll or a picture of a bombed-out neighborhood from time-to-time. Why this is, I don’t know. Fear, more than likely. We know there are monsters out there and we want to kill the monsters, but we don’t want to know all the dirty things those monsters do.
In Modern Warfare 2, you–for a brief time, and indirectly, but nevertheless–become the monster. And afterward, you realize just how bad the bad guys are.
Of course, Infinity Ward gives you the option to skip this level–without penalty–altogether, before the game even begins no less. And if you start playing it and find it too intense, skipping the mission on the fly is just a few button presses away: pause the game and choose “Skip Mission.” That’s not to say the rest of the game isn’t populated with brutal combat that does not apologize, but at least it’s against people who shoot back.
It must be said, also, that for all the terror that this game depicts, there are true moments of hope and glory in there as well. Late in the game, you (as a different player-character) and your squad of Army Rangers have to fight across Washington, DC after an atmospheric nuclear detonation renders all electronic systems dead. Stripped of your most sophisticated equipment, you must battle through a destroyed office building against invading Russian forces, engaging in firefights in the dark. You eventually push through to the White House lawn, where you soon learn that the Air Force is going to start bombing the city unless they see green flares on the roofs of buildings, signifying that Washington is still in friendly hands. In a desperate race against time, you fight to take back the White House; you finally make it to the roof and pop your green flares as planes that were meant to bomb the city straight to Hell fly harmlessly overhead. As you look around, you see green smoke on the roofs of several buildings, and you realize that America still holds the Capitol, that it has not fallen, even in the face of insurmountable odds.
I don’t know about you, but for me it was a pretty stirringly patriotic moment.
Posted by Brandon 
