Did the airport scene in Modern Warfare offend me? Not at all. I’m not showing off. This kind of violence is hyper-real (am I using this term correctly?), but it’s also a mature video game, and an M-rated game is at best a PG-13 movie. Rape, child molestation – these are extremes that make me uncomfortable in any medium…
Take the movie Irreversible. SPOILERS AHEAD SO SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU NEED TO. Not only is Monica Bellucci’s character raped, her boyfriend and friend bash the skull of the person they believe is the rapist when actually the person they should be demolishing watches from the background. This is the most depressing and unbearable movie I’ve ever seen. It kills me every time I think about it – and it’s nothing but pretend.
What hit me the hardest in the No Russian mission was the part where, while the majority of the civilians are either running away or falling dead, there are a few that stand still, hands up, believing they will be spared.
Forgetting the controversy for a moment, the scene is simply well-executed; they way it starts off only with the sound of people suiting and gearing up in an elevator; the chorus line of police officers in riot gear. Even the game slowing you down to a crawl so you can absorb the chaos – or to make the situation more stylishly violent. yet this slowdown is also a good design decision because it prevents you from running through the level, running into the crowd and possibly interrupting scripts. Infinity Ward wants you to decide for yourself if you want to squeeze the trigger, and for them to tell you their story, they need to limit your playground. They simply don’t want you to play like an idiot for this particular mission.
Besides, the other highly structured solution would be to make the mission on rails. At that point you might as well turn it into a cutscene. And at that point you might as well cut the scene, at which point, we might as well continue with the mentality that all video games are kids toys.
Do I want to have an Irreversible video game experience? I wouldn’t want to play a game that took me through the movie’s plot but I wouldn’t outright damn a game that depresses me like Irreversible does. It’s like with books; I like to read books for fun, but I’m not adverse to a book that challenges me intellectually or emotionally. And I think video games can do the same; we each just have different thresholds.
