Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?
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- Опубліковано 13 гру 2019
- Some time after the looting, the locked gates,
the US tank stood idle in a gallery
Support me: / jacobgeller
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This video was produced by Blake Hester
Sources:
129 Rapid-Fire Questions About Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: • 129 Rapid-Fire Questio...
Is Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare A Political Game? Here's Infinity Ward's Answer: • Is Call Of Duty: Moder...
Modern Warfare 2 designer explains the thinking behind No Russian mission: www.pcgamer.com/modern-warfar...
Military court upholds Michael Behenna's conviction, sentence: oklahoman.com/article/3589314...
Army reopens probe into detainee's death after Special Force soldier's Fox News interview: www.stripes.com/news/us/army-...
Navy SEALs Were Warned Against Reporting Their Chief for War Crimes: www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/us...
What motivated fellow SEALs to dime out Eddie Gallagher?: www.navytimes.com/news/your-n...
Why Modern Warfare will use a fictional country for its very realistic conflict: www.polygon.com/interviews/20...
Call Of Duty Dev Addresses Highway Of Death, Waterboarding, And The Intent Of Its Story: www.gamespot.com/articles/cal...
Interview: Modern Warfare 3’s creative director discusses blowing up the world, carefully: venturebeat.com/2011/11/06/in...
Twenty-five Years Ago: The 1991 Iraq Gulf War, America Bombs the “Highway of Death”: www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-...
‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Rewrites The Highway of Death As A Russian Attack, Rathern Than American: www.newsweek.com/call-duty-mo...
Description Credit: “Untidiness” by Amanda Dalton
Thumbnail design: / hotcyderable
Script consultation and Redbox funding by Blake Hester: / metallicaisrad
Gameplay footage courtesy of Jesse Guarascia
Games shown: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
Music used: Tierras de Azafrán (Blasphemous), Great Grey Wolf Sif (Dark Souls), Max Docks, Shells, (Max Payne 3), Main Menu (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2), N.M.H. (No More Heroes), Quarrel (Ruiner), Silent Heaven (Silent Hill 2), Mii Plaza (Wii), Der Monde, Ransacked (Wolfenstein: The New Order), Nazi Punks GTFO (Wolfenstein: The New Colossus), Wait Wait....Don’t Tell Me! Theme (BJ Lederman) - Ігри
Hey folks, UA-cam has demonetized this video based on "content not being suitable for advertisers." If you enjoyed this video and want to support more like it, I'd love for you to support me on Patreon. I'll even be releasing a full-length video director's commentary there with everything I couldn't fit in.
Can't exactly blame youtube... No one wants their product associated with content like this. Nonetheless, this video was a real eye-opener, eloquent and thought-provoking as always.
Huh, do they allow monetization of other videos containing footage captured from the same game?
Of course it isn't suitable for advertisers, if the message sold, they wouldn't have called it apolitical.
That was expecting, great video!!!
Not surprised. I hope you get double the income from this one, brilliant work.
"I can't shoot Captain Price, but I can shoot this baby"
Damn..
That moment when COD is more hardcore about throwing player choices back into their face than Spec Ops: The Line.
To be fair Price is required to continue the story, the baby is not.
@@harbl99 is it? spec ops the line definitely hit harder for me
harbl99 Not really, Spec Ops kinda just either rolls with your murdering of civies while COD just outright halts the level when you kill a civvie.
MW is a little softer than Spec Ops, the punches don’t hit as hard imo
What if the game had an alternative ending, in wich you shoot Captain Price and then you have to justify your action in front of a military court.
The message could be, that the US sees you as a traitor for going against US soldiers, even if its the right thing to do
The game gives a no no to chemical warfare, but in the first mission you call in white phosphorus.
holy shit I didn't even think of this
Spec ops is not a good war game it’s not という本
The Spec Ops white phosphorous scene breaks as soon as you try to not follow the game's railroad.
The game burns those civilians to death then blames you for it.
I was actually kinda hit hard by it up until the shoehorned "oh no you killed civilians because we made you you're bad" completely ignoring the harm I did to all the enemies before these civilians. If anything what I did to them was less horrific, they were apparently instantly vaporized unlike the soldiers still screaming in pain as they burn alive 10 metres behind me.
@@Mortablunt 'Spec Ops made YOU deciding to use the chemical weapons'
You lost me already. The player doesn't decide to use the weapon, when I played the game I looked through the scope and saw the crowd of civilians so I decided to try something else, but there is no other option.
The game forces you to kill those civilians if you want to keep playing the game, which is not a choice and shouldn't be seen as one.
@@cheesypoohalo you have an option, which is stopping to play. according to some old print article i remember reading on it, this is the actual choice the devs are on about. the player continuing to interact with the software despite doing horrible things? you dont want to get called a monster? stop playing. you dont want to commit crimes against humanity? stop playing.
Rewatching this, and I realized that MW actually displays torture as working perfectly, when in reality torture is an extremely unreliable way of getting information
Mw franchise and the whole cod franchise always done that
What could possibly be political about torture?
well, you get information. whether or not it's reliable is debatable. i mean, you can also learn a lot from a lie, as well. sh.t. this topic gets convoluted, quickly.
@@Dr.Nightmayor it's not debatable. There has never been a terror attack stopped by torture. If torture worked the cia would be screaming it from the rooftops. There is no grey area here.
@@Dr.Nightmayor You're missing the point
Fun fact; If your game is being assissted by the united states military, you're not presenting all perspectives. They don't assist if you don't portray them in a positive light.
In movies, and other media too.
There's a contract between Hollywood & DoD since the 70s.
this. i wish he mentioned this in the video. it's literally a condition of their cooperation. the US military has to greenlight everything that makes it's way into your game/movie about war.
@@sadpee7710
Didn't know this. That's interesting
There's tons of anti-war movies and games made in USA from Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse now to Spec Ops: the Line, it's just falls into "do not do this cool thing" effect when it makes the thing they critique look badass.
@@KasumiRINA all quiet on the western front is also a great anti-war movie
Is this game political?
*Performs extrajudicial murder of a civilian in a war zone*
No.
'WE DRAW THE LINE WHEREVER WE NEED IT'
Is this game political?
*Actively propagates and encourages the continued use of immoral war practice*
No.
Simon Yeeter lol ‘propagate’ ’encourage’. Need me to hold your narrative so you can think unabated?
XRXaholic okay, hold up a second. Please name the political party that is in favour of extrajudicial murders?
Well TBF, in MW2 you mow down a whole crowd of civilians
"Is this game political?"
*Every mission has some form of war crime porn*
"No."
War crime porn is the best porn ever.
Why is it not in Pornhub yet.
It's political from literally the very first line in the game: *"Our war is not for our faith."* Immediately tries to distance its middle eastern villains from Islam.
That alone is implying that "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism" which anybody who has even a minor understanding of "the religion of peace" would know that is false, and any soldier will tell you that regular western people have no idea just how much their religion plays a role into all of the conflict in The Middle East.
The second line: *"We fight to remove all foreign powers from our soil."* only reinforces the leftist belief that the real bad guys are the western powers who are fighting to protect our freedom from Radical Islamic Terrorism.
@@John-X damn ur stupid
@@John-X "fighting to protect our freedom"
Lmao if you believe this unironically. The correct line is "fighting to protect the bottom line of the oligarchs running the country at the expense of the rest and faceless foreigners".
@@John-X lmao you have *such* a hard-on for 'RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM' don't you?
Anyone who says their story about war is not political is a huge coward and should be mocked mercilessly.
Do you think said mockery will have the intended effect of changing the developers' minds? Or were you thinking of a different effect? In other words, *why* should they be mocked?
@@joringedamke5597 to discourage such behavior, both from the target and from others in the same role in the future, through the process of learning.
"War is just diplomacy by other means."
-Otto von Bismarck, noted militarist
@@ladywaffle2210 Clausewitz I think.
@@AdamNoizer It was and I am a fool.
That being said, Clausewitz was also a noted militarist.
The funniest part of gamers who say, "I'm sick of politics in my video games!" is that they LOVE politics in video games. They're just sick of seeing politics THEY don't agree with in video games.
Lol they don't even understand the games they played.
Metal gear Solid are some of the most political games ever, but nah Solid Go bruuuhh
@@wrestlinganime4life288 politics in action games is best when you don't notice it without turning off monkey shooty shooty slice slice brain. well it depends on the game.
@@notnot9476 Yeah no shit, except that those who complain about modern politics were too dense to understand it in the first place.
Kojima was personally upset with the way fans dick ride Solid Snake, missing the point of the character, and thus leading to Raiden whom initially was conceived as less masculine as Snake.
@@wrestlinganime4life288 tbf you can absolutely play Metal gear games and just bask in the bat-shit insanity that is Kojima storytelling and homoerotic supertext. Established military and international conflict is so normalized to millenials and zoomers that it's just familiar background noise that what ends up mattering in the story are the things that stand out. The characters, the sci-fi, the plot, all the unique stuff. What's crazy is when someone walks away from MGS/MGR with the complete opposite conclusion of what the games were trying to say, agreeing that they are political but that it's in fact their pro-US, pro-establishment, pro-right wing politics that it's agreeing with. They'll play CoD and then play MGS and believe they're saying the same things because both are featuring gritty army guys who get the job done.
Most of the people simply don't give a fuck about any of this, they just wanna jump in the multiplayer and start grinding to unlock stuff. The people complainig are just a small minority compared and represent a very small fraction of the market
Ah yes, the secret technique of turning your head a little while being waterboarded. Checkmate torture.
"Damn you're good" says the torturer to the tortured
he he he heh
you're good
i would simply drink all of the water
@@nefnef7474bepis slurp slurp
Mmmmm
@@nefnef7474bepis genius
the fact that they made a fictional middle eastern country attack a real european city shows really clear what kind of politics they had in mind
Recent events probably ruined any hope that this will change in a future game.
i think it was because they wouldn't've gotten away unscathed if they say made syria do it.
They made a terrorist group but yeh
@@skuuuker1060 i think they came up with the name by putting “kill” into google translate for arabic. low effort stuff lmao (put in القتل)
I mean I guess they’re partially going for that semi realistic, propagandist shock value punch to the gut feeling.
Edit: actually thinking about it more critically it would’ve made more sense if it was like a white nationalist group
This reminds me a meme that went like: "Games have two genders: male and political. Two races: White and political. Two sexual orientations: Straight and political."
That's some good insight for a meme
Think I saw that on Reddit on a post
That's pretty eye opening. "things I agree with and political"
This game is taking a broad stroke view of political issues and using it to tell a story.
Most people want politics injected to have "The Message (TM)" broadcast constantly by the game. That's how you end up with crap like Saint's Row Reboot.
Huh i heard something similar from innuendo studio.
“Disco Elysium isn’t about real life so it’s not political” is quite a take
The exact game that popped into my mind all throughout this video - more specifically, almost everything to do with the Krenel Mercenaries.
"Say one of these fascist or communist things, or fuck off"
Whenever I hear that take being said not sarcastically, the words "My brother in The Pale, *everything is political in Disco Elysium* " come to my mouth naturally
I guess we'll just chuck out all works of fiction ever. 1984 certainly wasn't political since it wasn't depicting the real world, right?
"It seems insane to get political" is an extremely political statement.
You could hear the anger in his voice, like an animal backed into a corner.
*makes shoot people game
" no politics here"
... what?
@@lanni5 *makes Political Violence game*
"no politics here"
Just meant this as a snarky 'quote-unquote correction' but I looked up the definition just to be sure...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_violence
It's a really good way to hide your motives.
Ah the old "everything is political" bullshit.
"This is not political" Literally rewrites history describing the highway of death.
my PTSD addled uncle who got roped into the navy had to clean up the viscera and gore left over from that specific war crime. he still wakes up screaming a lot of nights and he made me realize how completely fucking evil this nation can be
i wonder how the "apolitical" devs would handle a conversation with someone like him
May I ask, what is the highway of death, I hear abt it but i don’t know what it is?
Also holy shit, BOGMAN, I hope you guys are alright.
@@bonjolor8298 I'm living lol, and the highway of death was a war crime the US did back in the 1990's. In the 80's we propped up Saddam Hussein during the iran-iraq war by giving him chemical weapons, military vehicles, and financial support. After the war ended in 88, he made a multi million dollar infrastructure deal with Kuwait to allow Iraq access to their ports, as the country was land locked and in debt. Kuwait didn't hold up their end of the deal, so he launched an invasion to take the country in 1991. In response, we sent troops to kuwait and drove him back into iraq with air support
the highway of death was when the iraqi troops were retreating, notably with a significant amount of civilians in tow (mostly the wives and children of iraqi soldiers). Rather than letting them retreat, we flew in bombers and killed around 2,000 people, all in violation of international law.
Saddam was undeniably an evil bastard, but he wouldn't have been in power had we not propped him up and the mass murder of civilians was completely avoidable. Unfortunately, my uncle didn't realize this until he had to carry a dead toddler off to a mass grave in a country whose history he barely understood. in summary, i don't reccomend joining the military. (especially given the context of how we erroneously linked 9/11 to saddam as justification to invade for oil, whoops!)
@Craigishere 1 if you think that's bad, check out the genocides we did in indonesia and guatemala! we hired nazis into the CIA to put together kill lists of ethnic minorities and communists in both countries
or the 1917 bath riots, where we loaded people into camps at the southern border and sprayed them with zyklon B (or today when we're doing the same with HDQ neutral)
i think if people were actually aware, it would be almost unanimous that America is a modern day nazi germany. this country is seriously the greatest threat to international stability IMO but the propaganda is so strong that nobody is really aware
I admire their commitment to their cowardice. It takes real guts to not stand for anything, and even more to obviously have an opinion and direction and lie about it.
reminds me of that quote, "I know authors who use subtext and they're all cowards!"
It's call of duty you clown.
@@DIGITALGH05T GARTH MARENGHI!
Either they are lying to try and mitigate, or they truly do believe that.
I find the latter far worse.
This sounds like a line from Catch-22
“This isn’t political”
-civil conflict in the Middle East featuring proxy wars, terror groups, Russian occupation, and US/NATO occupation
-the Highway of Death (except the Russians did it)
-no knock raids against citizens
-terrorists based out of the Middle East (or at least being ethnically Middle Eastern) against a real western city
-a Benghazi mission
-black ops between Western nations and Russia
-freedom fighter groups backed by the CIA being given air support against Russians
-freedom fighter groups backed by the CIA being put on the CIAs terrorist group list
-debate over the rules of engagement when it comes to terrorists
-the mixing of terrorists within the civilian population
-the mixing of terrorists and civilians in a hospital setting
-the White Helmets (except from a fake country)
-the manufacturing and use of chemical weapons by both Russians and CIA backed terror/militia groups
-recorded executions for propaganda purposes (stopped by the player character)
-the invasion of an embassy in a Middle Eastern country
-the use of torture by Russians and Western special forces
That’s just off the top of my head after not playing the campaign since the game came out. That’s also without diving into the rest of the Modern Warfare series. The game is fun and playing it solely because it’s a fun CoD game is totally fine but to say it’s not political at all is ridiculous.
Let’s be real here, most COD players don’t give af about “political messages” there just here to shoot and blow up bad guys while playing with price and the boys once again.
Morons will still say this game is not political because there are no LGBTQ characters and "woke culture" in it. That is probably how many gamers understood the message.
Yeah except the thing is, the games missions are HEAVILY based on movies, and things that actually happened in real life. So call it political all you want, it's just retelling stories lmao.
@@RogerCharlamangeThings that happen in real life can never be political, surely.
@@RogerCharlamange It's sop funny to see a comment saying gamers have no understanding of what "political" means and then someone responding showing that he has no idea what "political" means. Congrats on proving the point, I guess.
For some people, apolitical = in line with their worldview
And they don't even realize it.
Well we human is a political animal
This is true for basically anyone who hasn’t examined their own political position.
@@Desi-qw9fc You hit the nail on the fucking head.
powerful ideology is often invisible
That's all I and a lot of other people wanted out of this game.
I've said it once, I'll say it again, if your game focuses on warfare in any way, it's a political game. War is an inherently political process.
I cant think of anything more political than war.
No shit but here is the thing not every war game nor movie is political the longest day is very apolitical it does not go into the political nature of the war hell it look at the D-Day invasions from all sides the Germans the allies even the french Resistance. It did not even say the Germans were bad because it was only looking at the battle. And yes everyone knows war is hell.
@@lorddiethorn still political. There are people who said they like war. And staying neutral kind of isn't neutral. There's really not a way to show real war somewhat realistic without being somewhat political. Both sides/all sides is political too.
There are a ton of ways to show war without being political again if they remade the longest day but keep it like the original that is makeing nearly non political because it’s not showing the Germans as bad most of the Germans were not nazi hell most were not even Germans who fought in d day. In saving private ryan those Germans are not Germans they were Czech because they were not Germans. That is not being political outside of the statement that war is hell. But most would agree that is not really that big of a political statement. But I don’t think call of duty is Propaganda. Mainly because it’s made by a american company and they are try to make money. By the way compared to russian films like furious and Stalingrad these games are tame. But I don’t notice anyone on the left bitching about those movies. Also just so you know the highway of death was not a war crime. But the The Baku-Rostov highway bombing was the russian military was found guilty On February 24, 2005, the European Court of Human Rights found Russia guilty of violention of the right to life and other human rights violations in the case of the attack on the "safe passage" convoy after a joint complaint was submitted to the Court by three various survivors in 2003,[6] summing up the established facts in its verdict:[2]
The reason why that was a war crime and the highway of death was not the highway of death target was military targets such as tanks and soldiers which is not a war crime unless there is a ceasefire which there was not.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku-Rostov_highway_bombing
Cullen Diethron while stories can be made inherently apolitical, every story retains some form of politics.
COD's developers: this game isn't political
Also COD's developers during the same interview: this game deals with themes like imperialism
"I don't understand why you're telling me I don't have cake anymore just because I ate it already. It seems insane to me that I can't have my cake and eat it too."
They're also being too much of a wuss to portray the _real_ capital I Imperialism which has done way more harm for the rest of the world compared to their fictional one - their own country (US)'s imperialism.
Cry about it
@@JakeznkBait comment
@@Jakeznk cry about what
Repeat after me "people who think their art is apolitical have the most dangerous politics", because they either don't have a clue about the consequences of their art, or know the consequences of their message are disgusting enough to fake being apolitical
What they deem is "political" is always just "PoC, LGBTQ people and too many women or girl bosses.". They could watch the fictional US president Mike Swaisy warcrime an entire country and have it be justified in the games eyes, but the second his secretary of estate happens to be gay THEN it's bad and "political".
Or that they’re so submerged in propaganda that to them its implications are taken for granted as a fact of life
eh i just wanna draw sexy anime girls
not my problem u guys take it far too seriously than me just horni
art is antipolitical.
it's like trying to classify a plant as a heterotrophic organism.
@@Barakon Sure, Blade Runner has no political message whatsoever.
And H.P. Lovecraft's whole mythos isn't based on his own crippling xenophobia.
And the Lumières aren't known for their scathing criticisms, particularily against the King, which were veiled enough to avoid censorship
Thought this was clickbait - turns out its a Ph.D. thesis on the philosophy of COD ...say what you will, this man does his research
Legit one of the best commentary on current military situation
Agree!
Better than a PhD thesis because it does not spend 25 pages explaining how his theory works in the context of [insert philosopher you have to pay your dues to here]
The games is not political, that's why we made sponsoship agreements with the U.S Army Esports and its recruitment technics.
🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
@@Battle_One Supporting the status quo is definitely not apolitical, tho.
Supporting US Army is not political tho, it's just normal. If they've supported Chinese military then that would have been another story.
@@TheManinBlack9054 Are you serious?
@@TheManinBlack9054 "Militarism is only bad when is do by people I don't like" Militarism and policing sucks, in the USA, in Europe, in China and everywhere and they defend the same institutions. I'm sick of this cold war and chauvinist (and xenofobus) of "free world vs the baddies" when in reality both collaborate with each other and provide feedback to each other. Both represent the two sides of the same coin.
I know I’m late to the party here, but Jacob’s conclusion as to what CoD actually believes in reminds me strongly of the conclusion that Shaun came to regarding the politics of the Harry Potter series: there are no good or bad actions. There are only good and bad teams. If the bad team does something heinous, it’s simply because they’re The Bad Guys. If the good team does something heinous, it’s actually fine, because, well, they’re The Good Guys. Actions do not determine the goodness or badness of a particular group or individual; instead, the goodness or badness of the *action* is determined by whether it was committed by The Good Guys or The Bad Guys.
Ultimately the politics of CoD and the politics of HP come from the same place, roughly. A glorification of the status quo. A status quo that in Harry Potter must be understood as flawed but never allowed to change, and in CoD must be spread to the entire world so everyone can enjoy our glorious status quo.
I know this is a bit later, but I wanted to add on. I do agree with you completely, because I think making it all about teams or ends is foolish. But I think people sometimes go too far the otherway and try and both sides things. But also they sometimes treat a tactic as an end. I'm reminded of dumbass rightwingers trying to equate autonomy for abortion, and autonomy for vaccination. Which is a silly position to take because they're always virtue signalling, they want to restrict abortion and only present this expression as a gotcha. equating them gives them one situation they hate, whether its abortion or vaccination. Because in a way they already recognize that there's a difference because they themselves hold these 2 paired positons of anti-abortion and anti-vaccination. They don't believe them to be contradictory, but will claim the inverse of each to be contradictory. In this example, healthcare laws are a tactic for advancing a position. It could be said of protesting and J6 vs BLM. I think some people are forgetting to examine underlying ideologies.
This comment gave me absolute CHILLS. Love both UA-cam creators but I would've never drawn this connection on my own.
1:57 A thing that strikes me about these "morally grey, no good or evil" stories is that they almost never justify the other side. They'll say that Captain Price made the hard decision to nuke DC, or threaten to kill a man's family, but never say that the terrorists or the Russians had a good reason for vaporizing a little girl. What they mean is that there is a pure evil, but that our side cannot be pure good, which is very troubling.
What's funny is that during the original Modern Warfare trilogy, the motivation for the Ultra-Nationalist Russians is only said in passing:
The world is getting westernized, Russia itself and the middle eastern country in the first game are colluding too much with the US, and thus... It's time to take the guns and maintain their own status quo. AKA communism.
Modern Warfare 1 nukes an entire city, Modern Warfare 2 bloodies an airport and burns DC to the ground, and Modern Warfare 3 reduces Europe to ashes... Because one Russian wants to take over the world...
@@Roler42 geez it’s almost like that’s the motivation for a bunch of armed groups and dictators or something.
Hell there’s an ongoing war involving Russia and Ukraine precisely because of that.
So instead of grey vs gray, it's black vs grey in this game eh? It's kinda ironic since apparently Barkov is "willing to go all way" to protect Mother Russia from terrorism too: including imprisonment and torture...
Plus, now that you and the comment above me mention it: there is also something that strikes me about "realistic war games". Not because they have to be unrealistic, but because they ignore (or want to ignore) the real causes for war and only focus on the realism of combat.
Think about it. Who is Al-Qatala? A bunch of Anti-Western terrorists who also happen to fight Russia. Who is Russia, besides a country that is against NATO and the U.S? (And just in case: no, they only disowned Barkov at most after his death). And the Urzikstani Liberation Force? That insider group in Urzikstan that we have to lend support to because they fight Al-Qatala and the Russian Army. *That's it*.
Weren't they Islamists, didn't they want to win and then impose their own version of Islam on Urzikstan like the Al-Qaeda group they so fucking obviously rip their name off of?
Doesn't the Russian government have it's own imperialist interests in the country, like in real life with Syria?
Doesn't the U.S and British government has their own, for that matter?
How did they gain their support inside the country?
It even does the same dehumanization to the U.S and British soldiers, for fuck's sake. Who are we, U.S and British military, if not a force for good who supports democracy because our enemies don't?
That's it, just tools of warfare. A role you're supposed to fulfill. It really seems *it's just these soldiers* who wanted to join war, isn't it?
Hopefully it's just me, but I'm amazed CoD decided to portray the story of two victims of war, even if only to justify their revenge later. Again, hopefully I'm wrong about that.
Is there anyone who started the Urzikstani Civil War first? Did the British Parliament and the U.S Congress give any permission to assist the Urzik Militia? Are you even sure that when the Urzik Militia win, they ain't gonna turn against the U.S and the British agencies, whatever the reason you think it may be?
@@raulfernandez57 Yeah, Jacob kinda touches on that with his disbelief at claiming any art can be non-political, but it's especially bad for a war story, since "war is the continuation of politics by other means". It's all political.
they are saying "our" side is pure good. "morally grey" is a euphemism for controversy. when you're the right person, the wrong thing to do is the right thing to do. this is the contrast they call "morally grey". it's just the good guy doing bad things for good reasons. it's ultimately framed as good but it's "dirty" good. morally grey heroes are "heroes that get their gloves dirty" as they put it. but everything they do is framed as 100% good.
"If there had come a point in the game where Captain Price made the decision to use chemical weapons against the enemy, the game would have framed it as a tough choice, but we need people who can make tough choices to protect our freedom."
Fun fact, that's exactly what he did in Modern Warfare 3. He gases a man for information, then kills him when he gets the information.
You also use chemical weapons at the start of the game, white phosphorous.
Yes but he executed him for the SAS members killed during the gas attacks
look familiar?
You do realize killing a terrorist is COMPLETLY different from helping a terrorist steal weapons to kill civilians right? One is Price, the other is Hadir. >_>
At one point during the story of the new Modern Warfare game, Marines fire rockets from attack helicopters and the cannon of a Bradley into a hospital filled with people and it's not even remarked upon. A frightening and chilling reference to Kunduz that I don't even think the developers intended
I'm surprised you didn't talk about how in their "neutrality", Middle Eastern countries have to be euphemized to avoid the appearance of politics but the UK gets to retain its identity.
The UK and America and Russia gets to keep their identity but not a Middle Eastern country has to get changed to avoid controversy
@@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504 USA funded ISIS, bet you will never see that in a game, or in real life. Same for the real history of this country, 9/11, other false flag attacks and religious debates.
Brutal truth that they don’t want to be linked to anything extreme coming out of that part of the world, in the sense that they would have “provoked” anything that could happen. Not that bad things and actors don’t come out of the USA UK or Russia but that is what it is
@@SuperMarkHere Yeah in these games you're always the savior, the good guy
It’s because, let’s face it, to americans, the “Middle East” is a fictional orient/monolith with no real ethnic or geographic borders.
All of those interviews scream "frat boy bootlicker" so hard it made me cringe. They represent all of the things that, ironically, make so many mainstream games still feel immature.
The anti-politics political stance, the glorification of edgy people with power over others, the use of "controversy" for the design that was clearly made to draw attention like an edgy teen would, the facade of maturity in "war is hell" edgy imagery. They refuse to take their very political stance honestly and analise it seriously and, in turn, end up looking like manchildren with way too much money for their project.
Summed up my feeling exactly
Boom.
I’ve never liked that the Modern Warfare games reset you back to a checkpoint if you harm civilians, as if that’s something an SAS operative would NEVER do.
-fictional city in the middle east with a name ending in -stan
ah so we're just not even trying to get the right ethnicities
Nah, they were just too scared of including a real middle east country in their game.
Yeah, but at least they shoulda known that that ending is a Persian word which is not the same as Arabic, in case that needs pointing out
Looks at how CoD 4 Modern Warfare was banned in the UAE for the location of the US campaign
Gee I wonder why
@@commanderbenson4121 no it was not banned for that it was Ann because the enemy looked like them
Well, given that the Russians were invading, I assume it was near the Russian border.
love how "gamers" think women and lgbt ppl automatically make a game "political" but war and terrorism don't
To gamers, "political" is anything they disagree with.
@@corvaes I agree. Everything is innately political, and great attention must be paid to those thing that claim to be above or outside of political.
I think people have become so numbed by depiction of what happened with war and terrorism that they see it as entertainment whereas games representing women and LGBT as people are political because we desire to be recognized and humanized and that was apparently more terrifying.
In that sense, I wouldn't be political if I was a victim of a car bombing, but I would be if people mentioned who I was beyond a number.
Two of those things are necessary for a FPS about modern conflict and the other two just aren’t. People are sick to death of unnecessary/unrelated politicization.
You know, after Spec Ops: The Line came out and laid bare all of the toxic assumptions behind the modern shooter genre, we were supposed to. . . do better. . . not wallow in it.
Yah that’s really never how shit works.
To quote Yahtzee: "I thought we were over the whole Modern Warfare thing. It had its fun for a while, systematically abusing the word "realistic", but then Spec Ops: The Line came along and showed us what a bunch of violent paranoid glory-boy twats the whole genre was making us all look like. You were supposed to slink off in shame! Nanny caught you with your hand in the cookie jar, you don't just continue eating the cookies."
@@KiwiLombax15 lmao that’s good
God i love that guy…
Unfortunately, we now live in a post-shame society. Why should you do better when you can just bully everyone telling you to do better and not suffer consequences for it?
@@KiwiLombax15 But that's only if granny -isn't willing to give you a share of the cookies- doesn't see you stealing them a.k.a The Line unfortunately isn't as famous as CoD is. Even when nowadays it is thankfully recieving more attention, it is kind of niche.
It's easy to imagine why. In the first place, it's almost a miracle a videogame developer and publisher decided to release a game such as Spec Ops. Secondly, I doubt marketing of the game went as far as to advertise it the same way Destiny did or CoD does with their games (maybe I'm wrong though).
I mean, even if people believe it's just another generic shooter and miss the surprise, or pan it because it blames you or whatever: the name of the game is widespread and UA-cam existed, hence there would be more favorable reviews combined the fame, even if the surprise gets spoiled.
Now, for what every Call of Duty game _really_ is: *_a recruitment tool._*
Which is a shame, because it's a lot of people's go to game for some mindless fun. But on the bright side, I don't think many people play the campaigns
@@nordikkai7185 the mindless fun aspect is kinda how it gets you though, it leaves intangible impressions of ideas about good guys and bad guys, what they look like and how they sound which are then carried over to real life tucked in your subconscious pattern recognition without ever realising it, its how we develop unconscious biases that we are only later confronted with and often end up trying to rationalise rather than address.
Most effective propaganda is subtle and background vibe shit that you don't really notice is being fed into your basic assumptions about a narrative.
@@nocturem Good post
Ah yes, Vanguard is a *really* effective recruitment tool
@@nocturem imagine using straight up 50s propaganda methods and calling them effective
Call of Duty believes that the boot tastes quite good, actually.
Almost333 How is it bootlicking
@@Almost3331 He literally asked why because he didn't get it, no point in being so passive aggressive!
@@Almost3331 They're not just supporting unrestricted military operations; they're supporting unrestricted military operations *while also* portraying Russia as the bad guys for doing the same thing. Remember, kids, it's ok when *our* non-state actors use chemical weapons and disguise themselves as civilians.
@@Almost3331 that's more like it. Good job on being a civilized, mature person!
Almost333 lol he did
I'll take 5 politics, please.
What is this, a crossover episode?
Nice to see you here.
Waiting for your vid
Would you like some fries with that?
Who the hell ordered all this politics & anime titty?!
The part that blew my mind when it came to COD MW 2019 was the part where Captain Price said "we draw the line wherever we need it to be." but not because it was "badass" or "cool". it was because it reminded me of Spec Ops The Line, and it's counter argument. The quote went something like this "we drew the line and kept walking" or was "we drew the line, that was our starting point.", Hell there was the phosphorous scene in spec ops the line that was similar to MW, but the difference was the attitude, While MW kind of treated it like a "yeah we did that" and crossed its arm around its chest and stood there smugly, Spec Ops treated it like "holy shit, what have we done.". If I had to describe MW and Spec Ops in one quote it would be this. In MW its hard to be the hero but everyone shouldn't question your action cause, well, your the hero, your the only one capable of saving the world, NO MATTER THE COST. while Spec Ops ask, "Do you feel like a hero yet?"
Spec Ops The Line (for all it's flaws) is one of my favorite games of all times, purely for the "feel like a hero yet?" loading screen text. At first I laughed - cheeky, cheeky - but by the end I felt very different. No more amusement, just a dull sense of "oh". I saw that bit coming but it still kinda hit home despite all the foreshadowing. In fact, the overbearing foreshadowing is WHY it hit home. The themes were hammered home like my very real PTSD hammers at my brain, and finally it clicked: there is no nuance. War is hell. A few years later I spoke to some actual survivors of real war and... yep. There is no nuance. There is no doubt. Only delusion by a handful of people but even then, deep down, you can feel they know there's no nuance to what they suffered either, only the mental castles built to preserve their sanity (and can you blane anyone for doing that?) The writers & designers of spec ops clearly understood this and wanted to share. Idk what COD's about except cash grabs galore. Definitely nothing like what war truly is, at least as far as I can tell from the people I met & the stories they told.
@@ki3657 COD writers could learn a thing or two from this game
The exact same quote, in different contexts.
In Modern Warfare, right after you disarm the nuke, or reach the Reichstag, or get the Medal of Honor for your "valorous" deeds, your character would be a little breathless and their squadmate would clap them on the shoulder and cheekily ask, "Do you feel like a hero yet?" as a nice little callback to the beginning of the game where your character stated they joined the Army to be a hero.
In Spec Ops: The Line, well... the fact that no one says it out loud says a lot. It's almost murmured, but you can hear it in your mind in so many different ways. The venomous words of a woman who lost her son to your bullets; _"Do you feel like a hero yet?!"_ A traumatized squadmate looking over a sea of bodies; _"...do you feel like a hero yet?"_ A disgusted father looking over the blood you spilled; "Do you feel like a _hero_ yet?"
This is kind of a retarded comparison since you kill civilians in Spec Ops but not in MW’s white phosphorous. You kill Russian soldiers. You don’t feel bad in Spec Ops until you see dead civilians. War itself is a crime so there’s really no “moral” way to make it fun for a videogame. But here we are with you pussies complaining
It's been years since I played a COD game on xbox 360 as a kid. Haven't picked one up on PC since then because of the seemingly stale formula and, well, the infuriating politics. Should I play spec ops: the line?
"This game is about politics."
"Is this game political?"
"No."
When you play a game like this with a story like this, it is inherently political. They were just using market-speak to appeal to their demographic. A real apolitical game is Pong.
Pong is inherently a political game bro
@@jvukovic4 how
@@suhasop4919 there's plenty of angles you can take with this. Pong was one of the first games to get sued for patent infringement, as it was taking heavy inspiration from Magnavox Odyssey. The ensuing legal battle is certainly political, as Pong's message is trying to discern the line from where inspiration stops and stealing begins.
If you want to analyze pong the game itself, their is plenty in the game to analyze. The fact that Pong is a 1 on 1 game, and that for every game only 50% of your players will win at any given point, Pong is fine with having people lose, in the name of sportsmanship. Anybody who says games aren't political is just a big dumb dumb
@@jvukovic4 woah
@@jvukovic4 that last line is true
In London in 2005, two weeks after the 7/7 bombings, British Police perused a man through Stockwell Underground Station and shot him after he boarded a train. They officers were sure that they had positive ID on a terrorist.
He was completely innocent, a student from Brazil. Police fired 11 shots, only seven of them hit him.
This is why the gloves stay on.
G. G. Yeah, shit happens, it’d be bad if shit happened to you but I’m sure you’d understand right?
Its as easy as you point it out to be. Everybody who does not get it is an idiot or a troll.
@G. G. I hope one day your the person the 'gloves come off' for...prick
Actually thats an inaccurate story. He was an illegal immigrant from Brazil whom tried rushing into the subway. They decided that no risks were to be taken and shot him. Somewhat questionable but they weren't tracking him. That is if we re thinking of the same thing.
@@psmt1234 Well too bad mate sometimes its entirely necessary and our fears. desires, aspirations, emotions and all that sentimental crap doesn't matter in the moment. For the greater good is not a phrase for no reason. Sometimes the risks too far outweigh the benefits to risk saving everyone. Its a part of life and everyone should accept it. lets say terrorists have a nuclear bomb and 100 children hostage, you have to raid them and risk the children's lives because that nuke is worse. Simple math really. Being emotional while running a nation is how you run a nation into the ground.
Funny how Metal Gear tackles all the themes that CoD pretends to tackle head-on, embraces the politics of it all, and does it in an impactful way that leaves everyone who's played it better off. Basically, play Metal Gear, not CoD
CoD pretends to tackle jack shit, it's COD, how have people become so retarded that they have started to take fucking RIOT SHIELD game seriously? It's the most arcady, actiony, cheesy game in the world, and that's it's fucking purpose dumbass. It's not political, it's just supposed to be "kewl" and "badass", so it tries hard, because it's call of fucking duty not SPEC OPS The Line.
Which one should I start with? I have always been tempted to try it out
@@hhelminn mgs 3: snake eater is arguably the best in the series :^)
@@hhelminn obviously, release order was the original intended experience, as the series heavily controls what info it drip-feeds you. if you wanna go the more confusing chronological route,
MGS3 > MGS: Peace Walker > MGSV: Ground Zeroes > MGSV: The Phantom Pain > Metal Gear > Metal Gear 2 > Metal Gear Solid > MGS2 > MGS4 > Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Metal Gear 1, 2 and Rising are arguably less important, and most of the spin offs are either noncanon, insignificant or both. Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes is a remake of MGS but is not necessarily the best way to experience MGS.
ultimately, it's down to personal preference. I'd do release order myself, but it's up to you!
@@hhelminn Release order you filthy casual lol
I think that if your game was sponsored by the U.S. military, assisted by the U.S. military, glorifies the U.S military, refrences real-world military incidents, or focuses on warfare - I think it might be just a bit political.
Cod is straight up military ad
"Perspectives"
I'm still waiting for the MW game from the perspective of a starving kid in half real Syria
@@straatee6566 you play as the girl actually, farah.
@@straatee6566 which game is that?
@@straatee6566 ???
@@straatee6566 i guess i never played it?
dude yes, I want it to be a suffering kid who joins an insurgency, where we play as the insurgency
Political = I don't agree with this ideology
Apolitical = This ideology aligns with my personal beliefs.
That’s not true. It means that it doesn’t shove into their face.
@@thomasffrench3639 like for example:?
A woman featured in a video game and someone briefly says she's strong and independent = "GET YOUR POLITICS OUT OF MY VIDEO GAMES!11!"
Stereotypical soldier man committing war crimes because America is the good guy and that's the core of the entire advertising campaign = "That's what I'm talking bout"
Literally.
My existence is deemed "political" because I am gay, trans, have a vagina, am disabled, etc.
By virtue of existing in physical + digital spaces, my existence is reviewed, discussed, debated, evaluated, mocked, belittled, demeaned, questioned, refused, ignored, spotlighted, dismissed, harassed, etc.
I am never allowed to just exist within the space.
Meanwhile, the 'non-political' existences are never questioned, never debated, never ignored or reviewed or harassed. They are assumed, allowed, enabled, acknowledged, assured, etc. They are given permission to exist, are encouraged to existed, are assumed to exist, appealed to, etc.
The existence of a fictional character like me in anything is a political statement. The existence of a Straight, White, Cis, Able/Neurotypical Male in any area is considered 'Standard' (excusing the rare occasion such as Bronies, in which men were the exception, which was/is so rare that its a decade old and still notable just via the fandom nickname used)
99% of the time people do not notice the list of Political Identifiers when they make up the 'Standard', instead only noticing when something is *wrong* - aka when one of the Identifiers has been altered to something *different* - as soon as one factor is different, the entire character is relegated to the 'political character/statement' section.
It's hysterical to me sometimes, because the 'political character/statement' section contains thousands of different combos, a wealth of human experiences, thousands of interesting and intriguing stories and histories and contexts, which would be so exciting to explore, but we're stuck with 5-10-20 or more of the same bland-ass 'Standard' character, because God forbid we do anything Different 🙄
@@Lambda_OvineReally depends. A good written strong woman/lgbt/poc that kicks ass and a good character? No problem. But a poorly written token woman/lgbt/poc that is only strong just because is just tokenism.
The mind boggles that in America being a member of the troops is so often a get out of jail free card
Yet, when military personnel criticize the military they are often labeled traitors.
The same fool who would call gallagher a hero wouldn't hesitate call him a villain if he came out against the military
Does it boggle the mind? Frankly I can't think of anything more straight forward than "we are the Good Guys and therefore what our Guys do is Good! Kill all nonbelievers, they threaten Our Guys and our ability to be Good!"
shoutouts Chelsea Manning
Gamers will scream to the heavens that they don’t want “politics in games” yet each call of duty after the next is just borderline military propaganda. Think about this, how many of the gamers who were saying “death to the MPLA” as a meme a few years ago even know who the MPLA is?
It won't be surprising that COD is the primary basis of anti-communism in most people. The MPLA was indeed a revolutionary communist movement opposing the former Portuguese colonial government, that was being opposed by the former Maoist but at the time right-wing CIA-backed Jonas Savimbi, which was portrayed by BO2 as the Good Guy.
The MPLA is responsible for Angola's liberation from its former Portuguese colonizers, or at least before they became revisionists after the 90s. However the CIA-backed UNITA (Savimbi) weren't so much so in the end anyway, as the US and eventually the apartheid South Africa was supporting them in the name of imperialism and neo-colonialism.
Yeah but communism sucks dick
Activision: “it’s a morally gray area”
Also Activision: “ROSSIA BAD MERICA GOOD BUY OUR GAME PLS”
Oh yeah here take this gas grenade. I call it the pocket war crime. You wanna drop some fire ass willy pete? LET ER RRRRIP.
But America was bad in the originals
@@tacti-cooldude6236 Shepard was bad in the originals. I don't distinctly remember america itself ever being painted as bad in mw-mw3. Unless im forgetting something.
@spleen eaterThat's basically this game Russia itself is not portrayed as bad but general barkov is
Person1 Person2 well, the Soviets are kinda portrayed as bad, and while Barkov is there there’s a lot more focus on the soldiers, whereas in the original mw makarov, zakhaev and Shepard all have their own private army when they go AWOL
Creating a narrative which "doesn't contain a perspective," seems a lot like when someone claims they "don't see color." They're utterly blind to their own biases.
well said
@MAX POWERS *"Well it does contain perspective."*
That's my point. Stories inherently have a perspective. It's completely unavoidable. So when a developer claims their game doesn't contain a perspective, it just means they're so used to thinking of their own point of view as the default that they don't think of it as a perspective. They think it's neutral.
*"If you look at the story and what the bad people do in the game not in real life then the good guys are the good guys. It’s only when you compare the game to real life that you have questions about it."*
But why shouldn't we compare it to real life? The game is obviously referencing real world events. Players can't help but make comparisons, even if it's at a subconscious level. Also, I would argue that there are definitely some things that the "good guys" do in this game that I would definitely question regardless of real world comparisons. I don't need real world examples to know that threatening to kill a man's wife and child to get him to talk is not typically a "good guy" move.
*"I think you just need to keep in mind that with these people want to make is a cool game about army men blowing things up"*
And that's fine, but they've also injected some of their own politics into the game in the course of making it. That's not an inherently bad thing, by the way, but my concern is in that they don't seem to be at all aware (or willing to admit when it's pointed out to them) that they've done so. If they just wanted to have army men blowing stuff up, that could have been easily accomplished without creating any controversy.
*"I don’t think the developers care very much about the politics"*
They put their blood, sweat, and tears into making this game, and the game has a political perspective. So I would argue that they very much care about the politics contained in their game, they just don't think about it as being political. Because, again, they're not used to seeing their own opinions as being anything besides the default or neutral.
*"this is not a dialectical materialistic Game about trends in the Middle East it’s just about price and his guys blowing up bad people"*
The developers themselves said the game deals with themes of colonialism, occupation, independence, freedom, and moral gray areas. That seems to be pretty incompatible with a simple story of "good guys blow up bad guys."
That’s a bit of a hot take. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to see people as people.
What? If the story has no good or bad perspective how is it biased? If it doesn't comment on the things happening, how is it biased. Why are you leftists always dragging people who don't want to be political into it by saying that they CANT stay on the sidelines. Seriously. Fuck you people.
@@whiteglint7694 *"What? If the story has no good or bad perspective how is it biased?"*
But the game clearly has a perspective. And perspectives mean bias. Of course, all good stories have a perspective (and therefore a bias), so I don't mean to imply that having a perspective (even one I disagree with) is automatically bad. But there is something gross about insisting that your story is totally neutral when it clearly isn't. It primes the player to uncritically adopt the developer's bias.
*"If it doesn't comment on the things happening, how is it biased."*
The game has a clear set of protagonists and antagonists with opposing viewpoints. And the setting is obviously referencing events happening in the real world right now. The game is commenting on things. This is exactly the problem I was getting at in my previous paragraph. You, as a player, have taken the developers word that the game is completely apolitical and without any bias. So now you seem to be completely blind to the game's commentary on the world you live in.
*"Why are you leftists always dragging people who don't want to be political into it by saying that they CANT stay on the sidelines. Seriously. Fuck you people."*
If they wanted to be apolitical, then they should have made a completely different game. Because the characters, setting, and themes the developers decided to craft this game around inherently carry a hell of a lot of political baggage. I'm not dragging them off the sidelines. They're smack dab in the middle of the damn game, wearing one of the team's colors, and actively playing. No amount of declaring their non-participation to the audience is going to make that not true.
Gamers when woman in Vidoe Game: "Why are they shoving politics down my throat?"
Gamers when CoD: "Apolitical gem!"
People think being political is bad but love watching Jurassic Park.
Cry about it
@@Jakeznk
I'll cry from a massive orgasm your mom drove me to
Literally no one says this. And what’s a vidoe game?
@@felixjohnston3402a whole lot, actually. no small amount of people are throwing a hissy fit one of the main characters of gta6 is a woman.
One of my favorite quotes ever regarding a COD game was about World At War.
People may have dismissed its darker tone as edgy back then, and while it certainly has had more love thrown its way nowadays, WAW was the only one that I've played thus far where I actively feared the enemy combatants.
But the scariest part is when you remember that you're fighting against other humans.
"WAW is a horror game where the monsters look exactly like you."
I liked that one of the npcs in game remark on your brutality or sympathy despite Reznov repeatedly asking you to slaughter them. They dont explicitly try to show an example of a example of "good German" but it does remind you at times that they are just human beings too.
I can’t help but feel like call of duty believes:
War = Cool
But they’ve stepped up to:
War = Hell = Cool
To obscure how much they just want you to believe War = Cool
More about war=cool but a large part of our players are ptsd military so we gonna sell more if we show some respect for what the troops do. Thats why the field agents are right and the higher hanked inteligence offices are wrong.
I mean it’s a video games company, what sort of company would say that their product is not cool. I mean... war is pretty cool whenever real people don’t die. That’s why war games are so fun and engaging. Plus is Call of Duty Who is expecting new wants to political commentary
@@loubloom1941 And the 'unintended' effect of making war out to be flashy and cool is that people may glorify war as flashy and cool.
No shit, that's the point of a game.
BF does the same thing, R6S too, EFT too, Insurgency Sandstorm too, Arma too, DCS too.
GTA says killing people is cool too
@@estebanod "everyone does it so we're not gonna bother doing anything about it"
“These men were given a presidential pardon” my vision blurred that’s absolutely horrible
I feel sick
Honestly it's on-brand for the U.S. It's very rare that state-sanctioned killers pay for their crimes against humanity. This is true from the local police all the way up to the U.S. military and CIA.
The Blackwater mercs who shot up 17 civilians (including children) in nisour square were pardoned by Trump right before the end of his term.
If you want to become a murderer and get away with it, join the army, I guess
It's pretty hard to find war criminals who are sentenced for 10 years or higher. The Abu Ghraib tortures were photographed with the perpetrators posing and smiling but the highest sentence given I could find was 8 years.
They quite literally qustify war crimes and then tell everybody they are the ones fighting war criminals
this video has been out for over 2 years, but i still can't quite get over the "it seems insane to get political to me" comment. the first half of your game's title is a direct reference to the United States Military, the second half explicitly tells us that this game is about current-day military conflict. just how insane do you have to be to even believe that it is possible to make that game apolitical
Because a certain subset of gamers are of the opinion that a "political game" means "it any sort of content in it that isn't 'straight white he-man applies violence to the other'"
“We wanted to talk about colonialism in the Middle East, political instability, and the definition of a terrorist group, so we had 3 white dudes who haven’t lived outside America sit in a room and nod their heads pensively at a camera for 3 hours”
Fun fact: The Pentagon gets to sift through media and games about the military for accuracy and attention to....detail.
US military has it's hand in basically each and every Hollywood movie that has anything even remotely to do with the US and war/combat. Recently, even in the SF genre (with movies like Independence Day 2). They keep expertise and material freebies (such as military props) out of reach, unless the producers are willing to toe the line in regards to portraying the US military as a absolute force for good or glorify the military service. So pretty much either 1. manufacturing consent that the US can do no wrong or 2. recruitment tools (gotta keep a good stock of fresh sociopaths, eh, those 3rd world villagers won't drone themselves will they?). Or both of course.
What’s the difference between an artist and a sniper?
@@birubu DETAILS
Hey man I want to research this can you give me a few sources I want to read about this.
@@trobertt7271 If you haven't seen it, there's a video called one marvelous scene - military ads in marvel that discusses the topic with the main focus being mcu movies of course
"I'm not political" -people who enthusiastically support the status quo
It feels like it’s only political when it’s a change from the norm. Like thinking you’re not moving when you’re at a consistent speed, versus accelerating/braking.
Toxic Potato So people who haven’t lived outside 1st world countries can’t have political opinions and must support the status quo? What kind of nonsense is that?
Or people who, having little interest in what is certainly a niche subject matter, (when it comes to genuine discussion) don’t care beyond basic principles that every person shares e.g. murder is bad, and maybe have some lukewarm opinions that they are not committed to (i.e. enthusiastic about) at all. I feel like you types have never talked to anyone outside of your ideology or the internet, where most people genuinely don’t give that much of a shit about politics and are more focused on the myriad of other things life has to offer. Like art, or making a living, or... you get the point.
@Toxic Potato That's absolutely what you said. You did nothing to imply that people need self-awareness and now your entire argument here is a generalization of one single group of people. What do young westerners have to do with any of this anyway?
@Toxic Potato Lol Ok
"We present the different perspectives"
I really enjoyed that scene in the game where the *evil* Russian explained what his reasons for being *evil* were, his arguments made a lot of sense
the part where the unnamed evil russians calmly explained their reasons was also my favorite part. The complexity of it all really resonated with me
Not a day goes by that I’m not mad that Metal Gear and Spec Ops the Line, didn’t sell as much as CoD
So, basically, military propaganda is "apolitical".
When you say something political in a crowd of people; one person is bound to get angry , You can't exactally please everyone
: /
@@Tabby-nw3bu Agree or not agreeing isnt the issue here. They just say 'apolitical' otherwise some gamers may have to sort out their beliefs and that's too difficult, may result in less sells. And the almighty money is of course more important than morals and truth.
Generic White Man God shut up dude why don’t you get morally outraged over something meaningful
@@quanhittersupreme6738 Like?
Exactly how is any part of this game military propaganda. Almost every single part of this game is legitimately a copy paste of reality, what is actually going on in some parts of the world. Children die, women get killed, civilians pick up weapons and sometimes attack militaries etc etc. no part of that is propaganda it’s all just them digitizing reality of war/wars/conflicts that have gone on for centuries.
So they wanted to be "Spec Ops: the line" but didn´t commit to tell the player he was wrong, only to shock him once a while
You don't even have to tell the player he's wrong, per se. You just don't need to constantly tell him he's right.
Like, imagine the Clean House Mission was a dud. You killed a few terrorists but got no information out of it and in fact, the other cells are now warned that the government is onto them and get more careful. Was it a mistake to raid the house? Yes. Should you have not done it? I dunno, maybe the risk was still worth it.
CoD still fails to portray war as messy. In CoDs universe, the Western powers don't make mistakes. Its the illusion of a clean war, in which you get exactly as much dirt on your hands as you're willing to take, nothing more. And that is not true.
@@TheSorrel Totally agree, it feels that all of the morally ambiguous actions of the Main characters are justified because of the lack of negative consecuences in their results, All conflicts based on agression (specially war) have terrible consecuenses for his soldiers and civilians, no matter the cause or the country. And one of the horrors of war that this game ignores is having to deal with the consecuenses of a terrible choice.
You’re never wrong in Modern warfare unless you shoot civilians that’s it. Every one else is a combatant
@@winnietheflu4633 I dont think you understand what we're talking about here
Him?
I think Cod's glorification of soldiers, their decisions, and their "justifications," can be summed up with this simple quote: "The soldier is always right!"
No, the *American* soldier is always right.
The COD writers seem to have the idea that “apoliticism” just means conservatism
That’s the view every conservative takes, just look at the replies in the comment section. Not even human, the lot of them.
@@thedeviantguy Sadly not all too surprising
The dominant cultural ideology rarely seems like an ideology to most people. Just like how so many gamers think white male is the default non political and non racial class for a human and anything else is political or racially motivated or both.
This is the hardest case of the pot calling the kettle black that I have ever seen in my entire fucking life, are they putting something in the Americans drinking water to make you guys like this or what?
@@GenericProtagonist7
1) Im not american
2) how is this pot calling the kettle black im stating a straight up observable fact
As Yahtzee from Zero-Punctuation said in that one video:
``You either die Spec Ops: The Line or live long enough to see yourself become Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.``
Eh
No
You either die a mediocre game or live long enough to see yourself become what many people consider the best shooter of all time? Sounds pretty njce
@Source Reserve look, im not saying you have to believe it. I dont believe call of duty has been very good since world at war personally. Im just saying what i've heard people say. When i ask friends their favorite shooter, ive never heard someone say spec ops the line, i have heard people (and seen people online) say CoD Modern warfare
@@corielldoghc
I'm currently referencing the Call of Duty in question, that being the 2019 one.
@@corielldoghc right so you call MW "the best shooter of all time" because you've heard some people say it, so tell who you've heard say Spec Ops: The Line is a mediocre game? Or was the first one your low IQ opinion?
I love how in clear house if you shoot the woman immediately upon entering the room and don’t let her do anything, it’s just like ‘good job she was going for a detonator’
An interesting take on that scene would've been *not* to punish the players immediately upon shooting a "non-combatant." Instead, have a scene later when they get chewed out because *three* of the people they shot were non-combatants and not tell the player which ones they were. Enforce the idea that "doing the right thing" means civvies get caught in the crossfire and, no, you don't get to walk away from this feeling like a "Good Guy." You got your "hands dirty." You did *bad,* not good. Even if that means, you stopped other bad things, you are yourself now a Bad Guy in the process.
I.e. have the game call you out on it somehow.
MW2: Price detonates a nuke over the Eastern US causing an EMP that, although being instrumental to the war effort by stopping the Russian advance, could've also shut down evacuation vehicles and aircraft, the deaths of those undergoing medical treatment in hospitals, and any civilian electronics (cars, phones, radios, and any other electronic device that could help civilians escape war torn areas) that aren't protected from EMPs are shut down as well.
MW3: Price, in order to obtain information to find the person that produced the gas used in Europe, uses that same gas for interrogation and executes the person he interrogated afterwards.
MW Reboot: Price uses a man's wife and son to get information, with the threat of killing them, in order to stop a chemical attack in Russia.
Hadir uses stolen gas against Russian soldiers overrunning their position knowing full well what will happen to him, his sister, and the Urzik Militia if they are killed or captured by the Russians again.
All of them except one are all under the excuse of, "A tough choice made by the right people."
Strangely, Hadir sounds like the most non-escalation-y one. It's a desperate attempt, and, according to the tools and options Hadir had at the time, appears the most measured response.
Meanwhile, real life russia: fails to take Marinka, population less than 10k before 2022, for OVER NINE YEARS. If there's one thing unbelievable in these games is russians advancing to the rest of Donetsk oblast, let alone into the center of Ukraine... no way they can get to USA.
@@levi2725 There's a sort of strange thing with militarism and the glorification of war. Our side is always good, and must always be one step ahead of the enemy. We must escalate before they do. But if they escalate, its their fault. Its hypocrisy of the highest order.
Yeah this is the first time i heard price detonated a fuckin nuke that is actually hilarious. Wasnt the first game all about trying to stop russian nukes as well? The irony
What’s your point?
I was born with bone tumors all over my body from a genetic disease caused by my parents’ exposure to depleted uranium ammunition as soldiers in the American Army during the first Gulf War. I grew up with Call of Duty and it is fun, but it is absolutely propaganda. Thanks for this video, I liked and subscribed.
PasoFreak he isn’t lying, this can happen
PasoFreak Do a google image search for “depleted uranium babies”
• Akti0n • you are absolutely disgusting
• Akti0n • You are an actually disgusting human being. Who cares what nation he comes from? He's innocent in all of this and yet he has to suffer the consequences. No one deserves that. You should really reevaluate your morals.
@@CS88528 the American education system is really helping you out isn't it?
"This game is not political"
"Americans and arab rebels good, Russians and islamists bad"
*Offer void to Arab rebels who don’t do exactly what we say.
lmao even though irl Russians have been fighting islamists harder than the west. Man isn't propagnda a great tool.
@@banditmc12 They pay off an Islamist to run his constituent "republic" like a fiefdom and give support to the Taliban.
@@BrorealeK yeah they all of a sudden decided to pay him money, its not like something was happening in this "republic" back in the days xD
first off al islamist r bad abd second of all u fight against a baathist organization
Video games make great recruitment tools. It's a hard pill to swallow, I've had friends who wanted to and have joined the army because they thought it would be like playing a video game, and even I've felt the allure of the aesthetics of war.
I think it speaks to how reminiscent today's game developers are to past futurist art movement during the modernist era, who themselves were attracted to the aesthetics of war and fascism.
Then you had stupid friends. Seriously. Like "how does this person walk and breathe at the same time" stupid.
Or you just made this up.
I'm going with the second choice.
Damn, good point, I didn't think of it that way... It's kinda creepy, more so if you're aware of how military spending and militarism in general are rising up...
I just did an analysis of the futurist manifesto by Filippo Marinetti for my bachelor studies in history and holy hell is it proto-fascist.
i try and say this whenever i get a chance. popular media about the military, everything from movies to video games, often have close ties to the US government military. they offer resources and access in exchange for control over the end product. nothing makes it into your media about war unless the US military greenlites it, meaning the only things in your game/movie are things that align with government military interests. almost no studio says no to this deal. in fact making a lot of this art would be impossible without the backing of the US military. you can look it up. it's real.
@@sadpee7710 it's also rather insidious to note where the US asks permission to enter and where it inserts itself forcefully. The global south is a sand box for war games, while European and/or wealthy nations get a seat at the table with at least some say in what goes on. The US has amassed so much power that they are the police both within and without its borders. And, in either case, the structure of the hierarchy is preserved. Filtered top to bottom, who you are grants you proximity to power. Almost without fail.
I'm just thinking about the USA's atrocities in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as an example, and the absolute horror of a building full of soldiers having a racist, state fueled power trip by torturing human beings. Especially the fact that they were having the times of their lives while doing so.
Did some research writing on this a while back. Genuinely had to stop and stare at what the hell I was looking at on my computer for quite literally an hour. That deep breath while I sat there was the most existential moment I’ve had in years. How could people do this to other human beings, and smile. It was deranged, and yet terrifyingly plausible after having seen how easily humans lose their sense of all compassion and love. Those images of Charles Graner of Sabrina Harman are seared into my mind. Her grin with the human pyramid made me want to vomit.
the irony of a Ellie Wiesel quote and a Chris Kyle quote together is insane
Also true. CoD using quotes like that just comes across as insincere. "Look at us trying to be all deep and wise and shit!"
they couldn't have had more cognitive dissonance if they had paired a quote from jesus christ and a roman centurion
It's called different perspectives guys
@@joshuadehler5039 a little more that that bud
@@bogmanhimself4656 unless it's that one centurion in Acts that got converted, then yes
"In a country that is totally not Syria..."
I guess what bothers me is that intelligence is always right and the ends are always justifiable and never mistaken.
Meanwhile, in the real world - everyone in the unit is pissed off because the LT's lost in land nav again and everyone oscillates between having the shits and being constipated - some poor bastards seem to be both at once, to the doc's utter fascination and bewilderment. He considers it some sort of medical miracle, nobody shares his enthusiasm.
Everyone smokes cigarettes or chews tobacco now because it's so goddamn cheap you can't afford NOT to smoke or dip, so everyone is spitting up vileness all over the place. Back hurts. Little to no sleep. Wife fucked fives guys while you were away and you're now afraid of fireworks.
But yes the antics of Captain Price and his merry band of extrajudicial tacti-cool operators with a capital O are the center of attention, all of the resources and intel in the world and literally NONE of the restrictions - which I can only surmise to the devs means all of the fun. Why let a pesky little thing like ROE get in the way of a perfectly healthy war? They're not ingratiating themselves to the boys already in uniform, because their mission is to put more boys in uniforms in the first place.
@@fuzzydunlop7928 "They're not ingratiating themselves to the boys already in uniform, because their mission is to put more boys in uniforms in the first place."
This is important. Games and movies functioning as recruitment tools. The Pentagon even offering up conditional support to developers and movie makers.
@@anessenator blackwater even put out their own game to clean their message and win over more potential mercenaries
@Chewbacca yeah, and it's awful
The thing of CoD is it frames and writes any horrific thing it needs to create set pieces. The Russian general (I think his name was something like barkov) was shown to torture someone to frame him as the big bad that you needed to kill. Price was shown to use torture to cement him as a gritty desensitized badass. The Butcher killed civilians to frame him as deserving of whatever he got. Gaz kills civilians to show that war is tough on soldiers and their life is always assumed to be at risk. The Russian troops and Al-Qatal use car bombs and chemical warfare to show that they don’t care about who dies or how as long as they complete their goals. Alex uses chemical warfare and Alex and Farrah both use car bombs to show that sometime you have to do dangerous things to accomplish the right goal. The idea is that you’re not supposed to question what you need to do, only what enemies need to do. Which ironically starts to make the game sound a whoooole lot like Military propaganda. But it’s not political right?
Gamers don't hate politics in games. They hate opposing politics to their veiws in video games. You will have people saying "No, I just hate politics in games" people tend to not notice politics when it aligns witht heir views. Almost all art is political in one way or another, in what it says, or in what it doesn't
As a veteran I completely agree with your assessment. I've seen plenty of soldiers feel the way activision and other military based games have portrayed them. As heroes who if needed will do what the others can not. What the sheep can not. Honestly this whole mindset comes down to the whole "killology" by Grossman. It was sick to see the mindset of some people in my unit.
Every time I've heard someone talk about why they want to enlist, it's either because they feel like higher education is too hard and the work force isn't for them + health benefits... Which is fair. The other reason being a disturbing enthusiasm to kill people. The idea that because you kill people in the rival army, that you are a hero no matter what.
@@solknuckles2408 exactly, it was honestly disturbing. Granted, I am sure most of them just say it to sound cool or they think it makes them some special breed of "warrior" but, a lot of them repeat this "badass" notation over and over again in their heads. I saw people reenlist because they didnt want people to see them as a civilian, but as a "warrior" they wanted to keep posting cringy military posts and angrily look at people with their gruntstyle attire. Which now in my home town is sold at the local gunshop so everyone wears those things here.
@@solknuckles2408 Yeah, some other reasons i've heard is they want to live up to someone's legacy or they want some form of purpose in their lives. I'll admit, if I thought a war was just then I might try to join the US airborne for no other reason than my grandfather was a paratrooper during WW2.
I enlisted with the typical mindset of wanting to serve and that the potentiality of going to war was part of that process. I'm about two years into my contract with my unit and I will say I still feel like I'm preforming a duty but as far as the concept of going to war has changed for me. I'd gladly go and take up arms but almost solely for the men I serve with. I have made amazing friends in my time in and would do everything in my power to protect them as I know they would also do for me. I've never been comfortable with the idea of war being fun and that killing the enemy is the sole objective and is badass. It sits wrong in my gut.
This is why I quit the military (by which I mean I didn't reenlist, you obv can't just "quit"). These people are toxic, backward, and disgusting, and as such they made the environment as a whole reflect the same sickness. I had to decide what kind of people I was gonna spend the next 20 years around, and it was NOT gonna be people like them.
If Call of Duty wanted to a game that shows the true nature of warfare, they would show civilians being killed in US airstrikes, in a conflict without any goals, with the characters not really knowing why they are fighting.
So essentially spec ops: the line, an objectively superior game to all of these
like in the video that julian assange released
They sometimes show us American soldiers doing bad things, but they always fraim them as "necessary things". Like is said in the video: Yeah, we see our protagonist treatening a man's wife and kid with a gun, but is ok because it was necessary.
If Call of Duty wanted a realist game, they wouldn't have immediately tried to distance its Middle Eastern villains from Islam with the very first line in the script: "Our war is not for our faith"
That alone is implying that "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism" which anybody who has even a minor understanding of "the religion of peace" would know that is false, and any soldier will tell you that regular western people have no idea just how much the religion of Islam plays a role into all of the conflict in The Middle East.
The second line: *"We fight to remove all foreign powers from our soil."* only reinforces the leftist belief that the real bad guys are the western powers who are fighting to protect our freedom from Radical Islamic Terrorism.
@@John-X thank you, very well said.
It says something when GTA V has a more accurate depiction of Torture than a game actually set against a military background
I had an exam on political theory and one task was that I had to write a page about an example of how the culture industry might negatively impact democracy and this video popped in my head, so I wrote about Call of Duty as an example of the popular image of „the troops“ and basically a generation uninformed voters on the subject sprouting from its teenage playerbase. Got an A, so thanks!
Hell yeah!
So you openly admit to plagiarism? Lol jk
@@jiib7770 nah, I think I even cited the video.
Whats culture industry
@@SmashingCapital the term was coined by philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer and refers to the way mainstream culture is mass produced similar to commodities in a factory. Specifically, Adorno & Horkheimer explored how the culture industry served to reinforce capitalist hegemony
Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remaster:
“Remember, no Russian”
*”Are you serious?”*
*takes you back to main menu
Wasn’t Makarov planning to make himself Tsar of a Russian empire by destroying America to put them first in power, oh boy Black Hundreds ideologies would be a hell of a can to open.
19th century politics can make any farleft/right fanboy bust in their panties.
@@zacchiu6204 Why do you think discussing and criticising a game is "crying" about it? And why do you say "It's just a game", as if it was a lesd valuable form of storytelling? And, most importantly, why do you unironically use 'beta'? It's almost like you want to not think about stuff.
I'm going to be honest, making a game about 'modern warfare' without it being political turns it from whatever complex narrative it could've had into a mere glorification of violence.
Imagine thinking colonialism, freedom and proxy-wars is political. Now that's just crazy.
“There’s no mercy in war”
LITERALLY A SECOND LATER
“Slav bad Burger good”
CoD Devs: "We don't want to talk about which perspective is right"
MW: "This guy used chemical weapons on invaders. This is bad. Every other character introduced thinks this is bad. You need to go find this guy because of how bad this is."
Only I can tourtre a guy and his family and not be bad because I with good guys ME GOOD
@@mostafaahmedibrahim2541 nobody ever said what they did to the butcher was good that's one of the reasons yegor stepped away from the scene they even gave u the chance not to get involved with the "negotiation" they did what they thought was needed to safe a lot of innocent lifes and stop a terrorist attack. nobody ever said what they did was good..
TheDorkKnight 25 that entire scene and the cutscene after it basically tells you “that whole thing was fucked up and probably evil” but you do what you gotta
"Chlorine gas bad. Shooting wife and child good."
@@LuvzToLol21 yep sure, the game definitely told you that shooting the child was "good" 😐
I'm sorry, so they block friendly fire on combatants, but let you casually put holes in random crowds of civilians?
- _ -
One part you should've further elaborated is that the game uses these infallible, moral superheroes as protagonists, and then uses these fictional characters to justify and glorify what real soldiers do in war. But real soldiers are not perfect video game characters. They're regular people, and people are so easily corrupted when you give them power over life and death of another. We didn't invent the Geneva convention or international criminal court because we were bored, we invented them because history of war is littered with war crimes.
But this game ignores all of that and tries to create some narcissistic gun porn where you're the righteous warrior and everyone in your way is just wrong and can therefore be murdered. It's tantamount to war propaganda, and it's aimed at kids.
The russians in the original MW trilogy were more humanized than this
Not all of them
*cannon foddler
There was a reason why they invade us (even if the massacre in airport was dumb (i mean come on they don't even use masks)) and also civil war/ultra nationalism before mw2
Yea the russians in the new MW feel like cartoon villians with no redeemable qualities
that's my biggest beef with the game, the original trilogy gets ragged on for russians bad but like, everyone but the ultranationalists are basically decent people. MW2019 has literally one good russian (not counting kamarov) and it's "i brought truth serum" nikolai
"Is this game political?"
-"For legal reasons, I have to answer- No"
Maybe I'm giving Call of Duty the benefit of the doubt, but I think the reason the writers and developers say the game isn't political because they have to. If they openly acknowledged that their game is making political statements, they risk alienating their audience. What Call of Duty actually believes in is not risking money.
What audience will be allianated as a result though? The game is still banned in Russia. They lose nothing by stating its pro-american.
Youdontnee Dtoknowwhoiam propaganda is less effective if it acknowledges that it is propaganda
@@youdontneedtoknowwhoiam9612 Yes because for some reason people these days think "political" = "critizicing the exact politics I like/don't like". The games are extremely political but in a broader sense, hell if anything they are a political analysis on fictional case studies. No different than hypothetical thought experiments you do in Poli Sci or International Relations theory classes. But nowadays people think political "Oh it's against the Right wing (whatever the fuck that is, because the rightwing today is pretty leftist)" or "Oh it's against the liberals (again whatever the fuck that is because they sometimes seem pretty right leaning to me)"
@@MrWepx-hy6sn funny comment
yes it feels like the devs in those interviews were reciting answers that they'd discussed at a meeting and then practised. still though, you can just get a job elsewhere. you don't end up working on a game like this by accident. the dude with glasses has camo pants and military style boots for fuck's sake.
"Our game isn't political!" literally has a terrorist group based off of real terrorist groups, shows real events such as the highway of death and puts the blame on a side who weren't even in the same war or weren't able do it. has a literal scene of a fictional prominent terrorist which is based off of real events. literally based their main fictional country on Syria and Iraq and shows drone strikes and air strikes done on the country. Reenacts events that could prolly portray actual Russian attacks done in Syria or American attacks done in Iraq. not political even a little bit.
I felt the same way about the new CoD games as I did about the TV series 24. The constant reinforcing of the message that these acts, if performed by the "good guys", are justified.
I've just played the MW2 reboot, where the overwatch mission sanctions you if you accidentally gun down an unarmed civilian. If it was truly representative, doing so would unlock a mission where you had to raid an embassy to detain a Wikileaks founder to make sure the footage never saw the light of day.
Developer: Does this game political? No.
Also developer: *Pin US war crimes in Iraq on Russia*
It wasn’t a war crime and it wasn’t in Iraq but ok
Alternate universe means who does first. Russians got ahead.
@@arcblooper2699 it maybe based from Syria, but from the way they potray russia in game its obvious that Iraq is also an inspiration.
James Stuart No I mean if you’re referring to the highway of death that literally was not in Iraq
How many people knew about the road of death before this game came out? Did you? People don't play Call of Duty and think "russians did this thing in a fictional video game so therefore they did it in real life". If anything, Call of Duty educated people who researched the inspiration for the in-game events. Imagine if China released a video game where the US committed something like Tienanmen Square Massacre. That would never happen because it just brings it more to light. If Infinity Ward wanted to ignore American war crimes, they wouldn't have referenced American war crimes...
"Farah is cooperative with the US and British military"
Thaaaats why she's one of the good guys, got it
For God's shake, people will look at this game in a century like we do with cold war propaganda movies
@@user-bv7zo6vd4m People ARE looking at this game nowadays like we do with cold war propaganda movies.
I don’t get this criticism, I know this is a year old comment but still. “Person working with western good guys despite being a non-westerner: RACISM”
@@simoneidson21 The implication is that anyone not affiliated/cooperative with those are considered "the bad guys", an "us vs. them" mentality.
This did not age well after the fall of Afghanistan and what’s happened to women there lmao
Just the phrase "he's the hero because he's the one who always makes the right decision, regardless of morality" is something that's been more often than not proven to be how a follower views a story's villain; the people of Jonestown called their main man a hero because they've been told he'll always make the right decision. A powerful, painful indoctrination of a victim may stay with their abuser because it's been ingrained into their mind that the abuser always makes the right decision, and to no agree is to somehow be against what's "good" despite all the morality being absent in their actions.
"If captain price used chemical weapons" the game starts with Price using white phosphorus
when i was playing the "clean house" mission i was hoping that everything was for nothing and you killed a few civilians who were just shocked that a military group raids their house. not because i want to be cool or edgy but because i wanted this side of the story once from call of duty which i expected when i first seen the trailer. i was hoping they would finally show that not every mission turns out to be great or show the perspective of the russians and the situations that caused them to execute certain actions. instead it was the same as always, just a bit more realistic.
One of the sas lads gets shot if that counts
@@lachlanchester8142 u can save him too if you shoot through the door before he passes. pretty sure there's an achievement for it
Declan Swade 👁👄👁 how did I not think of that, i need the gamerscore
@@lachlanchester8142 its pretty cool, Cpt. Price even comments on it if you pull it off lol
That's what I love about the COD4 nuke scene, you're the "hero", bit that doesn't always mean that you defeat the bad guys.
At least Spec Ops: The Line was willing to admit to what they were trying to do and actually had the balls to carry it through
It's also one of the few games where you can shoot American soldiers
There are a ton of games call of duty
Eh. Where CoD makes the "tough choices" and assures you they were right, Spec Ops forces you to do certain things and then calls you a monster for it. And also reveals that the things it told you (and that you might have based actions on) weren't so.
It's a different perspective, but it's not really any more sophisticated.
@@yourdeath7820 Except you're kind of the bad guy for doing it, so.
@@catfish552 it is absolutely more sophisticated, both for (initially) presenting it like any other game in the genre and presenting another perspective in a genre that is mostly devoted to glorifying war and making the player out as a war hero for actions he was forced to take.
it's not exactly nuanced, but at the same time it's seriously wrong to suggest that it's not more sophisticated than a series so excruciatingly devoid of self awareness as CoD.
What people forget is that it is not uncommon for soldiers to love war, death, and suffering.
Well yah, there’s a reason war games/media are popular. It’s not just soldiers.
I think about this video every time I see fanart of the MW2 skull mask guy getting his prostate destroyed
Devs: We want to present the different perspectives. We don't want to say one of them is correct.
Game: Americans and British are always right, no matter the wrong and hypocritical things they do. Go against them and you're automatically the enemy.
Devs: There is no black or white, no pure good or pure evil.
Game: Russians and Arabs bad, Americans and British good.
Bruh the Arabs are good guys in the game.
@@acatthatlookslikehitler1277 21:17 "I think the actual reason hadir becomes the persona non grata is because his refusal to be fully subservient to the american and british military".
Hadir becomes villian once his interest and means doesn't align with us and british.
Except there's usually at least one support character from the villainous country so they can be like "see? We're acknowledging they aren't ALL evil... now please, continue nuking them to oblivion"
ngl, a story where you play as an innocent villager in a third world country being invaded by america would be epic
like, you do your morning routine, just tending to your farm land and then you look off in the distance and the last thing you see is an american plane dropping a bomb on your vietnamese village simply because they believed some of you guys were part of the vietcong
The game doesn't say Russians are bad though, it gets revealed that Barkov and his entire army are rogue. So all the actions carried out by them were not directed or backed by the Russian state
I can't believe I just saw this. Absolutely spot on. Four Blackwater mercenaries who committed the real lifr equivalent of "No Russia" were recently pardoned as well. Fucking disgusting.
Yup. At one point, American news media tried to justify it.
A 7 year old boy was killed, and another person, a doctor who wanted to help, was found with his head blown off.
When the us army found the site, the were horrified, and reported it.
Can you please give more detail about this Blackwater incident? Never heard of it, it probably was only talked about in US
@@ButterDog42069 three arrows has a great video called « whitewashing an atrocity ». I highly recommend it.
Man, fuck blackwater.
PSA to anyone who stumbles on this comment: eric prince (the founder) or however the fuck you spell his name is still alive, and has tried rebranding his PMC
@@diegorincon4673 America basically outsourced murder to a bunch of mafia goons with zero accountability... oh wait, they did that before too
I'm glad you're spreading the awareness, we can't forget what was allowed to happen
I've studied the ethics of war and a little bit of political philosophy, and so many of the things you point out in the game (for example, the implicit endorsement of the principle of noncombatant immunity, or the ethics of different approaches to counterterrorism) are things we talked about in our seminars. But it's certainly frustrating that even the kinds of political arguments they do make are made only for the sake of selling copies and perpetuating a kind of exceptionalist morality instead of working to inspire actual contemplation and deeper engagement with our world's complex state of affairs. Great video!
Make your own game then
This was painful to listen to but I cant sit here and honestly say he is wrong lol So now Im questioning my ethics
genuinely, props to you for watching the whole thing even though it made you uncomfortable!
Hey man, I have mad respect for anyone who is willing to ignore how something makes them *feel* to focus on what it makes them *think*.
that's absolutely the way to go. no type of change and growth comes from a place of comfort
It's not political, unless it questions the rock solid American way
Gâbrïel If the Rock solid American way is obliterating people who bomb school children and beat gay people’s heads in with rocks I’d say yeah.
@@winnietheflu4633 I agree that killing the KKK is a good thing.
Winnie The Flu ah yes, because America is well known for not drone striking civilians and treating the LGBT community with respect. Foh
Fraser Smith Yanno what’s funny? America is one of the few countries in the world that treats gays with respect. Go to the Middle East you’ll get chucked off a building or stoned to death for being homosexual. Almost all the civilian casualties from the war on terror happened because of drone strikes Obama ordered to carry out. We’ve carried probably 50% of the war on terror on our shoulders?
Triadia yeah it is but I’m talking about Terrorist groups in Africa, Middle East, and Southeast Asia