Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 3 (EN)

The extreme speed of the information presented in the introduction causes an inability to capture everything at first glance, directly bringing a stressful atmosphere and the anxious feeling of already being late in the action. The choice to see "gory" elements or not is proposed from the beginning: in response to criticism about violence? In case children or sensitive people play? The usefulness of this option seems to me very limited given the sequence of events in the game and the absolutely constant presence of violence and graphic scenes.

The way the game is designed makes it very easy to die in it: in general, not following the instructions or being caught off guard for lack of reflexes or attention is synonymous with immediate death but, on the other hand, you can survive spectacular explosions and even the fall of the Eiffel Tower.

The extremely linear path of the actions only allows for a single possible course of action, so much so that it is very easy to feel when the player is supposed to follow a group: there is only one way to do it (and if he deviates from it even for a few seconds it is systematic death and return to the last save point).

Why is that? In my opinion, to propose an unconscious learning of discipline: obeying orders is generally what saves the life of the player who is accompanied in each mission by a higher ranking authoritarian figure and what allows the cohesion of a team until the common and disinterested success. On the other hand, in return, the player witnesses a constant mention of his individuality as a soldier; "it only takes one man to change the world" says a deep, masculine voice at the end of the introduction, closing the overload of information taken out of context with something the player can hold on to during the game.

As a direct result of this idea, the player can be a very good soldier by knowing nothing about the ins and outs of the conflict itself and just following orders to the letter.

The game allows the player to embody several nationalities and several "factions" each with a different role in the story, which might seem rather fair and remove the purely American side that the first Call of Duty had, but in the actions proposed according to the countries, we notice some peculiarities:

- when you play a Russian for the first time, you find yourself in the shoes of a bodyguard who is supposed to protect the president from the attack of an extremist faction that is also Russian: not even a real soldier, so the player is under-equipped and without help since there are only three other bodyguards. In any case, the mission is bound to fail, the president is kidnapped and the character ends up being shot in the head.

- When the mission takes place in Sierra Leone, in Africa, we notice several peculiarities: the total absence of civilians to protect (the beginning of the mission consists in watching a scene of execution of local civilians and not reacting). The deep meaning of this choice of scene escapes me, all the more so because if one tries to intervene one dies automatically and the team attacks the hostage-takers a few seconds after having let them execute the civilians... What message is conveyed here? That certain sacrifices are "necessary"?

The country itself is shown as dirty, wild, dusty, devoid of local armed forces, without any women, children or infrastructure. The enemies to be fought are advancing with their faces uncovered (unlike in "civilized" countries where the enemies are most often masked or in any case are not in shorts and T-shirts and armed with machetes) and are more numerous but less strong. Honestly, this mission made me want to vomit so much because it was so racist.

The rest of the game sees the use of simultaneous chemical weapon attacks all over the world by Russia (which is directly and openly opposed to the United States' demand for peace that we heard about earlier): Russia clearly wants to invade the whole world, justifying from that moment on in the game the fact that the end justifies all the means (mass destruction, ignorance of civilians, torture...) even on the part of the "good guys", the Americans.

This turning-point, which takes place about 1h30 from the beginning of the game, is staged in a special way: we play an American father on holiday with his wife and young child in London making an amateur film (the camera replaces the usual weapon in the gameplay) just before a bomb positioned next to them explodes and kills them on the spot, the camera thus serving as an outside view of the ensuing panic and the family's corpses.

This scene allows us to put the altruistic ideal of the protection of the (American) people by military force into context: once again a white man and his Republican family are played, their death is dramatized (whereas in Africa the death of the civilians on the stage was filmed in such a way as not to provoke any emotion) and serves as the basis for the underlying desire for revenge in the rest of the part (supported also by the death of the hero's father figure, which is also extremely long and theatricalized).

Yet, the rest of the time, comrades dying during the mission are never mentioned, or in a positivistic way (for example, the player and his superior are the only ones who survived the end of a mission in the subway, and when the latter is found, he simply says "it's just the two of us now" and does not talk about the other soldiers in his team at any point). Soldiers never communicate with each other except to give each other information directly related to what is going on "it's up to you" or "enemy at 10 o'clock", absolutely nothing personal, making them look like an interchangeable and informed mass that does not allow for any personal attachment. Attachment is finally more to nationalities than people, no emotion is created when one of the protagonists dies, only a few key characters count and justify the sacrifice of all the others. Moreover, one can kill all the animals encountered on the way (chickens, dogs) without any problem or remark from the other characters.

There is also a deliberate omission of women (the only female military figure encountered in three hours of play is a female voice on the radio used to transmit orders to the hero, appearing in only two sentences) who have no interest in being portrayed in a typically male story where speed of action, courage and leadership are the most important values. The daughter of the Russian president is the only woman shown on the screen, she serves only as bait for kidnapping, as a weight for her father and as a means of pressure in a conflict that doesn't even seem to concern her and about which she has absolutely nothing to say.

This is a dynamic encountered in most war games, responding directly to the place given to women by the Republicans: the woman waits patiently for the hero by taking care of the home and the children, and her mention only serves to bring comfort and hope to the real important character: the white man, the hero.