Everyone with an internet connection has likely seen this morning's Modern Warfare 3 reveal, and there's a good chance a portion you'd have been taken a little aback by its controversial scenes.
As previously revealed, Activision's third Modern Warfare instalment sees New York City left smouldering and heavily damaged following a serious attack by Russian forces.
Even more controversial to British readers are the scenes shown in the debut in-game footage, involving a derailed London Underground Tube train. These culminate in the train's carriages crashing and spinning violently through the smoking Tube tunnels, before finally impacting with the concrete support pillars in a cinematic collision.
It's not the first time the Infinity Ward series has courted controversy, of course; the last Modern Warfare included a sequence in which players were ordered to gun down innocent civilians in a Russian airport.
Despite the scene's narrative justifications, the general media went crazy and Modern Warfare's name appeared on television news across the world. But how do you feel about Activision courting controversy once again in the name of PR?
We of course don't yet know how these sequences fit in to the Modern Warfare 3 story - we've only seen a snappy reveal trailer, after all - but that surely won't stop the mainstream media voicing its opinion pretty soon.
Do you think the NYC and London scenes are acceptable given the game's World War 3 theme, and put in the right context? Or do you see them as overtly cynical attempts at building yet more newspaper outcry?
Comments
38 comments so far...
TheExpendable on 24 May '11 said:
Its not REALLY gameplay though is it
its more of a cutscene montage trailer
but either way it does look good will defo be gettin this come the time
just a shame theres nothing to really play during summer.
Dom Bom on 24 May '11 said:
Just looked on BBC News, ITV news, Channel 4 news and Sky. There was no mention at all of this controversial trailer yet...
mkwuk on 24 May '11 said:
Nah, Call of Duty is just the big Summer disaster movie of the video game world - and New York is constantly getting a fictional pummeling from some form or other.
Mass Effect 3 also has London getting attacked and Crysis 2 did the destruction of New York thing too.
PS360MAN on 24 May '11 said:
Let's be honest,,,they needed to do something to get anyone excited about it. The more i watch the more the shock wears off and I just think... meh.
TheLastDodo on 24 May '11 said:
I'm more shocked about how a trailer jam packed with cut scenes has passed as 'gameplay' on every site I've seen said trailer.
As for trailer itself, the train section doesn't bother me, though I could see how it could others.
To be honest, I find the entire trailer laughable, cut scene after cut scene, many things copied from other games such as the BF3-esque terminator soundtrack, the collapsing building from Crysis 2, the runaway train section from Crysis 2, the submerged tunnel from......Crysis 2. I could probably go on.
Seems like CoD no longer just relies on its past glories, it now relies on copying other games too.
Sorry if my cynicism upsets the regular CoD defenders, I'm not a hater, I bought Black Ops on friday, but (based on this trailer) this series needs a break.
The Bossman on 24 May '11 said:
The media will have another field day about this, and we'll be subjected to yet more pointless articles of so called experts in fields other than videogames criticising them. At the end of the day, MW2 spelled it out pretty obviously - it's USA vs Russia, and it's gonna get messy. Not sure how Berlin, France and England fit into this whole thing, though, unless Price and Mctavish REALLY p**sed off a lot of people now.
AndyR on 24 May '11 said:
For the record:
http://twitter.com/#!/fourzerotwo/statu ... 6615909376
@fourzerotwo
Robert Bowling
"@myothercareer Call of Duty doesn't have cut scenes, every second of that was taken from playable moments in the game. #MW3"
Dom Bom on 24 May '11 said:
After watching the trailer again, I find that believeable...
StonecoldMC on 24 May '11 said:
Controversial? No.
Typical of a Hollywood blockbuster? Yes.
Controversial would have been playing as a terrorist and trying to drive your (bomb ready) car into a packed airport, only to be foiled by the next character you play as. Smeato, who then sets about kicking terrorists as they run about on fire.
Glasgow doesnt do computer Games, but . . . . . . .
jim2wheels on 24 May '11 said:
I think the definition of "playable moments" is being blurred somewhat.
Not you in particular btw, but what people in general consider playable moments.
TheLastDodo on 24 May '11 said:
Well Robert Bowling is telling a porkie then, cos there's no way everything that you see in that trailer happens because of a choice you make in the game.
Also let me clarify my first comment, I didn't mean cut scenes, I meant scripted.
That building will fall whether I want it to or not.
Kroll_GB on 24 May '11 said:
Being able to waggle your head a bit doesn't necessarily make the scene "playable"
zombiesinmyhead on 24 May '11 said:
I don't think its that controversial. I mean they had you running around the ruins of the Whitehouse last time and nobody was that bothered.
Its only when things touch on reality that it becomes controversial. If its got islamic extremists blowing themselves up on busses then people will pay attention. Maybe slap some Isreali vs Hamas skins in the MP. But this big budget destroyed city stuff is just standard blockbuster fare.
The Bossman on 24 May '11 said:
I take it you didn't see the MW2 trailers then, or COD4 trailers for that matter? They take the gameplay, and use cinematic cameras around the gameplay, minus the HUD etc. You play ALL those moments.
monty_79 on 24 May '11 said:
As someone who was born and raised in London, and used the tube on the morning of the 7/7 attacks, I can honestly say I am not offended about it in the slightest. London is a great city with magnificent architecture and i can completely understand someone's decision to want to set a video game level here. It also doesn't surprise me that the tube is included as it is an iconic symbol of London.
I'm more offended that people try to tell me that this will be as good as Battlefield 3
gmcb007 on 24 May '11 said:
Is the word 'shock' used for sarcasm? NYC destruction is overused in a massive scale and chasing a london tube train(seriously really IW?) in a Ford Transit flatbed is just too cheesy.
Well half of them are just cut scenes.
StonecoldMC on 24 May '11 said:
At last!!! Someone gets it. Just dont use the rolling eyes smiley
.
KK-Headcharge78 on 24 May '11 said:
How come the film industry gets away with pretty much all forms of supposed controversial subjects yet video games continually come under the spotlight? Take military FPSs; MOH got blasted for covering a current conflict, Black Ops for shooting Castro, Homefront because of the USA been invaded by the Koreans and now seemingly MW3 for taking the battle to big European and US cities. What do people expect, a war game on Easter island? Also CVG are you not adding to the potential hyperbole by even proposing such a debate? So much for not feeding the Daily Mail trolls.
jim2wheels on 24 May '11 said:
If you use different camera angles and strip of the HUD, that surely means it is not a representative of gameplay? Representative gameplay should mean you see stuff happening from the gamers eyes.
I won't dispute it is gameplay, but the waters are definitely clouded by using "cinematic cameras". Leave that stuff for the TV trailers.
conceptwhite_fox on 24 May '11 said:
Andy Robinson, stop it, just stop.
As for the trailer.... nope!
TheLastDodo on 24 May '11 said:
I didn't see the CoD4 trailer but I played the game, I saw the MW2 trailer and I played the game, do you think you'll be taking down that building in MW3 by yourself? No, of course you won't. It's scripted. Not really an eye rolling moment unless its for yourself.
Bowling is telling a porkie.
creamerybutter on 24 May '11 said:
Scripted doesn't mean not playable though, that s**t may be happening around you and if you decide to look at it it up to you...possibly. You didn't drop the building through your own choice in Crysis 2 either but it wasn't an unplayable cut scene. Thing is if devs say trailers are from gameplay and they aren't they tend to get hammered, like Killzone did.
Also CVG seem to be the only one bother about the controversy so far, the poster and this trailer no one else has an issue aside from CVG.
SkyBlueJukeBox on 24 May '11 said:
How the Tube looks should be controversial, it's never that clean!! I've never seen such wide tunnels either, you're lucky if you get 2 tracks next to each other, unless you go overground instead of underground (or just wombling free).
jim2wheels on 24 May '11 said:
Ah, the beauty of CVG forums. Nostalgic segues to counter gamer nerd rage.
Bootifull (RIP Mr M)
keff on 24 May '11 said:
That Tube screenshot in particular looks like something out Half-Life 1. Why no detail in the environment?
BADavid on 24 May '11 said:
I think that the scenes are more than forgiveable... they're no worse than has appeared in countless disaster movies over the years. It would be different if bombings had occurred in London and New York within, say, the last few weeks and this seemed like a rush move to capitalise on them - which would be brainless and insensitive - but the truth of the matter is that scenes of destruction have always been a part of fiction. If I have any issue with this, it's that it feels like the developers are trying too hard to match and surpass the No Russian controversy.
Imaduck on 24 May '11 said:
"Corny" is the word that comes to mind. "Hurr durr we blowd up the rest of the world already ..... um lets blow up all the big stuff! ye ingenious!"
I can pretty much say now, this is likely to be the most sprawling and disjointed of the lot, remember that when we're looking back
That scale, mixed with the way CoD is going, it's just going to be a stamp around the globe blowing up Russians on Michael Bay's sets with a story that is basically "blah blah blah conspiracy" as usual.
If they'd focused on a really tight, intense, personal journey, atmospheric, bleak and spot on due to deep research, I'd be very interested. This is just Hollywood + war, again.
RichK on 24 May '11 said:
Ahh I really hope there's a tube level, I've always wanted to see it in a game. And if it's set on the central line there wont be enough space for gun slinging, just a slow painful death from the b.o. of fellow passengers.
Imaduck on 24 May '11 said:
Play Metro Rich
dannyboy23 on 24 May '11 said:
Cinematic or Cynical??
or a bag of s**te
Looks like there ripping off other games and the underground scene Die Hard
agentxnofx on 25 May '11 said:
please do not buy this s**te!
skyvisco on 25 May '11 said:
I, for one, think this is gonna be awesome. Obviously a lot of you already hate it. But I'm ignoring all those comments because these a lot of people are jumping onto the CoD-Hate bandwagon due to the entertainment atrocity we call black ops. I think this is going to be fresh. The Modern Warfare series has always be quite exceptional.
MrRage on 25 May '11 said:
I think its only controversial because Activision tells you it is. If you compare it to what we have seen of Battlefield 3 so far that's pretty much all been actual gameplay (admittedly on a high end PC). The MW3 trailer has just been very quickly cutting between lots of different scenes with minimal to no actual gameplay footage.
I know it will be the biggest selling game of all time, it will have review scores higher than any other game ever but that's because its COD. It doesn't matter what the game is actually like its got COD in the title so it will be the best game ever as far as the media are concerned and millions of people will buy it.
Augustus_aka_AG on 25 May '11 said:
OMFG! A train crash is being depicted in a cutscene?! How insensitive. What's next? Cutscenes of Jumbo Jets crashing into generic skyscrapers??
The Bossman on 25 May '11 said:
Everything in COD is scripted, very linear series, but you do play those moments, is what I was getting at. Not the start of an argument, just statement of fact to all those who keep saying they're cut-scenes.
Mikez90z on 25 May '11 said:
i liked the part where it looked like every other COD.
The_Seeker76 on 26 May '11 said:
Please CVG, don't go courting controversy by calling the images of all-out war in MW3 controversial. Did you miss MW2? It had the US devastated by the Russians so the events of MW3 should come as no surprise. Would you have preferred Call Of Duty: Makarov's Tea Party?
Crysis 2 destroys Manhattan and you don't bat an eylid. C'mon guys, you're better Journos than this.
legion on 27 May '11 said:
There is way too many actual good games coming out this year, i'm not gonna waste my money on another typically crap cod rehash.