User blog comment:DeTurbanator/Did "No Russian" work?/@comment-1187559-20150601084245/@comment-1187559-20150603132959

Anyway, for my longer reply that comes a bit alter than I planned. But I think No Russian actually did a good job of moving the story along. It showed just how callous and ruthless Makarov was as a villain. It truly showcased how far he was willing to go to get the worlds attention, it wasn't just some attack ona military base, it was actual civilians, which acted like civilians (trying to surrender, running and hiding, the whole works) and even if the player didn't do anything Makarov would happily mow down anyone en route. Also, the levels objective was also left vague to the player, where you're simply told "Follow Makarov", you have no need to engage in any of the killing of civilians and can simply walk though the first part of the level without firing a shot. And in fact, for the first part of the mission, looking back the fact they made you have to walk though that, and the music fitted perfectly (not so great for a speed run, but that's only when you want to ignore the atmos).

It can be seen as strange that Allen went though with it, but things like this may well happen in real life. Sadly, real life isn't black and white, and in the words of Mike Toreno "It's not all white knights and heroes. We have to make decisions, kid. You know, I try to set bad people on other bad people and sometimes I let good guys die.", so yes, perhaps it's odd that Allen took part in the attack, but sometimes that's what it takes to stay undercover. I mean, think about what Farid had to do while he was undercover with Cordis Die, he had to kill off the Yemeni army (who were helping the Americans) and then potentially kill Harper to maintain his cover.

However, with your point at "A player can ride helicopters with grenade launchers, blow up tanks, rescue fellow soldiers and win the day until mortality rears its ugly head and eveyone and everything around you is dead." is where I need to break from the "it works in game" route and go down the "it is a game" route. While No Russian was put in there as a bit of a dark level to showcase just how much of a ruthless man Markov was, the rest of game is made deliberately over the top to be fun. You need to remember, CoD is making a shooting game, not a shooting simulator. If it was making the latter then it would be much slower paced, use a completely different engine and overall feel completely different. No Russian worked in the essence it was able to make a game that is more or less about running and gunning, and blowing people up in to an area that would actually put the player on the spot against civilians with only the instructions of "follow Makarov". IF I really wanted to go deep in to this, I could even say this level followed the same psycalogic pretence after WW2 where they tested how many people would choose to deliver a deadly electric shock to a person purely because they were told to. But I don't think it goes quite that deep.

But to digress, No Russian worked very well. It turned a game that was normally just for laughs down a dark alley that made the player realise that this villain was actually a villain and not just some generic goon. It's a shame that MW3 really played this down and to a degree turned him back in to a generic goon, and somewhat shoehorned him in to past events. I mean, I think what made No Russian work the most is that this attack took place on a Russian airport, and pinned blamed on the Americans, instead of Russians attacking a US airport or something. Then as I said above, MW3 ruins this by making it so there's a level in England where British soldiers are trying to stop the gas attack, but it's an American family that gets killed, and unlike MW2 where you are physically shooting the civilians, in MW3 the explosion completely hides anything happening, and the bodies seemingly disappear afterwards.