User blog comment:Cubuff37/My Official Review Of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare/@comment-1263839-20150131213136/@comment-2080691-20150203073948

Yes you did, you over-analyzed Gideon as "a guy who usually takes the moral high ground, but is torn between his job/life and his moral standards"... I didn't get that vibe at all. Trust me, you are desperately trying to put a fanciful personality in Gideon.

I'm not saying Soap was a great character, but he had more personality than anyone in AW. I'm just saying there's a reason so many people hated the fact that they had Soap die. It's little things that make some badass characters cool. The cheeky lines like "What the hell kinda name is Soap?" and "How'd a muppet like you pass selection?" that give the person a little character. Another example, that cliffhanger line from Nikolai at the end of MW2, "Da, I know a place", an awesome line! It wasn't much, but it was enough to make decent characters in Soap, Price and even Nikolai. AW completely dropped the ball, you even said that. However there's no denying that a lot of people loved Soap and Price. If you still insist to disagree, take a poll of the best characters in the Call of Duty series and I guarantee the Modern Warfare characters will dominate in comparison to AW's. Same with Black Ops characters. With luck, one AW character might beat out the dog from Ghosts lol

Are you really going to ask what's sinister about Makarov? You don't think a terrorist attack on an airport is sinister? What about a terrorist attack on civilians in London? Maybe executing Czech civilians in the streets? Or possibly these numerous attacks on U.S. soil? Actually no, you're right, he seems like a real nice guy. The best part is he has reason to do this! Not a good one, but a believable one. Which leads me to my next point...

If you want sources that show Makarov liked Zakhaev, watch the opening cutscene to MW2, they made a statue of Zakhaev that depicted him as the "Hero of the New Russia". Also, watch Yuri's flashbacks in Blood Brothers, Yuri says something to the effect of "Zakhaev never forgot what we did for him that day" which implies Zakhaev kept Makarov close, hence why Zakhaev was succeeded by Makarov as the leader of the Ultranationalists.