We need to talk about what happens to Farah in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Spoilers)

Final week, Activision invited me to a review event for Telephone call of Duty: Modern Warfare. While my colleague has an amazing review of the total experience you lot can read now, I found myself deeply conflicted with the overall story told in the campaign fashion. Every Modern Warfare story has an edge to information technology, and with good reason, but this new game goes a footling darker in means that virtually made me exit my review station and stop playing the game entirely.

It makes recommending the game to specific groups of friends really hard.

Editor'southward Note: This article contains SPOILERS. A lot of them. If you intendance about the plot of this game and have non beaten it, end reading at present.

At their core, Modern Warfare games accept always taken time to expose people to the darker side of armed services combat in the mod era. While the core game is virtually getting the coolest gear and scoring the nearly kills in glorious multiplayer, the stories tend to expose you to experiences inspired by actual people who were faced with impossibly night situations.

This new game continues the tradition, only this time through the eyes of a adult female named Farah Karim. While there are three other guys you also play as during the campaign, Farah is the but one who gets a proper backstory. As y'all can imagine, the simply woman on the team did non have a peculiarly nice childhood.

You learn about Farah's struggles through doing, not only by watching cutscenes. The get-go of these experiences happens through the eyes of a young daughter, maybe vii or eight years old. As immature Farah, you crawl around in your childhood abode to escape the man who merely murdered your father in front of you until you discover a tool to attack him back with. Information technology could exist a knife, a screwdriver — actually annihilation that is handy. After you lot stab the guy one time he knocks you effectually a little and you lot repeat this alarming minigame once again. Eventually, he dies at the hands of this child yous've been made to play as and the scene ends.

Later in the game, Farah has another flashback. This time, entirely-too-young Farah picks upwardly a pistol and murders another man while her brother sneaks around backside them. Again, this isn't a cut-scene; you are playing a kid fighting for her life. Information technology's brutal, information technology's intense, and information technology's, frankly, kind of jarring.

The next flashback is by far the most disturbing. Farah is much older now, and the person she has been fighting against has her captive and is trying to get information from her by waterboarding her. You lot hear Farah choking, and you see the water splashing over her face, and there are instructions on the screen telling you lot to use buttons to movement her head and try to breathe. If you lot can get Farah's caput away from the h2o at just the correct time, she can gasp for breath and proceed fighting. Information technology's rough, and making it interactive was a lot to take in.

The more than I thought well-nigh this combined experience, the worst I felt well-nigh it. Why were these experiences interactive? And why was Farah the merely person on the team with such a rough backstory? What did this add to the overall story the game was telling? I sat down with Infinity Ward Studio Narrative Director Taylor Kurosaki and Gameplay Director Zeid Reike to go some answers.

Russell Holly: How did you decide which graphic symbol needed the nearly backstory?

Infinity Ward Studio Narrative Director Taylor Kurosaki: We desire to build empathy, at its most basic we desire players to want to succeed in the game — to complete their missions, to want to continue the person they are playing condom. One of the best levers we have for this is to make you want to care for these characters. Then you have to spend time with them, simply in terms of the amount of real manor we give one over the other, it depends. The vast bulk of our players don't know somebody who has a groundwork like Farah. She'due south more than different than some of the other characters our player base of operations will interact with. Spending more time on her background is more than of import. By going back into her story we can see why she feels and then strongly when information technology comes to some of the views she has.

Characters similar Kyle or Alex are more than like to the backgrounds of some of our players, and so less time was spent on their backstories. But there still needed to exist some fourth dimension spent, so y'all can see where their motivations come from.

Russell: What made you lot feel information technology was necessary to put the actor in some of these darker story parts instead of making it a cut-scene?

Infinity Ward Gameplay Director Zeid Reike: Any time you lot have the opportunity to have something emotionally impactful and permit the thespian exercise information technology themselves, as opposed to watch characters practice information technology, it'southward going to be even more than impactful. It's what sets us apart from moving-picture show. In a game I can empathize with someone equally I'g literally walking in their shoes. These were situations that nosotros wanted to put the player in, not but put Farah in, and take them experience it for themselves. That's why we brand outset-person games, to be able to say "I am in this situation" and not "I am watching this situation."

Russell: What was the narrative do good to going every bit night every bit these scenes go?

Taylor: Again, it'south to build empathy. I don't alive in a war-torn metropolis where my town and my family take experienced these horrors, but many people practice. Nosotros don't hear about these often, the Western perspective on war is "I'm going to enlist, I'thousand going to deploy, I'chiliad going to receive orders, I'grand going to complete my mission." That is the Western perspective on war, and nosotros were inspired by the way the original Mod Warfare switched perspectives.

But fifty-fifty those perspectives, ane was an SAS British guy and 1 was an American Marine. Nosotros're making Modern Warfare in 2022, what perspectives are missing? The perspective of someone who doesn't cull to get to war, war comes to them. I've never lived like that, and take reason to believe near of our players accept never been in a situation like that, to empathise what motivates this character you lot have to show this totally dissimilar experience._

The goal wasn't to create stupor value or to exist provocative, it's to build empathy with that character.

Russell: And this applies to when she's waterboarded too, when you force the player endeavor to avoid their fate? How did you come to the conclusion that this was necessary?

Taylor: We work with a lot of consultants: military consultants, former Tier i Operators like former Navy Seals, people who work in the CIA, state of war correspondents, and cultural consultants. Nosotros're looking to depict these situations authentically, and to build that understanding. We're making an interactive experience, and to put you lot in those shoes is — you mentioned that we're forcing the player to practise this, nosotros're actually not. You have the choice as the thespian in that moment to just submit, and to not try to go air, and the game progresses. There's non a fail state in that location where yous have to endeavor again, the game allows you to sit still. Yous tin can make that choice based on what you recall you would exercise. Would yous fight to get a breath of air, or would you be so overwhelmed that you retreat within yourself? I don't know, but I know what Farah would do, because we've seen her fully formed in the beginning of the game. She's clearly someone who would fight, these characters clearly state who they are and what they stand for.

I think that, past that point in the story, the players know she'due south not going to take this lying down. She's going to resist, then I retrieve nigh people too resist. In doing this, I call back we've congenital parity between the players and their emotional estate and the graphic symbol they're playing every bit.

Are the triggers worth it?

Overall, I'm non sure I agree this was the correct path to take with Modern Warfare. It's not at all obvious yous don't have to participate in the waterboarding, and I happened to exist sitting in the room playing with someone who had actually been waterboarded before and it made them manner more uncomfortable. How is this part of the game going to impact soldiers, a demographic which makes up a nontrivial role of the Call of Duty audience? PTSD triggers are a very real thing, and this experience offers no alarm nor way to skip or get out the narrative considering it'south not a cut scene.

I'm also not sure I agree the end result of these experiences was an increase in empathy towards Farah's state of affairs. Information technology was already clear she was defending her abode from any threat. The backstory, according to the story creators, was supposed to make it easier to meet why she was so driven to this conclusion. All the same, all I really got from this was why she wanted to kill ane person in particular so badly. Information technology didn't make his eventual demise any more than or less satisfying because the game had already washed a skillful job convincing me he was a bounder. It didn't actually help to know he had been a bastard his entire life, and left broken families along the mode.

I don't recall the overstep hither is enough to not recommend Modern Warfare to most people. Overall, Modern Warfare is a masterclass in how to polish a kickoff-person shooter to be something every kind of gamer can enjoy.

However, in an try to make the story stick with you, in my opinion, the creators not simply pushed too far but used the only prominent woman in the story to do so. The creators feel this woman of color is and then entirely foreign to their audition it was necessary to pull you lot through a shocking backstory multiple times in social club for you to sympathise with her, which ultimately feels kind of insulting to the audience. On several levels, it could take been handled very differently and yet been a stunningly memorable feel.

Look who's back!

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Captain Price and his cigar brand a render

The stakes have never been college as players accept on the role of lethal Tier Ane operators in a eye-racing saga that will bear upon the global balance of power. Phone call of Duty: Modernistic Warfare engulfs fans in an incredibly raw, gritty, provocative narrative that brings unrivaled intensity and shines a light on the changing nature of modern war.

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An internet connection will soon be required when setting up Windows 11 Pro

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An internet connectedness will soon be required when setting upwards Windows 11 Pro

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