Gunning Down People in an Airport

I purchased and installed Modern Warfare 2 this past weekend. I just got around to playing a little of it one night this week.

First off, the graphics are amazing; everything looks almost photo realistic. And to go with the great graphics, the artificial intelligence and animation are superb. The soldiers (allies and enemies) move realistically, react realistically, kill realistically, and die realistically. It’s a total package of amazing.

When I play a computer game, I like to really get into it. I turn off the lights in the room, put on my headset, and have no distractions so I can fully immerse myself in the game environment. The graphics and animation of this game really helps the immersion factor.

The main story of this game has the player (me) as a British and/or American soldier fighting enemies in war (standard practice for the Call of Duty series). But there’s one battle scene in this game that some find offensive. I had heard of it before purchasing it, but I didn’t think the concept offensive.

At one point, for one “battle,” you play on the side of a terrorist group. You play as a member of the bad guys when they assault a crowded civilian airport. Although I wasn’t offended by this idea, I was a bit unnerved by playing it.

Again, I knew this battle scene was in the game — I even chose the option in the game to allow me to play through this level instead of automatically skipping it. But the realistic graphics, the realistic animation, and the realistic artificial intelligence reactions startled me, here.

It’s one thing to play as a soldier in battle, fighting and killing enemies fighting back at you. Even when the graphics and all look realistic. But this scene of gunning down civilians who scream in terror and pain, bleed all over the terminal floors, fall, crawl, and die in very realistic ways, is stunning. The scene is gory and gruesome. Disturbing, even.

When the terrorists started shooting the civilians (and I was standing with the terrorists), I soon turned on my “allies” to kill them. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t let you kill your own side. This makes sense, as doing so would completely derail the story line.

As the terrorists continued shooting, and moved forward, I slowly came to accept that I was supposed to be role playing a terrorist right then. But I couldn’t bring myself to gun down the civilians. I eventually started firing my gun, but I shot high, intentionally missing all targets.

It took me a few minutes to convince myself, Come on Bullgrit, this is just a computer game. These are not real people no matter how eerily realistic they look and act.

When the civilian police forces showed up at the scene, and started shooting at us, it started to feel more like the standard army versus army game I was used to. I eventually took on the role play of the terrorist side.

After about 10 minutes, the scene ended. I was rather glad for it to end, too; I didn’t like playing that scene.

I was not offended by it, but I was somewhat shocked. I don’t think what is shown is anything worse than what has been shown in some movies. The only thing different, really, is that I was playing the part of the bad guy. I wasn’t just supposed to watch bad guys killing a bunch of people, I was supposed to actually do the killing personally.

And I really don’t think it was the playing the role of the bad guy that got to me so much. It was the realistic graphics and animations and sounds and reactions of the people. It’s so real-looking that it’s downright disturbing.

Bullgrit