BenJepheneT
Light Up Gold - Parquet Courts
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2019
- Messages
- 5,344
- Points
- 233
At this point it's a universal agreement that Call of Duty is just your average rooty-tooty gun-shooty Michael Bay on Steroids action game where you shut off brain & press mouse 1.
But, as a fan of the series, I'd like to give credit where credit's due and shine a light on the more unappreciated aspect of those games. I'm not denying the power fantasy and glorification of American military prowess but I believe lessons could be learned everywhere beyond what's seen within the surface level. Even within the worst of humanity, there's always something to earn from it; but that's going off-topic here.
If there's one thing that should be appreciated from the Modern Warfare trilogy (not counting MW2019; a good game, mind you, but leagues from reaching its peers) is the tonality and dialogue. As a guy who's heavily invested in writing, this is a great example for those looking to tell military-oriented stories from the perspective of an unnamed soldier among tens of thousands of other unnamed soldiers. Hell, just writing about the urgency of mortal wars in a more personal perspective.
The Modern Warfare trilogy always nails the sense of being within a soldier in a massive battle. People pin towards the one-man-army syndrome within the games but I'd argue those only show up within Modern Warfare 3. Every mission you play as an American foot soldier (not part of Task Force 141) is never a lone-wolf effort of "infiltrating behind enemy lines" or "one-man push through overwhelming forces" but a joint effort by the full effect and cooperation of your military force. Yes, the glorification is part of it but regardless, the missions highlights the discipline and cooperation needed betweens the ranks and the soldiers, and none of that is presented more effectively than the background radio chatter.
Yes, you heard me right, radio chatter. Background noises. Something you wouldn't pay attention while playing through the game. It's completely possible to replay the game thrice and miss everything.
This is why I'm making this thread. To show the amount of detail that went into these unnoticeable dialogue and how harrowing it really is. The chatter feels both haunting and at the same time, devoid of humanity. Unlike most movies where they just address the enemy as "bastards" or "fuckers" they simply address them with terminology. The same applies to their own forces. It never really feels like a battle is going on. It just feels like a play-by-play of events narrated by the participants of said events. Even at their worst situations where their practically surrounded by KIAs and heavy fire, they still retain their sense of duty, so much so that they don't even sound human: just very expressive cogs in a machine on fire.
Patriotism isn't what I'm trying to present here, but the horror of being reduced to being just a pawn in a battle where your livelihood comes before the objective; and it's all by your own volition.
If you can spare 11 minutes, I'd like you to listen to this.
At this point, you can probably note the storytelling and climbing urgency within the chatter. Just from simple callsigns you could tell not just how fucked shit's are, but how the shit gets fucked gradually.
I'd also like to highlight how the chatter depicts the ranking and discipline throughout the runtime. Hell, levelling one building full of hostiles takes at least three parties, with one relay sending the foot soldiers' requests to Overlord, and that shit takes almost a full minute, but that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to focus on is the Overlord's tone. Increasing odds; shit's diving deeper and deeper into the shit creek; allies dying left and right; troops descending from God's rectum and popping from the ground like gophers; and he still speaks like an announcer in Bingo night. The disparity between the Overlord's tone as Central Command and the foot soldiers' heightened panic not only accentuates the tone between two different parties in one setting, but also accents the nature of ranking and the discipline of the military.
Even under heavy fire and close brushes with death, never once had the soldiers talked back with the Overlord. Their tones may grow worse along with the alarm in their voices but they follow their orders to an absolute tee. They don't say fuck it and run, they request permission even when it's 100% justifiable that they get the hell out of Dodge.
More than any high-brow war-bad media out there, the radio chatter exemplifies just how lowly these soldiers are regarded, and, as stated, just how haunting the fact is that these soldiers did it by their own consent. You can blame the nature of the military all you want; the fact of the matter is that these soldiers willingly walked into it, and that, I think, speaks to the humanity and their drive to protect their ideals through conflict.
Do pay notice to "their ideals". Not everyone's. Their's. It's only a coincidence that they aligned with everyone else's. Of course, there's definitely other reasons for joining the military, but on an individual level, it's more than safe to assume their there only because the military just so happens to share the same ideas and/or benefits the soldiers desire.
If you're interested in hearing more, have a go at these.
And with that note, I'm out.
But, as a fan of the series, I'd like to give credit where credit's due and shine a light on the more unappreciated aspect of those games. I'm not denying the power fantasy and glorification of American military prowess but I believe lessons could be learned everywhere beyond what's seen within the surface level. Even within the worst of humanity, there's always something to earn from it; but that's going off-topic here.
If there's one thing that should be appreciated from the Modern Warfare trilogy (not counting MW2019; a good game, mind you, but leagues from reaching its peers) is the tonality and dialogue. As a guy who's heavily invested in writing, this is a great example for those looking to tell military-oriented stories from the perspective of an unnamed soldier among tens of thousands of other unnamed soldiers. Hell, just writing about the urgency of mortal wars in a more personal perspective.
The Modern Warfare trilogy always nails the sense of being within a soldier in a massive battle. People pin towards the one-man-army syndrome within the games but I'd argue those only show up within Modern Warfare 3. Every mission you play as an American foot soldier (not part of Task Force 141) is never a lone-wolf effort of "infiltrating behind enemy lines" or "one-man push through overwhelming forces" but a joint effort by the full effect and cooperation of your military force. Yes, the glorification is part of it but regardless, the missions highlights the discipline and cooperation needed betweens the ranks and the soldiers, and none of that is presented more effectively than the background radio chatter.
Yes, you heard me right, radio chatter. Background noises. Something you wouldn't pay attention while playing through the game. It's completely possible to replay the game thrice and miss everything.
This is why I'm making this thread. To show the amount of detail that went into these unnoticeable dialogue and how harrowing it really is. The chatter feels both haunting and at the same time, devoid of humanity. Unlike most movies where they just address the enemy as "bastards" or "fuckers" they simply address them with terminology. The same applies to their own forces. It never really feels like a battle is going on. It just feels like a play-by-play of events narrated by the participants of said events. Even at their worst situations where their practically surrounded by KIAs and heavy fire, they still retain their sense of duty, so much so that they don't even sound human: just very expressive cogs in a machine on fire.
Patriotism isn't what I'm trying to present here, but the horror of being reduced to being just a pawn in a battle where your livelihood comes before the objective; and it's all by your own volition.
If you can spare 11 minutes, I'd like you to listen to this.
At this point, you can probably note the storytelling and climbing urgency within the chatter. Just from simple callsigns you could tell not just how fucked shit's are, but how the shit gets fucked gradually.
I'd also like to highlight how the chatter depicts the ranking and discipline throughout the runtime. Hell, levelling one building full of hostiles takes at least three parties, with one relay sending the foot soldiers' requests to Overlord, and that shit takes almost a full minute, but that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to focus on is the Overlord's tone. Increasing odds; shit's diving deeper and deeper into the shit creek; allies dying left and right; troops descending from God's rectum and popping from the ground like gophers; and he still speaks like an announcer in Bingo night. The disparity between the Overlord's tone as Central Command and the foot soldiers' heightened panic not only accentuates the tone between two different parties in one setting, but also accents the nature of ranking and the discipline of the military.
Even under heavy fire and close brushes with death, never once had the soldiers talked back with the Overlord. Their tones may grow worse along with the alarm in their voices but they follow their orders to an absolute tee. They don't say fuck it and run, they request permission even when it's 100% justifiable that they get the hell out of Dodge.
More than any high-brow war-bad media out there, the radio chatter exemplifies just how lowly these soldiers are regarded, and, as stated, just how haunting the fact is that these soldiers did it by their own consent. You can blame the nature of the military all you want; the fact of the matter is that these soldiers willingly walked into it, and that, I think, speaks to the humanity and their drive to protect their ideals through conflict.
Do pay notice to "their ideals". Not everyone's. Their's. It's only a coincidence that they aligned with everyone else's. Of course, there's definitely other reasons for joining the military, but on an individual level, it's more than safe to assume their there only because the military just so happens to share the same ideas and/or benefits the soldiers desire.
If you're interested in hearing more, have a go at these.
And with that note, I'm out.
