World Premiere: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Not a word in Russian

Studio Infinity Ward , responsible for the best parts of the series Call of Duty (if you forget about the shot "in milk" in the person Ghosts ), occupies the floor in the building without any identification marks in the suburbs of Los Angeles, against the background of the California mountains. Exactly experienced operatives who know how to hide and store military secrets, the team has been actively working on two and a half years Call of Duty: Modern Warfare , “Soft” restarting branches about modern military conflicts – and there is almost no leakage for all the time!

The first mention on the network appeared only last Friday when the editor Kotaku Jason Schreyer gave the name of the game – apparently, having visited the developers. Personally, I did not meet him, being part of a small group from an Egyptian, South African and three Russians. And there were reasons for this.

Bad Assyrians

We were brought into a room with a large screen to show two episodes from the future game. The first is a fictional terrorist attack on the center of London. After a believablely directed video about how on a Piccadilly explosive wave it blows civilian, operatives, kabs and lampposts, we find ourselves in the courtyard of the house, which became the shelter and command post of terrorists – immigrants from the countries of the Middle East.

Captain Price, now a permanent guest of different parts of COD and, perhaps, the business card of the series – and his detachment under cover of night begin to clean the premises. For this, they have all the trump cards: night vision devices, laser sights and excellent training.“In fact, the night belongs to them,” the developers explain.

In dark rooms, it is noticeable that ordinary bulbs, as it were, “illuminate” air, adding realism to the picture

Jacob Minkoff, Director for Single Design

About half of the game you act in the troops of the first magnitude, such as SAS. And about half – along with rebellious fighters for freedom. When you play for the first, you have the best weapons, you are technologically more advanced, have night vision glasses and you can apply air strikes. And when you stand to death side by side with the second, you are de facto-facter, you have already been ahead of you. We have to use impromptu weapons, Molotov and IEV cocktails, rely on the knowledge of the terrain and numerical superiority.

Our idea is that when you are in the ranks of advanced allies and fight with the equally well equipped enemies, you will be. Both sides can strike air, both have cool gadgets. When you are on the side of the rebels and struggle with terrorists, you also come out to each other: hastily mined guns, numerous personnel, the same partisan tactics.

Everything is different, when you are a Substan, who went against the equipment: you will be technologically lagging behind. You have to use ambushes and artisanal weapons. When you are fighting terrorists along with the best, excellently trained allies, you have a technological advantage. But opponents know the area, plan ambushes … And in the end, more of them.

The game has four different types of battle and there will be a technique hung with a weapon. From the very beginning, the gameplay is much more dynamic than ever before. This is the most authentic and realistic game of all that we created.

Developers pay attention to such details as the sound from the shot cartridges. Depending on the surface they knock on – whether it be asphalt, wooden floor or tile – the sound changes. The automatic queue on the street will sound completely different than booming, deafening pops in the underpass

The detachment, coordinating actions with gestures, cleans the room behind the room, breaking out the most plausible doors in the most plausible house in the entire history of Call of Duty. In addition (statement, purely on the eye, rather truthfully), the authors admit that they usually tried to make the premises wider so that the characters under the control of AI would not stumble about objects and do not get stuck in the walls, but not this time. The existing technologies allowed the corridors to convey the feeling of claustrophobia, and through it – a feeling of credibility and cruelty of what is happening.

Brutality of the new Modern Warfare and really not to occupy. The terrorist is hiding behind the girl as a live shield – we shoot exactly in the head, regardless of the risk of getting into hostage. Another villain hides under the sofa – randomly fired at the victim through the mattress and a wooden partition. Another terrorist is a woman with a crying baby – well, I had to think earlier. Leave a child without a mother.

We are vividly made to understand that the enemy has not a single chance against a trained combat group, and yesterday's terrorists themselves become victims.

Taylor Kurosaki, narrative director

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be the same turning point as the previous part twelve years ago (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.- approx. editors). Moreover, this is a turning point for a new generation of players, which may not be familiar with any of the original games of the series.

We are betting on the storyline. Today's world is different from the world in 2007, 2009 or 2011. There is no more specific battlefield, and enemies do not form. There are no traditional armies fighting in a trench war – we are far from this. Before us is a much more confusing battlefield, where war is not just somewhere there, it allows everyone and everyone. Innocent, not related to hostilities, suffer.

Heroes and antagonists Modern Warfare find themselves in the zone of "gray" morality, it is more difficult for them to navigate. Everything really depends on your point of view. Your view in this war is where you draw a line between possible and unacceptable. Central question: how does a soldier survive in a modern war? Where and how he draws this line for himself? How soldiers are guided in difficult situations with a moral choice?

I can see myself as a fighter for freedom, fighting to the last drop of blood for the autonomy and independence of their homeland-and someone from outside will give me a shortcut of a terrorist only because he has a different point of view. Everything is relative, there are many levels of perception. No black and white. Only a huge gray zone: how you distinguish the wrong from the right and how you achieve what you consider good.

The new Modern Warfare looks great. To make the heroes alive, the developers animated the smallest details of the equipment: a strap on boots – and he hangs out when walking. Finally, the heroes do not turn immediately with the whole body, as if spinning on the heels (hello, World of Warcraft ), they first turn their heads and then the whole corps – like living people

Bad Russians

Inaccessible two meters separate me from the light shining through a break in a concrete slab. Grabbing a piece of slate, until recently a former part of the roof, knocking on bent reinforcement-maybe someone will hear and have time to get me out from under the wreckage of the house, which collapsed after the bombing of Russian aviation ..

Thus began the second and last game episode shown. Arab girl of about ten years old in the chaos of war is extracted from under the rubble. We find ourselves in the fictional country of Erzikan, occupied by Russian troops. The plot throws us back twenty years ago regarding London events so that we can understand the motives of one of the key characters of the new game – headlights. Having reached adulthood, she and her younger brother Hadir will join the detachment of Captain Price in the fight against world evil. In the meantime, the task is simple – to survive.

Once in the arms of the father, who arrived before the start of the attack of the Russian infantry, we through the eyes of the child see how the soldiers firing the civilians who remained to help other buried under the wreckage. The father puts his daughter on his feet in a relatively calm lane and calls him: “Listen and do what I say – then we will not die!"If I participated in Hands-on-sessions, at that moment the game would have transferred control in my hands, but so far we continue to watch the record. With a first -person view, the child loopes along the alleges, trying not to catch the eye of armed people in vests, dives under the torn ropes with dry clothes and bends with the roar of fighters that were pursuing over the villages. In the end, the father and daughter get to their home, where the frightened Hadir awaits them.

Alas, the respite was only a second: after a moment, an armed barl burst into the house and throws up on his father. With horror, we see how the exhausted person with all his strength is trying to repulse the shaven -headed killer who beats the victim with his head against the wall. And then shoots from the machine point blank.

Jacob Minkoff, Director for Single Design

Starting the development of Modern Warfare, we understood: if we talk about the modern war directly, then the frame will be a war that is not only trained in troops, not only professional armies, but also militias, ordinary people who take up weapons and fight for that , what they believe in.

We were inspired not only by Hollywood films like "Lord of the storm" , "American sniper" And "Purpose number one" – The last ten years through them we are aware of the gray morality of the war, but also documentary tapes, such as "White helmets" And "The last person in Aleppo". They tell stories concentrated on people's lives in hot spots.

Very often developers, instead of manually modeling, resorted to scanning real objects. So, for example, in order to build plausible locations of the burned city, the authors bought a crumpled door of a real car, which suffered during California fires, and dragged it to the scan studio

The reprisals of a man of the invasion are not enough, and he switches to children hiding under the bed. If we characterize the coming stage with dry gaming terms, this is a stealth minia. Stealth Mission, from which a lump rolls to the throat, and tears are stitched on the eyes. Farah will bypass the killer of the father from the back, trying to drive a screwdriver into him. Get out through a small technical hole between the rooms, attack and again hide in the middle of the poor atmosphere of the dwelling – again and again. Until the ambal grabs her younger brother.

Then you have to fight openly: the headlight is injected by the Russian occupier with a screwdriver in the heart. Wiping away tears (they cover the player with a screen), the child removes the gas mask from the body – Russian aircraft uses gas weapons against civilian weapons – he puts it on himself and leaves his father's home with his brother. On the street at that moment, the other military finish the wounded local residents with automatic bursts in the head.

Jacob Minkoff, Director for Single Design

We want to be faithful to the spirit of those military conflicts that are happening today. At the same time, we do not retell the history of any concrete clash: we have before us a fictional Middle Eastern country occupied by the troops of the fictional General Barkov.

He is an expelled Russian military leader. We said that we have views from different cultures, and the game is morally gray. Its motive is that he sees Erzikan in the south and sees terrorists who are making his way from this country to Russia – and he is absolutely right. When terrorists come to us [in the USA], we also fight with them. But he feels that the right way to cope with the threat is different. If local residents cannot manage their state themselves, if their country is made by a nutrient medium for terrorists, this becomes its personal responsibility. You need to come to Erziktan and take up its protection, completely capturing control. That is why he says: "You are unable to rule your country, well, so I will do it for you".

At the same time, Barkov is pretty too much too much. That is why a considerable part of the campaign we act shoulder to shoulder with the Russian and Middle Eastern allies against this Ryegat general. Very similar to "Apocalypse Today" , When Colonel Kurtz leaves the reservation and begins to build his country in the middle of Southeast Asia. Our goal in these subjects is to show characters who consider themselves the heroes of their history, but capable of performing actions with which others will never agree.

The new Modern Warfare will have its own “General Shepard” – a person responsible for harsh solutions. At the presentation, the developers mentioned a colonel by the name of Noreste, who will affect the life of headlights and hadir when they grow in the commanders of resistance

After leaving the hall, where the presentation was held, the national composition of our group of journalists became clear. For Infinity Ward, it was not just a presentation of a new game, but a sociological study of how the Russian and Arab audiences will react to what they saw. Of course, we, the game press, support the show of different positions – there are bad Russians, but there are good. There are good Arabs, but there are terrorists. But I am afraid of the repetition of the non-core Russian media scandal, like that erupted after "not a word in Russian" from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 ..

Well, let's wait – we'll see. And the production, a sense of realism and brutality in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare took truly new bronze casino heights.

The release will take place on October 25 on PC (Battle.Net), Xbox One and PS4.