Slow As Sunday: Modern Warfare 2 story retold (part one)

Spoiler alert! The following feature contains story elements from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This is not a review but an analysis of the story told in Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare series. For those of you that will never play the game, skipped the “No Russian” mission, or missed the subtleties I encourage you to read on.

Five years after Imran Zakhaev was killed and a nuclear launch against the United States prevented, attitudes in Russia have shifted towards the teachings of the once radical. While not explicit, I believe that Zakhaev’s followers were more prevalent than first believed. Infiltrating the military and government at all levels, Zakhaev’s spiritual successor Makarov was able to slowly twist the Russian peoples’ attitudes to those of the Ultra-Nationalists. Like Zakhaev, Makarov has a thirst for death and destruction and uses them as tools to further his agenda of war. Attacks are made at various targets worldwide fueling the bloodlust of Makarov’s recruits and training them for the coming war.

While Makarov is seen as a threat by the United States there is little action taken to reign in this mad man. Whether Makarov is protected by the Russian government or is slippery enough to evade all nets is not revealed. There is at least one US military leader that is taking steps to put an end to the destruction and death. General Sheperd, who lead the military action against Al-Asad in Afghanistan, is now the head of a small military operation. The General's Taskforce 141 is composed of various special operations members, hand picked by General Sheperd, from the British and United States military and intelligence agencies. Their current mission is the retrieval of the encryption module from a downed US satellite from a Russian military base. At the same time General Sheperd is recruiting the latest member of his taskforce from the Army Rangers, Private Joseph Allen. While inspecting the abilities of this new recruit there is a rebel attack in the Afghani city near the military outpost Allen’s unit is stationed in. General Sheperd goes with the unit to retaliate against the attack. The counter attack is successful and the General takes Pvt. Allen with him to his new assignment.

Thus ends part one of the retelling of Modern Warfare 2. Check back next week for the second part.