Today, Activision released a trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which is not a remake of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and is instead a sequel to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019). It is the first Call of Duty game to so in the wake of a redefinition of what “modern” war is, brought on by the war in Ukraine and the United States pulling out of Afghanistan.
The reveal trailer, which finally showed gameplay from the game’s campaign, was as bombastic as one could expect from a Call of Duty trailer, showing Captain Price and company doing their thing.
Videos by VICE
Modern Warfare 2 (2009), on its original release, was the post-Iraq fantasy of a complicated war. Specially trained troops did bad things to worse people for information, you participated in a false flag operation, all of it in service of a desperate return to Cold War era geopolitics where Russia and the United States finally duke it out. It is a vapid game about war, one that has defined an entire generation’s understanding of conflict. Its bombastic campaign, tacti-cool aesthetic, and era-defining twitch multiplayer, have drastically altered the American conception of what war is and should be.
Now, a global conflict with Russia is not just a neo-conservative fantasy, but a genuine reality for millions living in Ukraine and its allied states. It will be, without a doubt, an uncomfortable video game.
This disconnect between the original title’s aims and context extends to the franchise’s relationship to its publisher; then Activision, now Activision-Blizzard. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was a cultural juggernaut, one that has become inextricable from Activision as a brand. This was a strength in 2009, but in 2022 has become best known not for its games, but for its internal controversies, rampant sexual harassment, and disasters management. One small part of the Call of Duty empire, Raven Software’s quality assurance team that does testing for the hugely popular Call of Duty: Warzone, is also the first major video game union in the United States. The new iteration of Modern Warfare 2 is a direct product of the violent corporate machine that its predecessor helped to create.
And in spite of all of this, the game will probably do great. It will sell well, and people will complain about differences between it and the original, while playing it every day. However, the cultural moment that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 created cannot be repeated, nor should it. “Modern” war has changed, and the series that helped define it has been left behind in its wake.
