[0:16] [Music]
[0:21] Call of Duty Ghost might be the worst
[0:23] game I've ever played. Now, that
[0:25] requires a lot of qualification and
[0:27] humming and hawing and generally being
[0:29] annoying, but such is the cost of these
[0:31] things. Ghosts occupies an odd place
[0:34] within the megalithic franchise that is
[0:36] Call of Duty. At this point, it sits
[0:38] roughly in the middle, being the 10th
[0:40] main title in a series with 21 full
[0:42] banner annual releases. It begs us to
[0:45] ask, what is a Call of Duty? Well, back
[0:48] in the late 18th century, modern nation
[0:50] states as we know them began to coalesce
[0:52] within a new ideology called
[0:53] nationalism, which will differentiate
[0:55] with a small N to distinguish it from
[0:58] the nationalist political movements that
[1:00] would arise in the 20th century. Within
[1:02] small N nationalism, people began to
[1:04] view themselves as part of a new
[1:06] national identity that encompassed or
[1:09] even superseded their local ethnic
[1:11] identities. This would lead to a bunch
[1:14] of stuff.
[1:20] As the story goes, when US soldiers
[1:22] started killing and dying during the
[1:23] Great War, it became necessary to start
[1:26] giving medals for doing a particularly
[1:28] admirable job of killing or dying.
[1:30] Additionally, it was felt that the US
[1:32] Medal of Honor had been handed out too
[1:34] frivolously during the Civil War, and
[1:36] the Medal risked being trivialized as
[1:38] over 3,000 had been awarded. Okay, this
[1:41] is just It turns out this was a huge
[1:44] boondoggle. Actually, a double
[1:46] boondoggle. Look, I had to play Call of
[1:48] Duty Ghost like a dozen times to make
[1:51] this. Y'all are going to sit there and
[1:52] listen to my goddamn research. President
[1:55] Woodrow Wilson ordered the War
[1:56] Department to do a review of the system
[1:58] and the committee in turn revoked 911
[2:02] legacy Medals of Honor. Boondoggle one
[2:04] is that apparently in the Civil War,
[2:06] tons of medals of honor, being the only
[2:08] award the military had at the time, were
[2:11] handed out for some pretty suspect
[2:13] reasons. Many had been promised
[2:15] basically as a recruitment bonus. Over
[2:17] 500 were awarded to a unit that had
[2:20] already gone home for a mission they
[2:22] didn't do. And Buffalo Bill wasn't even
[2:25] in the military at the time he did the
[2:28] thing that got him the medal. Boondoggle
[2:30] number two was that Buffalo Bill, for
[2:32] better or worse an American icon, had
[2:34] his Medal of Honor stripped from him the
[2:35] week that he died. Battlefield surgeon
[2:38] Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, who got her
[2:40] recommendation from Sherman himself and
[2:42] spent four months of the war in a
[2:43] Confederate P camp, was one of nine
[2:46] civilian surgeons to be awarded the
[2:48] medal and the only one to have it
[2:50] revoked. She was also the only woman to
[2:53] have ever, even to this day, been
[2:55] awarded the Medal of Honor. Just to not
[2:57] leave that story hanging, she refused to
[3:00] return it to Congress and wore it
[3:01] proudly until she died in 1919 at the
[3:04] age of 86. Congress did eventually
[3:08] reinstate her award in 1977. However,
[3:12] amidst the bureaucracy and sexism, a
[3:14] phrase was born. Miller Oscar F. Major
[3:18] 361st Infantry is awarded the Medal of
[3:21] Honor for conspicuous gallantry and
[3:23] intrepidity above and beyond the call of
[3:26] duty. And 85 years later, we've got a
[3:29] video game franchise. Since its
[3:31] inception in 2003, the Call of Duty
[3:33] first-person military shooter brand has
[3:35] produced 21 mainline titles and 22
[3:38] spin-offs, originating as a cinematic
[3:41] shooter in response to Electronic Arts
[3:43] Medal of Honor games, which were
[3:45] themselves soft adaptations and
[3:47] expansions of the film Saving Private
[3:48] Ryan under the supervision of Steven
[3:50] Spielberg. The games are known for their
[3:53] giant setpiece levels, heavily scripted
[3:55] sequences, extensive voice cast,
[3:57] cuttingedge visuals, and just all-around
[4:00] high production value. Quickly though,
[4:02] let's introduce our corporate cast of
[4:04] characters. The franchise as a whole is
[4:07] published by Activision, now Microsoft
[4:09] Activision Blizzard King. The original
[4:11] game was developed by Infinity Ward, but
[4:14] after the success of the first game,
[4:15] Activision brought in a second studio,
[4:18] Treyarch, to begin working on a third
[4:20] game, while Infinity Ward worked on the
[4:22] second. The idea being that the sequel
[4:24] would drop in 2005. And then Activision
[4:27] would already have a sequel to that
[4:29] game, ready to go for 2006, which would
[4:32] give Infinity Ward 2 years to make the
[4:35] game after that. And then the game of
[4:37] Leaprog would continue. Eventually, they
[4:39] would need to bring in two more studios,
[4:41] Sledgehammer and Raven, to wrangle the
[4:43] ever ballooning scope. But we're getting
[4:46] ahead of ourselves. This plan for a
[4:48] yearly release paid off huge when the
[4:50] fourth game, subtitled Modern Warfare,
[4:53] smashed sales records and catapulted
[4:55] Call of Duty from being a merely
[4:57] successful franchise into being the
[5:00] video game franchise, a cultural
[5:03] shortorthhand for the idea of a video
[5:06] game. Indeed, Call of Duty was pushing
[5:09] the leading edge of production value so
[5:11] hard that the franchise became the
[5:13] definition of AAA video games. In the
[5:16] same way your grandmother could describe
[5:18] all video game consoles as a Nintendo,
[5:22] AAA video games could be simply a Call
[5:24] of Duty. Ghost, released in 2013, is the
[5:27] 10th mainline title in the series, the
[5:29] sixth made by developers Infinity Ward.
[5:32] The game follows two brothers, Logan and
[5:34] Hesh Walker, as they shoot their way
[5:36] through a series of nonsense levels
[5:38] strung together by a jingoistic plot
[5:40] rooted deeply in American insecurity
[5:42] that was bubbling up as the global war
[5:44] on terror solidly entered its second
[5:46] decade. It is the near future, the quote
[5:49] great energy producing deserts in the
[5:51] Middle East have been destroyed by war,
[5:53] cutting off much of America's energy,
[5:55] leading to a collapse and decline. In
[5:58] the power vacuum that followed, South
[6:00] America has been united or conquered
[6:02] under the banner of the Federation of
[6:04] the Americas, often simply referred to
[6:06] as the Fed. The game opens as two
[6:08] astronauts perform maintenance on the
[6:10] control station for the orbital weapon
[6:12] Odin, a kinetic bombardment system
[6:14] utilizing tungsten rods dropped from
[6:16] space, an impractical but popular pop
[6:18] culture weapon often shorthanded as rods
[6:21] from God. As they are performing the
[6:23] finishing checks on this decidedly
[6:25] military super weapon, the station is
[6:27] attacked and hijacked by Fed forces who
[6:29] gain entry by posing as an American
[6:31] supply shuttle. The Fed successfully
[6:34] target and bomb a large swath of
[6:35] Southern California, Texas, and Florida
[6:38] before the temporary prologue
[6:39] protagonist or prologist destabilizes
[6:43] its orbit and burns up in the
[6:44] atmosphere. That that sounds
[6:46] grammatically incorrect. So ju just to
[6:48] be clear, both the prologonist and Odin
[6:52] burn up in the atmosphere. Parallel to
[6:54] this, Elias Walker tells his sons the
[6:56] origin story of a fabled special ops
[6:58] team called the Ghosts.
[7:01] >> It was a different time, a different
[7:03] enemy.
[7:05] 60 men from tier 1 teams were sent to
[7:08] face down a force of 500 enemy fighters.
[7:11] Their objective to force the enemy back
[7:13] from a civilian hospital and keep its
[7:16] occupants alive.
[7:18] In this other backstory, in another
[7:20] time, another war, 60 men from a joint
[7:23] special ops team were tasked with
[7:24] guarding a hospital and they get
[7:26] obliterated over the course of a couple
[7:28] nights. 60 become 15 and eventually
[7:30] these remaining 15, they evacuate the
[7:33] hospital and send one of their own as an
[7:35] escort. Then the remaining 14 cover
[7:37] themselves in blood and sand and hide
[7:39] under the bodies to ambush the enemy
[7:41] fighters. The pros in this story is
[7:43] fluid, reverential, bordering on
[7:46] spiritual ecstasy. They are baptized
[7:49] with blood and anointed by the sand,
[7:52] then massacre the opposition with
[7:53] hit-and-run tactics that are so sick and
[7:56] badass that the one remaining enemy
[7:58] fighter goes crazy. He expressed
[8:01] warnings to others of a force so
[8:02] menacing and unbeatable, it could only
[8:05] be described as supernatural.
[8:07] He called them ghosts.
[8:13] God damn it. It's even got the ellipsus
[8:15] right there in the subtitles. I feel I
[8:18] feel like I feel like this is what
[8:21] folding ideas sounds like to people who
[8:24] don't like folding ideas. This literal
[8:26] campfire story is then interrupted by
[8:28] the rods from God falling on San Diego
[8:30] as the Fed uses Odin to obliterate
[8:33] basically everything south of Santa
[8:35] Monica. The body of the game takes place
[8:37] 10 years later, long after the war with
[8:39] the Fed has come to a stalemate. It's
[8:41] not really relevant to anything, and you
[8:43] need to dig into the codeex entries to
[8:45] sort it out, but basically the US
[8:46] military doesn't have branches anymore.
[8:48] It's all just one big blob, which is
[8:50] really just the underlying justification
[8:52] for the main characters, Logan and Hesh,
[8:54] to run around doing whatever the
[8:56] designers thought was cool. After a
[8:58] tutorial mission and some walk and talk,
[9:00] the boys are sent out to scout some fed
[9:02] salvage operation back in San Diego.
[9:04] their first big mission beyond the
[9:06] massive border wall the US has built.
[9:09] They are assisted on their missions by
[9:10] the game spectacle feature Riley, a
[9:13] trained German Shepherd and his doggy
[9:15] cam sneak attack.
[9:20] Despite the lengthy geopolitical setup
[9:22] and hell dump of backstory, the game's
[9:24] lore is extremely front-loaded and the
[9:27] meat of the game revolves around a man
[9:28] named Ror, a ghost and dad's former
[9:31] commanding officer. Oh, spoiler. Dad's a
[9:33] ghost. like that's why he knows all
[9:36] their backstory and stuff, but not like
[9:38] a cool ghost. He's just he's a he's an
[9:40] assassin
[9:42] special ops badass. I It's It's treated
[9:46] as a twist. It's You're supposed to find
[9:48] You're supposed to You're It's It's
[9:50] treated as a twist. They play it like
[9:52] it's a real twist that you didn't that
[9:55] you didn't see coming.
[9:58] >> But your father's not there anymore.
[10:04] Dad, this whole time you you were one of
[10:06] them. You a ghost.
[10:08] >> Try the ghost.
[10:09] >> So Ror, along with your dad was one of
[10:11] the original 14 ghosts who were anointed
[10:13] with sand after defending the hospital.
[10:15] And his psych profile is basically that
[10:17] he's Rambo, but like Rambo 3 or Rambo
[10:22] for Rambo. Not really first blood Rambo.
[10:25] Ror went missing in Caracus two years
[10:27] before the Odin incident and was
[10:29] presumed dead. When the Fed threatened
[10:31] all of South America and ordered all
[10:33] US-born residents killed or imprisoned,
[10:36] the US preemptively invaded Venezuela
[10:38] and sent the Ghost to assassinate Fed
[10:40] leadership in a mission that culminates
[10:42] in Federation leader General Elmagro
[10:44] ordering a missile strike on a massive
[10:46] dam overlooking the city. Now, this
[10:49] self-destructive action here, we're
[10:51] going to have to set aside the fact that
[10:53] America's enemies are so insane they'll
[10:55] nuke themselves, was already a recurring
[10:58] plot beat in the franchise by this
[11:00] point, so we can instead focus on the
[11:02] silliness of the scenario. If Western
[11:05] media gets accused of playing fast and
[11:07] loose with its audience's lack of
[11:09] knowledge of the rest of the world, few
[11:11] other instances will really compete with
[11:14] this game. stashing a billion gallons of
[11:17] water a kilometer in the air above the
[11:19] Caribbean Sea. So, the ghosts do
[11:22] successfully assassinate General
[11:23] Elmagro. You play as your dad, Elias,
[11:25] for this mission and shoot him yourself.
[11:27] But the helicopter crashes, Ror falls
[11:29] into the water, and after weeks of
[11:31] searching for his body, the ghosts are
[11:33] pulled from Caracus, and Ror is declared
[11:35] MIA. Since he's the antagonist, he
[11:38] obviously survived and now he holds a
[11:40] grudge against the ghosts for a
[11:41] combination of not rescuing him and not
[11:43] having the decency to die trying to
[11:45] rescue him. He was instead captured by
[11:47] the Fed and tortured in a jungle pit
[11:50] where they used all the old standards,
[11:52] isolation, temperature extremes, sleep
[11:54] deprivation, stress positions, keeping
[11:55] him wet, presumably direct physical and
[11:58] verbal abuse, and they feed him
[11:59] psychoactive poisons implicitly.
[12:02] This process stylized for the cinematic
[12:05] blows all of the white off of him as
[12:07] black alien crystals burst out of his
[12:09] skin. That's interesting iconography
[12:12] that might come up later.
[12:14] >> Broke was their ghost. Now,
[12:18] the perfect weapon to use against us.
[12:21] >> He becomes the main villain of the
[12:23] entire game. And he's Bane, the Batman
[12:25] villain. Specifically, the Bane from The
[12:27] Dark Knight Rises, a two steps ahead
[12:29] criminal mastermind with seemingly
[12:31] limitless resources to pour into a plan
[12:33] that uses lofty geopolitical ambitions
[12:35] as a smoke screen for a personal grudge
[12:37] against a couple specific dudes. There's
[12:40] a series of RO focused missions,
[12:41] including backstory, then an
[12:43] infiltration mission to find where he's
[12:45] hiding, an assault on the hideout,
[12:46] capturing RO, then getting hijacked by
[12:48] Ror's people and dumped in the jungle,
[12:50] after which the game switches to
[12:52] hardcore filler mode. There's a winter
[12:55] science facility level in Chile, then an
[12:57] oil rig level in Antarctica, then an
[12:59] underwater level in the Atlantic, then a
[13:01] factory level in Brazil somewhere north
[13:03] of Rio. After blowing up the factory,
[13:05] the team heads to a safe house in the
[13:07] remains of Las Vegas to hang out, where
[13:09] they get ambushed and captured by Ror
[13:11] again. Oh, you are right, Elias. I'm not
[13:16] a ghost.
[13:17] I'm the man that haunts them and sends
[13:20] them back to the other side.
[13:24] Dad, a ghost.
[13:25] >> There's a sinking aircraft carrier, then
[13:27] a tank mission, and a second space
[13:29] mission, and then finally you fight Ror
[13:31] on a train. The thing you learn in all
[13:33] of that faffing about, maybe a nugget
[13:35] permission, is that the Fed has cloned
[13:37] Odin. That wreckage way back in the San
[13:40] Diego level where Doggy Cam was a
[13:42] mechanic, that was Odin. And I guess
[13:44] that information isn't exactly hidden,
[13:47] but it's really downplayed.
[13:49] >> This is definitely the place.
[13:53] Stalker 6, we got something here. Looks
[13:55] like they're taking some wreckage.
[13:58] What kind of wreckage?
[14:01] >> Not sure. It's guarded, but we're going
[14:03] to push through.
[14:04] >> It's actually kind of amazing how good a
[14:05] job the game does of making this
[14:07] theoretically important discovery feel
[14:09] utterly beneath notice. The crash
[14:12] satellite looks unremarkable in the
[14:14] muddy brown gloom that pervades the
[14:16] game, and all leading lines direct the
[14:18] player away from it. You get a glimpse
[14:20] at the top of the hill, but the shape of
[14:22] the hill and the people shooting at you
[14:24] from down below pull your attention
[14:26] downwards and then to the left. When you
[14:28] exit the cave, the shooting is again
[14:30] coming from the left, pulling your view
[14:33] away from the crash site. Even when you
[14:35] exit the building and traverse a catwalk
[14:37] that goes right next to the satellite,
[14:39] the game makes sure there's people
[14:41] shooting at you off to the left, pulling
[14:43] your attention away from the wreckage.
[14:46] In glimpses and fragments, this crash
[14:48] satellite just looks like indistinct
[14:50] industrial wreckage. A refinery or a
[14:53] silo of some kind, not a grounded weapon
[14:56] of mass destruction. That's the reason
[14:58] everyone's in this mess in the first
[14:59] place. The only way to really appreciate
[15:02] that it's the wreckage of Odin is to sit
[15:04] around and explore. But this is a game
[15:06] that very much does not want you to
[15:08] explore. Cinematic shooters are 90% high
[15:11] gloss hallways. That's kind of the core
[15:14] pitch. You trade freedom to wander for
[15:16] extremely intricate scripted sequences
[15:18] and spectacle. Wandering off is almost
[15:21] always tightly constrained. A door that
[15:23] you aren't explicitly directed to open
[15:25] will almost never open. A side hallway
[15:28] that isn't part of a shooting arena will
[15:30] almost always deadend quickly with
[15:33] nothing to see. In the case of the Odin
[15:35] wreckage, poking around is explicitly
[15:38] punished by falling into radioactive
[15:40] kill zones, sending you back to the
[15:42] previous checkpoint. Curiosity in the
[15:44] genre is structurally discouraged. So,
[15:48] nominally, Logan and Hash were sent to
[15:49] San Diego to figure out what the Fed is
[15:51] rooting around looking for. But when
[15:53] they find it, they just go, I don't
[15:55] know, some big busted thing looks
[15:57] expensive. And are then immediately
[15:59] derailed by Ror capturing a ghost named
[16:02] Ajax, at which point the actual mission
[16:04] is discarded in lie of meeting up with
[16:06] Ghost's American Keegan and heading off
[16:08] to rescue Ajax from the ruins of Dodger
[16:11] Stadium. So, the fact that the
[16:13] Federation is rooting around in the
[16:14] wreckage of Odin is uncovered in chapter
[16:16] 3 and then deemed so unremarkable that
[16:19] aside from a stray mention in chapter 9,
[16:21] it isn't really relevant again until
[16:23] chapter 13 when the team stumbles into a
[16:26] factory loading up Federation Odin
[16:28] clones, a project called Loki, named
[16:30] after the shape-shifting infiltrator
[16:32] that ends the world. Now, here's the
[16:34] very important thing to remember about
[16:36] Loki. It is said out loud to call your
[16:38] attention to this. The important thing
[16:40] to note about the clone of the orbital
[16:42] penetrating rod weapon of mass
[16:44] destruction built by the South Americans
[16:47] is that theirs is smaller. It's less
[16:49] girthy. It's not quite as potent, but it
[16:52] is significantly more numerous.
[16:55] >> Yeah, these are smaller, but there's a
[16:57] lot more of them.
[16:59] >> There might be some symbolism in there.
[17:01] I don't know. There's another space
[17:03] mission where Americans hijack Loki and
[17:05] start raining hell down on South
[17:06] America. You drive a tank. You fight Ror
[17:09] on a train. You eventually shoot him and
[17:11] your brother and all of the windows
[17:13] crack like blow open and he drowns and
[17:15] you and your brother sit on a beach
[17:17] watching the world burn as the credits
[17:19] start to roll before the inevitable and
[17:21] tragic sequel bait when an apparently
[17:23] immortal Ror kidnaps Logan. That's you.
[17:26] And drags him off with a postredits clip
[17:29] implying that Logan is being subjected
[17:30] to the same jungle drug torture
[17:32] brainwashing as Ror was. So ghost falls
[17:36] apart in basically every way. Like if
[17:38] we're talking about a bad game, what are
[17:40] the ways in which a game can be bad?
[17:43] They can be just technically bad.
[17:45] Unstable as software that doesn't launch
[17:48] right, crashes frequently, or breaks at
[17:50] the programming level. That's one type
[17:53] of bad. It can be just not particularly
[17:56] fun to push the buttons like the
[17:57] responsiveness of it or the feedback
[17:59] that you get or the rewards that you
[18:01] get, the way that it respects or
[18:03] disrespects your time. Or it could be
[18:06] offensive on some narrative level. The
[18:08] story is full of holes. It isn't told in
[18:11] a way that carries the player through.
[18:13] Character motivations are vague or thin.
[18:15] Actions and consequences don't really
[18:17] seem to line up. And maybe it espouses
[18:19] some morally reprehensible worldview.
[18:22] Ghosts is all of these. So, the long
[18:26] story short behind all this is twofold.
[18:28] One is simply that games of this scope
[18:30] take, as a rule of thumb, about three
[18:32] years to make, and Activision had their
[18:34] studios cranking them out in barely two.
[18:36] While Ghost was not noted for its
[18:38] development crunch, this is because it
[18:40] was still so ubiquitous and normalized
[18:42] across the AAA industry in the early
[18:44] teens that it was deemed unremarkable. A
[18:46] contemporary Guardian article about the
[18:48] development of Ghost opens by talking
[18:50] about Crunch in an extremely
[18:52] matter-of-fact way, like how you would
[18:54] say that being a sailor involves the
[18:56] risk of getting wet. The second is that
[18:58] around the release of Modern Warfare 2,
[19:00] Infinity Ward went through a major
[19:02] upheaval. Studio co-founders Vince
[19:05] Sampella and Jason West had wanted to
[19:07] sever Modern Warfare from the Call of
[19:09] Duty brand, getting Infinity Ward a
[19:11] bigger slice of the record-breaking pie.
[19:14] When Activision caught wind of this, all
[19:16] hell broke loose. The two were fired.
[19:18] Then they sued Activision for basically
[19:20] manufacturing cause for their dismissal.
[19:22] Then Activision counters sued, calling
[19:24] them insubordinate and self-serving
[19:26] schemers who attempted to hijack
[19:28] Activision's assets for their own
[19:30] personal gain. This got very messy. It
[19:32] came out that Activision had a thing
[19:34] called Project Icebreaker that West and
[19:36] Zimpella alleged was a scheme to ou them
[19:38] from Infinity Ward. While Activision
[19:40] insisted in their defense that
[19:42] Icebreaker was merely a scheme to spy on
[19:44] employee emails in order to improve the
[19:47] relationship with the studio, in the
[19:49] fallout, almost four dozen devs departed
[19:51] Infinity Ward in solidarity, leaving a
[19:53] big old hole in Infinity Ward's dev
[19:55] team. While Modern Warfare 3 would
[19:57] ultimately come out on time, it was only
[19:59] because Activision brought in Raven and
[20:01] Sledgehammer to help finish the game.
[20:04] Afterwards, it was decided that the
[20:05] 2-year leapfrog cycle just wasn't enough
[20:08] time, and thus the third game out from
[20:10] that point would be developed by
[20:12] Sledgehammer starting a three studio
[20:14] rotation. All this required was for the
[20:16] folks at Sledgehammer to be brought
[20:18] fully up to speed, not just finishing
[20:20] assets for a game already in progress,
[20:22] but working from scratch with the new
[20:24] engine and all the various intricacies
[20:26] of making a Call of Duty. This added
[20:29] workload on the remaining Infinity Ward
[20:31] staff, creating a massive technical debt
[20:33] that would ultimately be paid by ghosts.
[20:36] None of the problems that plague ghosts
[20:38] are unique to it. Rather, Ghost is
[20:40] unique for suffering from every single
[20:43] problem that plagues AAA video game
[20:45] production. I have taken the liberty for
[20:47] the sake of pacing and shaking things up
[20:49] a bit of organizing all that into a
[20:52] numbered list.
[20:57] The focus in development was on getting
[20:59] the game ready for the launch of the
[21:01] PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which left
[21:03] the PC version in a pretty bad state
[21:06] with numerous development problems
[21:08] leading to frequent crashes to desktop,
[21:10] broken script triggers, and numerous
[21:12] soft locks. They fixed a lot of this
[21:14] over the years. It is a lot more stable
[21:16] these days if you play it on a modern
[21:18] machine, but it's still really easy to
[21:20] soft lock various levels because Call of
[21:22] Duty games are extremely complicated on
[21:25] a scripting level. If in chapter 2 you
[21:27] exit the tunnel into the LA River and
[21:29] immediately try and shoot down the
[21:31] helicopter, you can actually sort of
[21:33] shoot it down, but since it's supposed
[21:35] to come back later and you've already
[21:36] tripped the flag saying it's destroyed,
[21:38] it just never comes back for when you're
[21:40] actually supposed to shoot it down and
[21:42] the level soft locks.
[21:44] I hear more literal birds than I hear
[21:47] helicopters.
[21:49] All right. Well, only one option.
[22:03] >> The experience of the game, the game
[22:05] play itself is sluggish. Even sprinting
[22:08] feels more like a waddle. There is
[22:10] multiple vehicle segments that just do
[22:12] not function the way that you'd expect
[22:13] them to. The helicopter fights in
[22:15] particular have a very bizarre control
[22:18] scheme that I still do not fully
[22:20] understand. Lateral movement works more
[22:22] or less like you'd expect, even if it
[22:24] feels terrible. But altitude control is
[22:27] semi-automated within a very shallow
[22:31] layer. It's very awkward if you expect
[22:33] the helicopter to control like a
[22:35] helicopter.
[22:40] It's just kind of ugly. Even at the
[22:42] time, Call of Duty games were remarked
[22:44] on for being dominated by shades of
[22:46] brown green brown brown green gray
[22:48] brown, and gray. Online comic strips
[22:51] like VG Cats were already mocking this
[22:53] trend in 2007. And yet, 7 years later,
[22:57] Ghosts somehow takes that and makes it
[22:59] even worse. The brown gay shooter has
[23:01] effectively become an archetype, and
[23:03] Call of Duty Ghosts is its avatar. The
[23:06] game's average color is taupe. This
[23:08] actually brings us to our next point,
[23:10] which will hand off to Folding Ideas
[23:11] Mexican Office.
[23:22] A major marketing point was the hiring
[23:24] of Oscar-winning screenwriter Steven
[23:26] Gagan to pen the script. Now, Gagean won
[23:28] an Oscar for Traffic, a movie with its
[23:31] own, let's say, interesting relationship
[23:33] with Latin America. Traffic can be
[23:36] almost single-handedly credited with
[23:37] convincing audiences that Mexico looks
[23:40] like piss, which in turn became the
[23:42] visual language of hot places that are
[23:44] also dangerous, which became the visual
[23:46] language of war writ large, which is in
[23:48] part why Call of Duty Ghosts looks the
[23:51] way it does. In all fairness to Gagan, I
[23:53] just happen to have a copy of the
[23:55] published shooting script, and it
[23:56] doesn't say anywhere, "Mexico, a land
[23:59] the color of piss. Everything is a shade
[24:01] of piss, even the sky." So that one's
[24:04] more on Solderberg or well Peter Andrews
[24:06] who's just Steven Solderberg with a
[24:08] Carheart Beanie and a Leica. Gage's
[24:10] pedigree as a writer is honestly like
[24:12] most writers a little mixed. He wrote
[24:15] Traffic and Serriiana, but he also wrote
[24:17] Abandoned and The Alamo. And not
[24:20] relevant to Ghosts, but still funny. He
[24:22] would eventually write and direct the
[24:23] 2020 film Dittle starring Robert Downey
[24:26] Jr.
[24:28] >> Oh, good heavens.
[24:29] >> The writing of a video game is
[24:31] complicated. more so for a game like
[24:33] Call of Duty than most. But there are
[24:35] elements that we can pretty safely put
[24:37] in GageN's lap, like the mission
[24:39] briefings with their absolutely tortured
[24:42] stoic pros.
[24:43] >> The sand stuck to their skin like a
[24:45] shroud, changing them, anointing them.
[24:49] >> This is just kind of a whirlpool of
[24:51] hell. The performances aren't saving the
[24:54] script, but the script isn't giving the
[24:57] performers material worth saving.
[25:01] This whole time you you were one of
[25:02] them. You ghost.
[25:04] >> Try the ghost.
[25:09] >> The bulk of the story is very stupid and
[25:11] is plagued with obvious backfills that
[25:13] are emergent from the way that the game
[25:15] is made. The cinematic shooter is so
[25:17] reliant on massive setpiece events that
[25:20] they have become the cart leading the
[25:22] horse. This aspect is basically an open
[25:24] secret of how the game and an
[25:26] embarrassing number of modern
[25:27] blockbusters are made, but it is rarely
[25:30] as obvious as it is with ghosts. Cool
[25:33] moments were devised first. Production
[25:35] was started and artists and coders and
[25:37] scriptors were put to work building a
[25:40] sinking aircraft carrier years before a
[25:42] writer would be sent in to figure out
[25:45] why an aircraft carrier is sinking.
[25:47] After all, enemy gunships and boats just
[25:49] move around on predefined paths. The
[25:52] exact model of helicopter, the flags
[25:54] being flown, or the uniforms on soldiers
[25:56] can all be swapped later. For a big part
[25:59] of the process, they're just floating
[26:01] cubes and other placeholders. Anyway,
[26:04] even the dialogue and character
[26:06] interactions have the hallmarks of being
[26:08] as unintrusive and generic as possible.
[26:12] Characters are mostly an ephemeral
[26:14] presence, barking immediate orders into
[26:16] your ears.
[26:17] >> Siggon Riley, move to the next floor.
[26:19] >> The door's down. Flash now. Keep an eye
[26:21] on your death gauge.
[26:23] >> Clear.
[26:23] >> Clear your charges. Moving. Pick up.
[26:26] >> The why of what you're doing simply
[26:28] needs to be kept to a minimum presence
[26:30] so it can slot in easily at a later
[26:32] time. This is why every mission has on
[26:35] average one moment that actually
[26:37] matters. The character learns or
[26:39] accomplishes one thing frequently by
[26:42] watching a video or reading a document.
[26:44] And the significance of that thing is
[26:46] more often than not shuffled into the
[26:48] interstitial monologues that serve as
[26:50] loading screens. You're sent to blow up
[26:52] an oil derek off the coast of Antarctica
[26:54] in a bluff to lure away the Fed's navy,
[26:56] but that doesn't make any sense. Not as
[26:59] a plan and not as the motivation driving
[27:01] you through the mission. It's simply the
[27:03] results that you're told afterwards. And
[27:05] then later that diverted Navy just shows
[27:08] up and sinks the US's last remaining
[27:10] aircraft carrier. Anyway, the crashed
[27:13] Odin in chapter 2 is so conspicuously
[27:15] unremarked upon that it's entirely
[27:17] possible that it wasn't even decided
[27:19] what rubble the fed soldiers would be
[27:21] searching through at the time the
[27:22] mission was started. Like, not to get
[27:24] repetitive here, but this is the full
[27:26] exchange.
[27:27] >> This is definitely the place.
[27:31] >> Stalker 6, we got something here. Looks
[27:33] like they're building some wreckage.
[27:36] >> What kind of wreckage?
[27:39] >> Not sure. It's guarded, but we're going
[27:41] to push through.
[27:42] >> You don't interact with it. It's
[27:43] surrounded by killer radiation, so you
[27:45] can't try and do anything with it.
[27:47] Merrick and Keegan don't ask about it.
[27:49] And despite the fact that you were sent
[27:51] out explicitly to figure out what the
[27:53] Fed were doing in San Diego, this
[27:56] information is seemingly never relayed.
[27:58] The thought that the Fed is trying to
[28:00] salvage Odin in order to make their own
[28:02] isn't floated as a possibility, even as
[28:05] the characters are watching the Fed
[28:07] launch mystery ballistic missiles that
[28:09] NORAD loses track of after launch.
[28:14] >> NORAD was able to say conclusively, the
[28:17] missile launched in the Yucatan did not
[28:19] hit the USA.
[28:20] >> There isn't even a beat where a
[28:21] character puts two and two together the
[28:23] moment that they walk into the room and
[28:25] see Loki being loaded up. Even the bit
[28:28] with Loki is like, okay, they walk into
[28:30] the room, they see something, there's a
[28:33] bunch of radio chatter about it, and
[28:36] then they move on. This level could be
[28:38] 95% completed without the artists even
[28:43] knowing what's going to go in that slot.
[28:46] These events, these thoughts are all
[28:49] siloed from one another, interacting
[28:51] only through the narrow tunnels between
[28:53] missions. There is simply zero internal
[28:56] cohesion to the story. It's so obviously
[28:58] and shoddily a series of set pieces that
[29:01] were hastily strung together. It's
[29:03] actually difficult to keep them in order
[29:05] in the memory simply because there's so
[29:08] little logical connection between them.
[29:11] In the game, you infiltrate the lab to
[29:13] get files on the missile program, blow
[29:15] up the oil derek to lure away the navy,
[29:17] then sink the last destroyer guarding
[29:19] Brazil so you can sabotage the factory.
[29:21] But we could just as easily make it that
[29:23] during the factory sabotage mission, we
[29:25] uncover Loki. Then we blow up the
[29:26] destroyers so we can get access to the
[29:28] oil Derek, which as a one-two punch will
[29:30] lure the Navy in the Pacific towards the
[29:32] Atlantic so we can infiltrate the lab
[29:34] and steal the access codes needed to
[29:36] subvert Loki. All it would need to
[29:38] replace is a few lines of dialogue and
[29:40] the interstitial monologues. Other
[29:42] missions are less egregious, but never
[29:44] properly escape this artifact of their
[29:46] creation. missions are in the order that
[29:49] makes a reasonable amount of narrative
[29:51] sense while breaking up the mechanics.
[29:57] Many of these set pieces are extremely
[29:59] obvious in their influences. Again, it's
[30:01] basically an open secret that Call of
[30:03] Duty level designers just look for
[30:05] moments from movies and go, "Wouldn't it
[30:07] be cool if you could play that?" But, I
[30:10] don't know. It just feels so hack when
[30:12] the inspiration is so obvious. Ror
[30:15] allows himself to be captured for no
[30:17] particular reason except that it allows
[30:18] the game to recreate the opening of The
[30:20] Dark Knight Rises. One level is lifted
[30:22] in pretty equal measure from The Dark
[30:25] Knight and Transformers: Dark of the
[30:27] Moon.
[30:30] The game doesn't really have mechanics.
[30:32] It has the simulation of mechanics. In a
[30:36] typical game, hell, let's get saucy and
[30:38] say in a real game, the player is given
[30:42] a suite of interactions that they can
[30:43] perform, and it is then given to the
[30:45] player the freedom to figure out how to
[30:47] best string together these interactions
[30:49] to accomplish their goals. Ghosts
[30:51] instead gives you a gun and a context
[30:54] prompt. Things like night vision
[30:55] goggles, thermal optics, the dog Riley,
[30:58] a blinding strobe light, a motion
[31:00] tracker, and gas grenades aren't tools
[31:02] that you are given, tutorialized on, and
[31:04] then expected to deploy at your
[31:06] discretion. They are gimmicks that pop
[31:08] up at predetermined moments and persist
[31:10] in your toolkit for only as long as
[31:13] deemed necessary.
[31:14] >> Logan, sync up with Riley.
[31:17] >> Here we go.
[31:19] Now, there are a lot of compromises that
[31:21] are made in the service of the cinematic
[31:24] in cinematic shooter. The player is
[31:26] ultimately on rather tight rails with
[31:28] little freedom in how they approach the
[31:30] world. This is not inherently bad.
[31:33] Roller coasters are literally on rails
[31:36] and roller coasters are really, really
[31:37] fun. And at a certain level of
[31:39] abstraction, this is true about
[31:41] basically every game with a linear
[31:43] story. Using Doom 2016 as an example,
[31:46] while the player can backtrack through
[31:48] large areas of the game for a
[31:50] substantial chunk of the play time, this
[31:52] is ultimately little more than the
[31:54] freedom to hunt for collectibles as the
[31:57] actual bang bang pew pew rip and tear
[31:59] gameplay remains constrained to a
[32:01] predetermined shoot you must climb into
[32:03] if you want to rip kacadmon eyeballs
[32:05] out.
[32:07] [Music]
[32:08] The argument in favor of rails is that
[32:10] they are needed to provide a kind of
[32:12] tightly crafted experience that a freer
[32:14] sort of sandbox environment just can't
[32:16] deliver. But with that comes an unspoken
[32:19] contract that I as a player am seeding
[32:22] an amount of control in exchange for
[32:24] something impactful and the expectations
[32:26] that the rails will be reasonably well
[32:28] disguised. I shouldn't feel the rails
[32:31] because the path forward should simply
[32:33] be the one that I most want to go down.
[32:36] this way for khaka demons and their
[32:38] eyeballs. Call of Duty Ghost is littered
[32:41] with so many friction points, the poorly
[32:43] laidout levels, the obnoxious
[32:45] characters, the incoherent story that
[32:47] the illusion, the buy in just falls
[32:50] apart. You begin to notice that you're
[32:52] thrust into situations where tools you
[32:54] were given earlier would be useful, but
[32:56] you don't have them because they weren't
[32:58] actually tools in the first place. They
[33:00] were single scene gimmicks. There is a
[33:03] veneer of realism here in the sense that
[33:05] your commandos aren't going to be
[33:07] showing up with the same ever ballooning
[33:10] kit of toys to every single mission. But
[33:13] that realism shreds like tissue paper
[33:15] when a very useful tool like the strobe
[33:18] light is only functional within a single
[33:21] specific room. The fake commitment to
[33:24] realism results in frankly boring
[33:26] gunplay. Well, you will occasionally
[33:28] stumble across a shotgun or machine gun.
[33:31] By and large, you will spend the
[33:32] campaign cycling through a series of
[33:34] indistinct assault rifles. Step after
[33:37] boring step of the game is saturated
[33:39] with barked orders from your commanding
[33:40] officers, who perpetually sound pissed
[33:42] off that they even need to deal with
[33:44] you, giving the distinct impression that
[33:46] the game not only feels obliged to hold
[33:48] your hand, but resents doing it, too.
[33:50] >> You can stick with us, but you do what I
[33:52] say when I say it. Understood? Put all
[33:54] in a package, Ghost is a great
[33:56] simulation of what an escort quest must
[33:58] feel like from the perspective of the
[34:00] NPC.
[34:04] Help! I'm trapped in a numbered list
[34:06] factory. The bosses stole my passport.
[34:08] If you're reading this, tell my wife I'm
[34:10] still alive. Please send rescue.
[34:15] Ghosts are cringe. The amount of
[34:17] worshipful religious pros that is poured
[34:19] out talking about the ghosts is weird
[34:21] and embarrassing, especially given that
[34:23] the source of most of that is Elias
[34:25] talking about himself.
[34:27] >> And this really happened. So, the legend
[34:29] goes,
[34:30] >> but it really reaches the next level
[34:32] after Elias is killed. In the story, the
[34:35] ghosts are a quasi official interdep
[34:36] departmental unit consisting entirely of
[34:39] 14 people. There were 15 soldiers left
[34:41] at the hospital. One of them was sent to
[34:43] escort evacuees. 14 stayed behind to be
[34:47] anointed by sand. That event in and of
[34:49] itself is within the lifetime of all of
[34:52] the games characters. Merrick, Ror,
[34:54] Elias, Ajax, and Keegan were all there.
[34:57] They are first generation ghosts. Logan
[35:00] and Hash are implied to be the first
[35:02] initiated ghosts ever. From the events
[35:05] of the game, the ghosts are depicted as
[35:06] both quite new, very exclusive, and
[35:09] badass to the point that prior to Ror
[35:11] killing Ajax, the unit has suffered zero
[35:13] confirmed casualties. So, with all of
[35:16] this framing, it's all just so deeply
[35:19] cringe when Hesh spends a loading screen
[35:21] detailing all the ghosterary rights and
[35:24] customs like they're a deeply rooted
[35:26] tradition with generations of practice.
[35:29] In the event a ghost is killed, his
[35:32] remains are placed face down with his
[35:34] head pointed in the direction of his
[35:36] home, his weapon next to him. We do it
[35:39] this way so that when our fallen are
[35:41] taken to the other side, they can watch
[35:43] over us and keep an eye on our enemy.
[35:49] Let's talk about the dog. Ghost had two
[35:51] big elements that became the backbone of
[35:53] the marketing campaign for the game. The
[35:55] lesser of these is the affforementioned
[35:57] hiring of Oscar-winning screenwriter
[35:59] Steven Gagan to pen the script. The big
[36:01] one was Riley the dog.
[36:04] >> This is someone you care about. This is
[36:05] a squad member. He does everything from
[36:08] sniffing out explosives to protecting
[36:10] the team.
[36:10] >> Riley is only mechanically available to
[36:13] the player in two chapters. He's less
[36:15] like a squad member and more like a
[36:17] specialty grenade that you have access
[36:19] to for three specific gunfights. He's
[36:22] barely in the game. There's a whole
[36:24] thing in chapter 14. That's the one
[36:26] where your dad dies and Riley kind of
[36:28] appears out of nowhere and then gets
[36:29] shot and you need to carry him through
[36:31] the rest of the level. After that, they
[36:33] show him at the start of the aircraft
[36:34] carrier mission, the one where the
[36:36] carrier sinks. But since there's a 3
[36:38] days later fade in between, Riley is
[36:41] just sort of quietly ushered out of
[36:43] existence in the uncertainty of that
[36:46] transition.
[36:50] The political undercurrents of the story
[36:52] are repulsive and reflect the madness of
[36:54] an America trapped in a quagmire of its
[36:56] own making and desperate for a new
[36:57] villain. Diagetically, America is on the
[37:00] backfoot, is in decline following the
[37:02] collapse of the quote energy producing
[37:05] deserts and is embroiled in a defensive
[37:07] war against a superior foe. At least
[37:10] that's what we're told. Since so much of
[37:12] the story is really about Ror's personal
[37:13] grudge, the geopolitics sink into the
[37:15] distant background. America being in
[37:17] some nebulous decline is simply the
[37:19] prerequisite to justify the conflict to
[37:22] make it a fair fight. America built an
[37:24] orbital weapon of mass destruction when
[37:26] they were in decline. So, you know, take
[37:29] that for what it's worth. So, let's
[37:31] actually look at how ROR fits into all
[37:33] of this thematically. We have this soup
[37:36] of action set pieces strung together by
[37:38] a plot written around them. What emerges
[37:41] from that soup? The theme that comes
[37:43] through loud and clear is that Ror gives
[37:46] the Fed their potency. The plan to
[37:48] hijack Odin is cooked up by Ror. The
[37:51] attack on Santa Monica is Ror and Loki
[37:54] is Ror's doing. All the various filler
[37:56] tasks ultimately revolve around getting
[37:58] ahead of Ror. Ror is an attempt at
[38:02] dracializing an inherently racialized
[38:05] conflict. You simply cannot have a
[38:07] conflict between the United States and
[38:10] Venezuela without invoking the spectre
[38:13] of US interventionism in South America.
[38:17] >> What do you mean by political?
[38:18] >> That doesn't mean anything, right? The
[38:20] question is this a political game
[38:22] doesn't actually mean anything because
[38:25] it it's what does the word political
[38:27] mean to you? Do we touch topics that
[38:31] bear a resemblance to the geopolitics of
[38:35] the world we live in today? Hell yeah.
[38:36] Cuz this is the the that is the subject
[38:39] matter of modern warfare.
[38:40] >> Despite the developers insistence their
[38:42] games are simply good sugary fun that
[38:45] happens to resemble something in the
[38:48] shape of geopolitics, kind of like a
[38:50] candy cigarette. They do remain aware of
[38:53] the implications of the things they make
[38:55] and in the early teens were visibly
[38:58] sensitive to the push back. They
[39:00] received criticism for how the Arab
[39:01] factions in Call of Duty 4 were depicted
[39:04] with a nuclear suicide bombing. So,
[39:07] Modern Warfare 2 instead revolves around
[39:09] the threat of a duplicitous US general.
[39:12] And then in Modern Warfare 3, it was
[39:15] revealed that the nuke had actually been
[39:17] the machinations not of al-Assad, but of
[39:20] that game's antagonist, Vladimir
[39:23] Macarov. Ror is, in one sense, a safe
[39:26] antagonist. It makes the game about
[39:28] Americans fighting Americans, white
[39:30] people fighting a white person whose
[39:33] most vocal motivation is simple revenge.
[39:36] However, in the same way that the levels
[39:38] are generic vessels for McGuffins to be
[39:40] placed into at a later date, the natural
[39:43] end point of a production pipeline that
[39:45] demands endless crunch, ROR is the end
[39:48] point of corporate cowardice. There is a
[39:51] potentially insightful conclusion down
[39:53] the path of the greatest threat to
[39:55] America is America itself, but this is
[39:58] not that. The message here isn't civil.
[40:01] It's not suggesting that America has
[40:03] invested so much in outward strength
[40:05] that it has become internally brittle
[40:07] that the contradictions of American
[40:09] existence threaten the concept of
[40:11] America itself. The vulnerability isn't
[40:14] American hubris. The vulnerability is
[40:17] American subversion. The game plays to
[40:19] the sensibilities of an America in
[40:21] tension with the war on terror, the war
[40:23] in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan. As
[40:26] these wars were solidly entering their
[40:27] second decade, the narrative of a
[40:29] righteous war, always suspect in the
[40:32] first place was decidedly faltering.
[40:34] America's presence was clearly not a
[40:36] stabilizing force and they had become an
[40:39] intractable quagmire. So in Ghosts, the
[40:41] Middle East is simply written out of the
[40:43] picture in passive voice. The
[40:45] destruction of the oil producing
[40:47] deserts. No one's fault, just a thing
[40:49] that happened. The Fed, which is to say
[40:51] South America, is described as invasive,
[40:54] creeping, consuming, uninexurable force
[40:56] moving northwards to take over America
[40:59] for no reason but conquest. In the
[41:01] cutscenes, they are an organic oily mass
[41:03] crawling across the map and staining it.
[41:05] They are a perverting force, a
[41:07] subverting enemy that will invade
[41:08] American space, take America's things,
[41:11] and turn them against America. The enemy
[41:14] is both impossibly strong and utterly
[41:16] impotent. Their power is not strength in
[41:18] their own right, but their ability to
[41:20] pervert. Ror does not become
[41:22] disillusioned with America. That's not
[41:25] why he switches sides. While he
[41:27] definitely harbors a grudge against
[41:28] specific individuals, his heel turn is
[41:30] fully explained as brainwashing. He is
[41:33] tortured and drugged and converted into
[41:36] their ghost. And you know, there's that
[41:38] imagery. As the Federation torturers go
[41:41] to work on his soul, the whiteness is
[41:43] literally blasted off him and black
[41:45] crystals rupture out of his body as he
[41:47] becomes their operative. In an attempt
[41:50] at telling an underdog story, Ghost
[41:52] creates a world where American paranoia
[41:54] is fully justified, where American
[41:56] orbital weapons are good and right, but
[41:58] Federation orbital weapons are an
[42:00] abomination and also decidedly less
[42:02] potent, but more numerous. It is a world
[42:04] where the Fed is wrong to see America as
[42:06] an existential threat and behave
[42:08] accordingly. But it is simply pragmatic
[42:10] for America to assassinate Federation
[42:13] leadership. The hordes are coming.
[42:14] They're sending their murderers, their
[42:16] drug dealers, and their rapists to
[42:18] corrupt America. The wall is simply a
[42:21] necessity.
[42:24] [Applause]
[42:38] I don't think much if any of this is
[42:40] intentional. Rather, it is my belief
[42:42] that Call of Duty Ghosts is a
[42:44] thoughtless product. These are the
[42:46] consequences of a bad, albeit
[42:49] Oscar-winning writer simply trying to
[42:51] paint a broadstroke scene to efficiently
[42:54] communicate a stupid plot to an
[42:56] inattentive audience after he was handed
[42:58] a pile of half-built set pieces and a
[43:00] vague corporate mandate for the overall
[43:03] shape and tone. But in that
[43:05] thoughtlessness, in the reliance on
[43:07] stereotype and trope, Ghost tapped into
[43:10] an anxiety of the moment it was created
[43:12] in a desperate need for America to be
[43:15] righteous and justified, for its
[43:17] paranoia to be a foresight of something
[43:20] real. Given that we are now living in
[43:23] the consequences of that paranoia, the
[43:26] odious results of that anxiety, I find
[43:29] Call of Duty Ghosts repulsive. The worst
[43:32] game I have ever played.
[43:37] Wow, that sure was an episode, wasn't
[43:39] it? And to think he didn't even get
[43:41] around to mentioning the fish AI, the
[43:44] role of NORAD as the US military's head
[43:47] command, seemingly implying that Canada
[43:49] has been annexed, the controversy of the
[43:52] developers reusing motion capture data
[43:54] from Modern Warfare 2, the reality of
[43:57] American energy production, or the fact
[43:59] that Eminem song Survival was released
[44:01] as a pre-order bonus. Well, anyway, it's
[44:04] a long way back to Canada from here in
[44:06] Mexico where I most certainly am because
[44:09] I am in Mexico and most definitely not
[44:11] in southern Alberta. So, I'm going to
[44:13] get right on mossying. Until next time,
[44:16] keep your tango frosty and your LZ
[44:18] cleared.