Call of Duty franchise is known for its difficult yet fun missions. But one of the missions that stands among the most talked about ones is the No Russsian mission from 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Not only did the mission make noise for being a difficult one, but it also had a controversy surrounding it back when the game was released.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 No Russian Controversy
Before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released in 2009, video footage from one of the missions named “No Russian” was illegally leaked on the Internet. Call of Duty publisher Activision immediately confirmed that such a level existed in the game and also went on to clarify its context within the game.
The devs issued an email statement which read that the leaked level was “not representative of the overall gameplay experience in Modern Warfare 2″. As soon as the video leaked, it became a topic of discussion among gaming publications as well as major mainstream news publications, including the Associated Press and The Guardian.
Apart from being leaked, the level also sparked a lot of controversy on release, for allowing the player to participate in a mass shooting that takes place at a Russian airport. Notably, the players are not forced by the game to shoot any civilians. In fact, the players can skip the level altogether without penalty.
However, the mission had the game journalists divided. Tom Hoggins from The Daily Telegraph said that he could not properly evaluate the level without playing it. However, he questioned if Infinity Ward had treated this level wrongly by allowing players to use grenades to “treat these civilians as human bowling pins“.
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Similarly, The Guardian,’s Keith Stuart slammed the skip feature, saying it was a “cop-out” for a level that the developer actually wanted players to experience. On the other hand, Jim Sterling of Destructoid seemed to have a positive reception of the mission.
They were of the opinion that the mission was in fact a statement that video games were capable of talking on controversial topics. According to them, if the ‘No Russian’ mission could induce players to question if the deaths of innocent civilians were justifiable, then video games in general could ultimately be considered an art form.
Developers on the ‘No Russian’ mission
A year later, when the studio was preparing for the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops in 2010, the questions about the ‘No Russian’ controversy continued. During an interview about Black Ops with The Guardian, developer Treyarch’s community manager Josh Olin was asked about the controversy.
Since the controversial No Russian mission garnered Modern Warfare 2 a lot of media coverage and attention, he was asked whether Black Ops also had such moments that the people could strongly react to.
To this, he said,
“There may be some controversial moments, but nothing is done gratuitously. Anything we put in our games is meant to further the immersion, further the plot in some way, plucking an emotional string of the player. We’ve always believed in free speech, we are making a mature game for mature audiences.”
On release, Black Ops did have a controversy attached, although not as intense as the ‘No Russian’ one. Cuba had criticized the game for depicting American special forces in negative light. It showed how the American special forces tried but failed to slay a young Fidel Castro, and instead killed a body-double.
