Ark of the Lost Angels

The Members of Task Force 141 in Call of Duty Modern Warfare III (Credit: Infinity Ward)

Reboots come with pitfalls that can easily make new takes on old stories fall flat.

Call of Duty is one of the largest video game series of all time. The original Modern Warfare trilogy binds a lot of gamers together with common memories to this day. Many of us fondly look back on fighting alongside Captain Price and Soap MacTavish to stop renegade Russians from plunging the world into total chaos. Ask a number of people who played Call of Duty at that time, and they will speak fondly of playing what was essentially Red Dawn in the 21^st century. That’s not even mentioning multiplayer having a stranglehold on half of Xbox Live while the other half was dominated by Halo 3 in an era where the competition between giants made gaming such a fun experience.

The original Call of Duty Modern Warfare trilogy sit fondly in the hearts of gamers worldwide. In 2019, Infinity Ward rebooted the subseries with a fresh new take on beloved characters and plotlines. The praise and criticism of these reboots gives a good glimpse into some lessons about rebooting stories.  

This week marks the release of the latest installment in the Call of Duty series of video games, with Black Ops 6. Call of Duty’s two main subseries have been for the better part of its existence have been the Modern Warfare games and the Black Ops games. While there will be plenty to say about the upcoming entry’s conspiracy thriller story set amidst the geopolitical changes of the early 1990s in the wake of the Cold War, it also means this is the last time to talk about the rebooted Modern Warfare III, which garnered much criticism last year for its campaign.

One of the most common complaints raised after Modern Warfare III’s launch was, “How could you enjoy Modern Warfare III’s campaign!? It was nothing like the original!” That comes with positives and negatives, but more positives than common discourse would lead one to believe.

The nomenclature of the games can be difficult. Call of Duty originally used numbers for their entries, stopping after the very first Modern Warfare game. As such, no game with the title Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was released until 2019’s first entry into the rebooted subseries. The original sequels used Arabic numerals while the reboots used Roman numerals. This article will attempt to keep the abbreviations consistent with common cultural usage, which is as follows:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) will be COD4
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) will be MW2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) will be MW3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) will be MW2019
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022) will be MWII
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023) will be MWIII

Old and New

The original Modern Warfare trilogy relied upon old Cold War fears and the Global War on Terror. Russia as the bad guy in American fiction goes back to the late 1940s. Once Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich was snuffed out after twelve years, the two largest parties which accomplished the feat were left staring each other down, hands on their pistols, amidst the ruins of Germany. The Cold War led to fears of direct confrontation between America and the Soviet Union, which came with paranoia after the USSR detonated their first nuclear bomb in 1949 in response to the two America dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to decisively end World War II.

Since that day, the idea that America and the Soviet Union facing off would end the world influenced much of American cinema, which in turn, influenced video games. A small incursion in the Middle East being spawned by Ultranationalist Russians pining for the glory days of Soviet Supremacy which ended up inflaming tensions to cause World War III is more of an encapsulation of lingering Cold War fears than reflective of the warfare being fought in 2007, when Call of Duty 4 was released.

A summary of the original Modern Warfare trilogy can be found within this article detailing those entries’ surprising anti-war position. For the sake of brevity within this article, it will not be reproduced here.

While the toys used were fairly modern for their time, the warfare of the original Modern Warfare games was ironically dated. Aside from COD4’s bountiful parallels to the Iraq War, most of the game’s action revolves around lingering Cold War fears of an aggressive and hostile Russia. It would be another year before the real Russia would spark a border conflict with Georgia to prevent the latter country joining the EU and NATO, and it would be another seven years before Russia would illegally occupy Ukrainian territory, and a further eight years before Russia would ignite the unjustifiable and brutal war against Ukraine that continues to rage as of the writing of this article.

In 2007, the greatest threats to the free world were still coming from the Middle East, and here Infinity Ward spending their time from 2007 to 2011 rehashing 1980s fears and the Red, White, and Blue style of chest thumping with which America traditionally responded to those fears.

By 2019, the world was in a much different place. Russia’s mask had started to slip, leading brutal campaigns across the Middle East to help their allies and interfering in plenty of places across the globe. Islamic extremists had continued striking the west in smaller attacks, choosing western Europe as their main striking point instead of America after 9/11. The idea of two nations going to war on a mass scale was almost laughable. Wars were handled with proxies and special forces, the great powers of the world using pawns to further their own goals. Infinity Ward accounted for all of these factors as influences when they announced a reboot of the Modern Warfare subseries starting with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and bringing beloved characters like Captain Price into the modern age.

The New Stories

MW2019 starts with a covert American CIA-Marine Raider mission overseen by CIA handler Kate Laswell to find chemical weapons stockpiled off the books by a particularly unsavory Russian general who has been running an illegal occupation of a fictional Middle Eastern nation for twenty years. CIA field operative Alex Keller is the only survivor of the raid when terrorists believed to be from Urzikstan assault the Marines and take the gas. Sergeant Kyle Garrick of the SAS is part of a counter terrorism unit in London and is frontline when terrorists from Al Qatala assault London’s Piccadilly Square with bombs and guns. (“Al Qatala” translates to “The Killers”, meant to be a thinly veiled version of Al Qaeda without the religious aspects).

Captain Price arrives and recruits Sergeant Garrick, who offers the intelligence his unit had on AQ’s activities within London. While Alex Keller travels to Urzikstan to meet with the head of the Urzikstan Liberation Force: a woman named Farah Karim. Farah, and her brother Hadir, have been fighting against the Russian occupiers under General Roman Barkov’s command for most of their lives. While Alex helps disrupt Barkov’s activities in Urzikstan, Price and Garrick raid a safehouse in Camden, London used by Al Qatala where they uncover the whereabouts of AQ’s leader, The Wolf. Alex links up with a unit of Marines and attacks the hospital where The Wolf is hiding, successfully capturing him. When the handoff at the US Embassy goes awry, Price, Garrick, Alex, Farah, and Hadir have to avoid the AQ forces storming the embassy and keep The Wolf away from his followers. Hadir is revealed to have assaulted the Marines and stolen the gas after The Wolf is freed, and the team tracks both to a compound in the countryside. Farah and Alex successfully kill The Wolf, but Hadir escapes.

Alex decides to remain in Urzikstan with Farah’s forces while Price and Garrick meet an “old comrade” in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Nikolai helps the pair track down the gas and stop an attack on Russia. Price and Garrick then head to Barkov’s estate in Moldova, capturing Hadir and getting intel on Barkov’s gas factory in Georgia. With Farah’s forces, they lead a combined assault on the gas factory, destroying the facility and killing Barkov. In the end credits scene, Price is putting together Task Force 141 to continue fighting Al Qatala and the Russian Ultranationalists they’re working with, led by Victor Zakhaev. It is then revealed that Garrick has been given a nickname: Gaz.

MW2019’s campaign was gripping and intense, charting a new course for the Modern Warfare games, with minimal involvement of the new versions of old characters. Of the four, only Price and Gaz play major roles in the story, with Griggs relegated to a cameo appearance in one mission, and Nikolai playing a supporting role in two others. The protagonist of the story is arguably Farah, since the fight for Urzikstan is a fight for her homeland, and she has a personal history with Barkov. If you had told me that a Middle Eastern woman was the protagonist of a Call of Duty game back in 2009, I never would have believed you. Yet, Farah’s journey is a crucial part of the game’s narrative, and the writing and performance make her an incredible presence.

The biggest change and greatest strength of MW2019 compared to the original games is the characters experiencing and reacting to their journey. Alex’s arc is about walking away from being a triggerman for the CIA and fighting for a cause he genuinely believes in: the ULF’s mission to liberate Urzikstan. Gaz went from a salty Lieutenant making snarky comments whenever something went wrong to a soldier sorting through the ugly morality of fighting wars against enemies with no borders and no armies. The events of the story force Gaz to question everything he experiences, and hopefully lead the audience to ask those same questions.

The only character to not have their worldview thoroughly challenged is Price, and he provides an excellent foil to everyone else’s journey. Even Price’s characterization is different from the original games, turning from a seasoned, bloodthirsty veteran to a hardened soldier who offers comfort and guidance to Gaz while still keeping the mission in focus. Price’s compelling consistency lets the other characters unfold around him and keeps the narrative grounded.

The gritty reality of the game was allowed to shine through and became a key feature of the first reboot entry. The 2005 London Underground bombings and the 2015 Paris attack were key influences on the Piccadilly mission. The conflict within Urzikstan was informed by the events currently going on in Syria and other areas of the Middle East. The Embassy was inspired by the Benghazi attack of 2012, and The Wolf’s Lair was heavily inspired by the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Only one mission involved massive amounts of Western military hardware and personnel taking the fight to bad guys in a slug fest. It was refreshing. It was nothing like the original trilogy.

The story of MW2019 continues in its Special Operations and Warzone modes with periodic cutscenes over the life of the game being released to further the story. Various groups of operators undertake missions around the city of Verdansk in the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Kastovia when Al Qatala launches an attack on the city under the command of a new leader, whose name is revealed as Khaled Al-Asad. West and East cooperate as they uncover Victor Zakhaev being Al-Asad’s benefactor to raise chaos in the city so Zakhaev can activate a forgotten Soviet nuclear missile and fulfill his father’s wishes of bringing the West to their knees. Task Force 141 along with Farah, Alex, and Nikolai unite to stop Zakhaev and preserve the peace.

In both trilogies, the verisimilitude with the real world drops off severely with the second entry.

2022’s Modern Warfare II, the game starts out with the assassination by cruise missile of an Iranian General in a nearby country making an arms deal. This event mirrors the 2020 assassination of Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad fairly closely. The general’s subordinate, Hassan Zyani, immediately throws his lot in with Al Qatala and makes public statements about wanting to strike back against the West who killed the general. Kate Laswell informs General Shepherd, who oversees Task Force 141’s activities, about Zyani. Shepherd dispatches a contingent of Marines alongside Task Force 141 members Lieutenant Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley and Sergeant John ‘Soap’ MacTavish to a fictional Middle East Country bordering Urzikstan to capture Zyani. They fail but discover American-made missiles were in Al Qatala’s hands. Meanwhile, Laswell travels to Amsterdam to meet up with Price and Gaz, who are investigating Al Qatala’s operation in the city to find who is helping them smuggle the missiles. Price, Gaz, and Laswell discover that it is the Las Almas Cartel, and they are smuggling Zyani over the Texas-Mexico border. Laswell calls an old contact, Colonel Alejandro Vargas to try and stop Zyani before he reaches the United States. Alejandro and his right hand, Sergeant Major Rodolfo “Rudy” Parra follow Zyani across the border into a Texas town, but a firefight with the cartel breaks out and the cartel returns Zyani to Mexico.

Soap and Ghost arrive to work with Alejandro, Rudy, and their military unit: Los Vaqueros. Los Vaqueros are a contingent of Mexican Special Forces under Alejandro’s command with the sole purpose of fighting back against the Cartel and trying to keep the city of Las Almas free. Soap, Ghost, and Los Vaqueros follow Zyani’s trail, and with the help of American PMC Shadow Company and its leader, Phillip Graves, capture Zyani. Shepherd orders the alliance to let Zyani go as they cannot legally hold him. Thanks to Zyani’s phone being in contact with a Cartel warehouse on an island off the coast of Spain, Price and Gaz are able to continue the investigation into the missing missiles. The mission being unauthorized bites them when Al Qatala captures Laswell and spirits her away to Urzikstan where Price and Gaz meet up with Farah and Nikolai to rescue Laswell.

In Mexico, Soap infiltrates a cartel gathering to nab the head of the Las Almas Cartel: Valeria Garza, who previously served with Alejandro before usurping a cartel boss and becoming the preeminent power in Las Almas. Valeria remains captured at Los Vaqueros headquarters while Soap, Ghost, Alejandro, and Graves stop the second missile from striking New Orleans, after which, Shepherd orders Graves to take Los Vaqueros HQ and to cut Soap and Ghost out from the operation. Hostilities ensue, Ghost and Soap are forced to go on the run, meeting up with Rudy and rescuing Alejandro and the rest of Los Vaqueros before they are rejoined by Price, Gaz, and Laswell.

Laswell reveals that Shepherd was using Graves’ Shadow Company to move the missiles several months before the events of the main story. The convoy was ambushed by Russian mercenaries. The missiles were stolen and then sold to Iran, who then handed them over to Al Qatala. A reunited Task Force 141 works with Los Vaqueros to take back the headquarters and get Valeria to divulge the remaining missile’s location: Chicago. Task Force 141 and a team of Marines take on Al Qatala’s forces across multiple floors of a high rise in Chicago where they stop the missile, kill Zyani, and save the day.

In a post-credits scene, Soap, Ghost, Gaz, Price, and Laswell are discussing the events which unfolded in a Chicago bar. Shepherd is in hiding, Graves is presumed dead after Mexico, and the mercenaries were hired by Ultranationalists under orders from one Vladimir Makarov.

Similar to the first reboot game, more of the story unfolds in post-launch content. A series of four cooperative missions is released which detail Price, Gaz, and Farah looking into a Soviet bunker in Urzikstan with a nuclear missile as Al Qatala has shown up and entered the Atomgrad facility. After fighting their way through, rescuing Alex, and confronting and killing Hadir, he offers a warning that the Russians are returning and are the major threat. The cutscenes for the game’s post launch seasons reveal a chemical attack in the fictional Dutch city of Vondel and a Russian real-estate magnate hiring a PMC to intervene. Graves is later revealed to have survived and the PMC is identified as Konni Group, the same PMC which assaulted Shadow Company and stole the missiles. Graves strikes an alliance with Farah to fight back against Konni as Russia returns to Urzikstan. Finally, the in-game event for the Modern Warfare III trailer reveal pushes the narrative further: Graves leading Shadow Company into uncovering an underground facility where remainders of Barkov’s chemical weapons have been kept. Two Shadow Company mercenaries reveal themselves to be Konni and take samples of the gas that were recovered by Shadow Company.

Modern Warfare III begins with Konni mercenaries infiltrating a prison in Verdansk to break Makarov out. Shortly thereafter, Konni mercenaries attack multiple sites in Urzikstan. Farah is caught in the strike at the port where Shadow Company was unloading missiles for Farah’s forces, though she manages to place trackers on the containers. Price, Ghost, Soap, and Gaz investigate Konni’s presence at an unfinished nuclear power plant which was used to hide some of Barkov’s chemicals. The trackers on the missiles lead Task Force 141 back to the Atomgrad bunkers. Price infiltrates the facility with Farah while Laswell sneaks onto the Arklov Peak Military Base in Kastovia to meet with a contact who has information about Makarov. Price and Farah discover that Konni intends to launch the missiles and blame the Urzikstan Liberation Force for the attack but are unable to stop them from striking the base. Afterwards, Makarov’s operatives crash an airliner and attempt to blame the attack on the ULF. After a flashback to Makarov’s capture in 2019 after attacking the Verdansk stadium, Task Force 141 is contacted by General Shepherd with intel on Makarov’s financier he wants to trade for a way back after going into hiding in the wake of his betrayal of the team in Mexico. The 141 uses Shepherd’s intel to find Makarov’s hideout and capture his lieutenant. His lieutenant informs them of a prisoner’s location, which turns out to be General Shepherd, who learned of their plan to blow up the Gora Dam in Verdansk. Task Force 141 stop Makarov’s attack on the dam, and then they finally take out Makarov’s remaining stock of chemical weapons at an airbase in Urzikstan. Makarov launches one final attack in London and attempts to bomb the Channel Tunnel, but is stopped by Task Force 141, although he is able to kill Soap before he is chased off. In a mid-credits scene, Captain Price executes a redeemed General Shepherd in his office in the Pentagon for betraying the team, and learning the lesson Makarov imparted to them at their meeting in the flashback

The post launch story does not continue the narrative, rather offering vignettes to promote the new content.

The Criticisms and the Problems

Much online criticism of the rebooted Modern Warfare games is around the degrees of separation from the original trilogy’s narrative. For some people, the idea that the reboots must hem closely to the original story means that the new narrative is a much weaker one. The advantage of a reboot is to correct shortcomings from the original works, and take the story in new directions, or play with new combinations of characters.

The reboot’s biggest shortcoming is the failure to live up to its potential. The end of the first rebooted title left Captain Price forming Task Force 141 to stop Victor Zakhaev and his ally leading Al Qatala, Khaled Al-Asad. The reboots had the opportunity to use two of Call of Duty 4’s under-developed villains as interesting characters. Victor Zakhaev as an influential man working in the shadows, trying to live up to his father’s dream of a powerful Russia, with a grudge against Price for trying to kill his father. Al-Asad could have been explored as a man desperately fighting for his country and to make imperialist powers pay while being supplied by one of the nations he’s fighting against. Instead of a willing accomplice to Zakhaev’s plans, Al-Asad could have become much more of a wildcard and hindered Zakhaev as much as he helps. Those opportunities were tossed by the wayside when Zakhaev was killed off in a Warzone cutscene and Al-Asad wasn’t even mentioned in either of the two sequels. Rumors had it that Hadir, Farah’s brother, was meant to be Al-Asad, and could have provided an interesting foil for another story exploring the chaos felt within Urzikstan after Barkov’s fall. Instead, Al-Asad remain unmentioned, and Hadir was unceremoniously killed off in the MWII Atomgrad raid finale.

MWII similarly had the opportunity to connect more deeply with the plotlines set up by the first game, giving that follow up on Victor Zakhaev and Al-Asad while bringing the cartel plotline into play for a different feeling regarding the War on Terror. Instead, the narrative gets sidetracked by a paper thin betrayal by Shepherd, Graves, and Shadow Company to hit the same plot beats as the original Modern Warfare 2. What made the original Shepherd’s betrayal so impactful was that nobody saw it coming, it subverted expectations when Roach and Ghost stepped up to the helicopter and were unceremoniously executed by Shepherd once they had the evidence on Makarov. When the reboot hit and Shepherd was introduced, everyone expected a betrayal by Shadow Company. Therefore, the best way to juke the audience’s expectations would be to have Shepherd be loyal and heroic this time around. Or for Shepherd to betray the team and Graves to be in the dark, as Graves was built to be a very rough, morally flexible mercenary who relished getting his hands dirty. Seeing him stick with Task Force 141 and Los Vaqueros when Shepherd turned on them would have thrown returning audiences for a loop.

Modern Warfare III continues more of the plot threads from the first reboot game: the state of Urzikstan, the Ultranationalist movement in Russia, the threat of Makarov instigating war between east and west, etc. While the lack of Alejandro and Valeria with their interesting dynamic as ex-comrades turned bitter foes, and the dynamic the cartel storyline brought to the table, MWIII feels connected to past entries. Verdansk was the site of the original Warzone battle royale map, released in March 2020. Verdansk is very nostalgic for newer players to the franchise thanks to the large amount of gaming at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. Seeing sites from Verdansk in the campaign, returning to detailed and perfect recreations of sites such as the Stadium and Gora Dam hit the nostalgia button in the right way, and gave a sense of continuity to the newest entries that the older ones felt lacking.  

One of the major strengths of the reboots is the focus on character arcs. The weakness in some of the stories were carried by the strength in character writing, which was a far cry from the original trilogy in which the characters were barely distinguishable cardboard cutouts with some quippy banter, there to provide exposition during gunfights.

Gaz in MW2019 comes to understand what it means to “take the bloody gloves off and fight” and has open conversations with Price about his level of comfort with the moral compromises required by people in his position. Alex’s arc within the game echoes a similar sentiment, refusing to abandon allies merely because he has orders to do so as he finally found a cause worth fighting for. Similarly, Modern Warfare II had Soap go from an eager young Sergeant to a more measured, more thoughtful soldier, and Ghost go from a pathological and distrusting loner to someone who valued his team highly, and understood the burden of leadership. By the time Modern Warfare III came around, Task Force 141 was fully assembled and the character development of the previous game was clearly visible: Price was still the unflappable leader, Ghost was a very capable Lieutenant, Soap was much more restrained, and Gaz took the position of devil’s advocate by remaining coldly logical when everyone else’s emotions were running high.

Reboots are opportunities to do things differently. Characters who were never given the chance to flourish now have the opportunity to see development and

No discussion of the new Modern Warfare series would be complete without mentioning the main villain. The original Vladimir Makarov had an impressive resume: initially introduced as a mad dog killer and indiscriminate terrorist, he was revealed to be a Russian supremacist who wanted to see the West burn, and engineered World War III with a false flag attack on a Moscow airport which he made seem was sponsored by America. The characterization ends there: he’s clever and bloodthirsty.

The reboots have lower stakes. World War III culminating in a brutal street fight in Washington DC ending in US Army Rangers taking back the White House from Russian forces was no longer on the table. Both the narrative and the character work are better for it. Obviously, it is difficult to judge Makarov on his first appearance and the beginning of his story arc in the new continuity, but he feels so much more fleshed out as a person in the new game. In the introductory mission, Makarov extolls loyalty to each other in their mission at the end of the prison break. Immediately afterwards, he is shown to be petty and vindictive when having the leader of the prison break operation executed for questioning Makarov. Throughout the campaign, he is shown to be clever, sadistic, petty, self-aggrandizing, and a mix of character traits conveyed by Julian Kostov’s excellent delivery.

Most of the criticism from fans is how weak the new Makarov is. Perhaps his plans didn’t cause as much devastation, but as a character, the new Makarov is far more compelling to watch on screen than the old. He feels more human, and Kostov’s softer face makes Makarov all the more chilling to watch. It goes to show that the most monstrous in the world don’t have to look like it. Also remains to see how Makarov’s second entry plays out. With the benefit of hindsight on the original’s whole story and only the first act of the new Makarov’s having been told, it remains to be seen if the new Makarov will soar to better heights than his original counterpart.

After Action Report

Nostalgia is a powerful force. Had the original Modern Warfare trilogy not been as beloved as it was, the reboots never would have happened. However, a constant focus on comparison with the originals as if reboots are meant to be perfect recreations retold with fancier graphics takes away from the creative opportunities of a reboot. Characters seen in new ways, or interactions which never took place in the original version of a story can help make a reboot feel distinct. The idea of taking familiar characters and reinterpreting them through a more modern lens, in more modern situations, is what makes a reboot shine. The new Modern Warfare games are at their best when taking familiar characters and putting new challenges in their path and exploring depths to the characters that didn’t exist in their original iteration. The games feel their least compelling when they try to retread familiar ground instead of focusing on telling the best story they possibly can going forward.

They make a good example for mistakes and successes with reboots, and a little critical eye will reveal hints to which aspiring writers who may end up tackling a reboot would do well to pay attention.