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Small details: Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare

A few years ago I had the pleasure of going to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, an emblematic place and showcase of cultures lost around the world. Between ocean totems and Native American remains I found a curious piece that caught my eye: a native Gilbert Islands armor made of coconut fibers. It looked like a gambeson with a cardboard armor on it, brown all over it, and although I could not touch it for obvious reasons, its appearance must be soft. To counteract it, their swords had serrated edges. The history of the war in general and to get hostia in particular is one of evolution and adaptation: the castles serve until the cannons arrive, the cavalry serves until the cars arrive, assault rifles mean that few people can do much damage in guerrilla warfare. The etcetera gives to write sagas.

Communicating that in the video game universe can be somewhat more difficult. The differences of shooter to shooter, from Overwatch to Battlefield, are many times significant and suppose to learn new systems, but to express that change within a same paradigm complicates the things What the difference between a Garand and a FAL in Battlefield if in both cases you shoot a semiatuomatic rifle? You do not feel its weight nor texture nor materials nor you have to maintain it. It is recharged by pressing a button so that an animation, always the same, does the work for you. The rocket launchers are the same now and before; the difference, if that, is that today can be remote control, but the classic catch, pull the trigger and see something "bum" a hundred meters feels the same everywhere. Button. Explosion.

The challenge they proposed from Infinity Ward to bring Call of Duty from World War II to the post-11S Middle East conflicts involved more than a reskin, cinematic where the world is seen in bird's eye view from a satellite or UAVs online. World at War invented his own excuses to have low streaks and, if he wanted, even Chivalry: Medieval Warfare could do it. You order the archers to save or an explorer tells you how the battlefield is. Silent Hill is a pachinko, so anything is possible.

But modern war is not that of the Forties and Save Private Ryan. Weapons are more sophisticated, but so are the tactics and shapes of the soldiers. Showing that change involves understanding how the shooting now works, and the symbol of the new world is the blinding grenade. In the tutorial of that boat of pladur not only do you shoot down to each figure that opposes resistance but they invite you to throw blinding grenades before entering each room. It is a preventive measure: warm the grenade, the strips, you enter while they are all stunned, two shots, you continue. It is a support tool, a debuff of modern conflict. The missions under the command of the British Special Service carry an indistinguishably tactical tinge of intelligent maneuver rather than open fire without thinking. Snipers, silencers. They are the most targeted levels; the seed of that legendary mission in Chernobyl has planted these types. Calculate before shooting. 

Use the blinding grenade.I know there is more to the weapons of today than a simple grenade; the evolution of radio transmissions, night vision, bulletproof vests, mobile artillery are more representative of the 21st century army than an item of special forces. But all that equipment, the coupled grenade launcher, the holographic sight, speak the same language as the Thompson or the BAR: efficient killing, aiming, shooting and the doll in the peephole drop the ground and stop annoying the rest. Showing how the war has changed means doing more than describing the new rifles and how you can attach shotguns to a rifle or the AR-16 can have a telescopic sight glass. The planes with their bombs already existed with the mortar, the bullets have always had the same whistle. You have to show something that did not exist then. The blinding grenade.