Modern Warfare 3 Stirs Up No Russian Controversy With Its Own Shocking Mission

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III‘s campaign is available now for people who preordered the game digitally, and that means people are playing it and posting footage of the story mode.

This story contains major spoilers about Modern Warfare 3’s campaign.

As was rumored, the game features a No Russian-style shocking mission where players take part in a terrorist attack resulting in a great loss of life. In the mission, the villain Makarov boards an airplane with his henchmen as they plan to carry out a terrorist attack on an airplane. Makarov and company make their way through airport security without issue and head to their gate to take the 6:45 PM flight to Sochi, Russia. The screen goes black before resuming with a cutscene that shows a plane filled with men, women, and children, many of them Russian nationals.

Makarov forces a woman named Samara, who previously had ties to a military organization fighting against Russia, to carry and eventually detonate a bomb on the plane. This scene plays out in first-person from Samar’s perspctive. Markarov forces this woman to the back of the plane, with the bomb strapped to her chest. She is made to carry a pistol in her hand against her will. She tells Makarov and says she is not a terrorist. But she looks like one when she’s holding the bomb and the pistol, a henchman says. She pleads with the passengers to help her defuse the bomb, but, believing she is a terrorist, they attack her–eventually, the bomb detonates.

Makarov and his team of villains escape from the plane in parachutes. Everyone on board dies in the explosion, a news report states, adding that the plane went down in a suspicious manner. The next mission involves Task Force 141 investigating the crash site and beginning to learn the truth of what actually happened.

Before this, a developer at Infinity Ward suggested in a deleted tweet seen by GameSpot that Modern Warfare III might put players into an interactive terrorist mission. Modern Warfare III’s airplane sequence was likely the mission the developer was referring to.

The No Russian mission from 2009’s Modern Warfare II was controversial, and this sequence in Modern Warfare III is sure to stir up some debate and controversy as well. Prior to Modern Warfare III’s launch, an earlier trailer heavily suggested that Modern Warfare III would have a airplane terrorist attack mission.

The No Russian mission was not only polarizing for fans but also the developers themselves at Infinity Ward. The sequence went too far in showing extreme violence, in some people’s eyes, and many called it out for being especially unpleasant given how frequent mass shootings have become in real life.

In the 2009 game and the remaster, players are warned about “offensive content” and have the option to skip the mission entirely. It does not appear that this new mission in Modern Warfare III gives players the ability to skip the airplane sequence or warn them about the content.

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