The DeanBeat: Coming to terms with brutality in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Everybody has a line. We all draw it in different ways. That’s the theme of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, this year’s first-person combat game from the Infinity Ward studio and big publisher Activision. But it’s also my own reaction from playing it, which has some of the most brutal scenes I have ever seen in a video game.

When I saw (but didn’t play) a couple of scenes during a preview event in May, I felt like the designers went too far. The scenes were devoid of context, and I could not imagine why that level of violence belonged in a video game, which I assumed was a work of entertainment. Now that I’ve played the whole game and interviewed narrative director Taylor Kurosaki of Infinity Ward, I understand the creative intentions better. (Here is our formal review).