I read Edge-Online every day. I could read Kotaku, JoyStiq, Destructoid, IGN, GameSpot, or several other sites (and I often do), but I subscribed to the email newsletter at Edge one day and I’ve become semi hooked.
Yes, semi-hooked doesn’t sound terribly convincing. Every site gets the news, some early, some later, but they all get it. What I enjoy about Edge-online is its columnists, and today’s column by Chris Dahlen, “Survival of the Fittest,” is an insightful, erudite piece that puts Modern Warfare’s gritty story in perspective. 
Like a Bond film, Modern Warfare 2 moves faster than most people can breathe. It’s incredible action sequence after incredible action sequence, interrupted only by loading screens that tell the compressed story. When you finally pull up for air, your skin is tingling, your mind awash in violent kill-or-be-killed scenes, and your fingers twitching. It’s an amazing feeling, actually. Like a rocket-fueled roller-coaster that you control is implanted into your nervous system, plus five cups of coffee, and one cigarette for balance.
But what about that story? Dahlen looks at the game and sees it as a conscientious example of story-telling sans a moral kilter, without a rudder, or even a little Jimity Cricket strolling in once in a while to say, “Hey, if you do that awful thing, people are going to die and that’s not good.”
Modern Warfare I and now 2 are Infinity Ward’s way of saying goodbye to its former self, to World War II, to its originator, Medal of Honor, see you fucking later–and flipping them the bird, the California high sign. IW has swallowed enough of all of that World War II morality stuff. In the post-Bush era, the United States has tortured people, it’s attacked Iraq, watched as Baghdad’s stores, shops, and buildings were ransacked by its own people, and then, years later, sent in private companies to pay off government officials. It’s hunting terrorists overseas and in its own backyard, and isn’t looked at as a moral leader as clearly and cleanly as it once was. Pardon me for sounding like a conspiratorial lefty, I’m not really, but we don’t live in 1944 anymore. We live in 2009. The US isn’t exactly the same country it was in WWII. And World War II was different than most wars because there was a clear enemy and it was really evil. It was because of unspeakably evil things conducted by Nazi Germany that we could take the moral highground–and savor it.
Infinity Ward’s story is based on elite militants hunting unscrupulous terrorists. There is no savoring to be done, no relaxing, just the frantic scramble for air. As the story unfolds, we learn that the only way to fight fire with fire is to imitate the unscrupulous bastards, to become more bad-ass–or in this case, more fit–using every possible weapon in our power to catch and thwart them. The victor gets to write history as the game says, and like Malcolm X said, the winner must use “whatever means necessary.” With Activision’s news today’s of the game’s worldwide sales of $550 million in five days (approximately 8.5-9 million units), it appears that most folks agree.
