The Big Picture: Narrative Focus

I've talked about the frat-boy favorite Call of Duty before. Today, it serves as a cash cow for Activision Blizzard, serving uncontrolled testosterone wrapped in a soggy political thriller shell. However, things were not always this way.

Once upon a time, Call of Duty was a powerful experience for players. What distinguished it from other games was it's narrative focus; instead of being a one-man army that was responsible for single-handedly winning the war, the player felt like a small part of a much bigger conflict. The WWII setting didn't have to be explained much. All the player had to know was that if those AA batteries weren't taken down soon, a bombing run would fail. Not that the war would ever actually be lost, mind you (players would just have to try it again before getting it right), it convincingly built up the right tension to make the player feel in the middle of something bigger.

The WWII setting provided more then just a historical backdrop; provided a large, wide-ranging conflict that doesn't need to be explained. The motivation of the Nazi's doesn't need to be explained, nor do those of the player character. The game can show some German soldiers shooting civilians or something to emphasize the point, but the player already knows who are the bad guys and why they must be fought.

A couple sequels later, the setting changes from WWII to something more modern. Instead of being set in Iraq or Afghanistan, the conflicts are entirely fictional. More importantly, they are based around characters: heroes and villains. This provides for a fundamentally different narrative then the previous games.

Massive, globe-spanning conflicts that focus primarily on a handful of heroes and villains is something that mainly works in fantasy. We never question the central rolls of Gandolf, Sauron, and Frodo in the war for the ring, because everything in their world is aggrandized. It's entirely plausible. When that same tactic is applied to our world, we begin to question the plausibility of the situation. A story about a single man turning back the tides in WWII and winning the war (by assassinating Hitler in a slow-motion shoot out) would be pure, ridiculous cheese, yet that's essentially what has happened.

The real world is far to complex to be changed by any one person.