Five months down the road after MW2 was released, I rewatch the airport scene on YouTube and my god I completely forgot how psychologically damaging that mission has been for me. It was totally hard to stomach in. Anyone else who felt disgusted, disturbed or something after playing or watching the mission No Russian? I don't think I've ever felt anything nearly as damaging as this mission had been.

Yah it was pretty dark, I guess it worked and made you "hate" the bad guy.

I felt no emotion whatsoever and killed as many of the people I came across as I could. Does that mean I have sociopathic tendencies? Nah, it just means I realize it was a game and that the characters on the screen were no more human than the ones in multiplayer matches who are controlled by actual people. 
 
I just find it hard to suspend my disbelief during a game such as MW2 in a way that let's me associate characters in it to real people. The object of the game is to kill anything and everything that comes across your path with extreme prejudice (oh except, some civilians in Favela, but they just slap you on the wrist for that, whoopie), so the characters in No Russian were just targets like any other level.
 
 Were it an RPG doing that scene, I probably would have felt something akin to what you did, as I'd be in the proper mindset to associate characters on screen to real people. That's just me, though, and I'm certain;y not trying to berate you for feeling the way you did. Things impact us all differently.

I was marginally uneasy, but not much. I knew it was a game so it's hard to put that much weight on it. I know they were going for " OMG WHY" but I was more like "OMG WHY...is that guy still crawling? *bang*

Didn't impact me an awful lot. I don't really feel most of Infinity Ward's storytelling in that game, it was garbled, convoluted and pierced with set pieces that for some reason expected you to care for under-developed or poorly explained characters. 
 
Now, when you find out who that prisoner is... THATS STORYTELLING. The airport scene, to me, seemed like the means to an end, to explain why Russia was suddenly attacking the US. And it wasn't a great means at all.

guess it's because i'm a bit of an apathetic goth type but i didn't feel a thing hosing those civvies. 
 
gonna have to make it worse then that if you want me to feel psychologically damaged by a videogame.

It had good weight to it, I felt the impact of the scene but had no remorse for the "people" I was gunning down with my M4. It also made me love Makarov as a character.

nah, it didn't disturb me. I appreciated it as an impactful scene, much as if it were a good movie. The fact that i  controlled it made no real difference to me.

It wasn't that bad.

Didn't bother me. Never had any real connection to anything going on with that part up until literally the very end of the level. If there was significant build up and more life-like-ish physics (ala GTA IV), it might've evoked more emotion.
 
Though the non-murder parts were pretty good and well made ("pre-placed" bodies, "scripted moments" and such were all good). Seemed a tad eerie when everything was empty, but still, no real feeling overall (again, except the end).

I had no problem with it. It's only a video game, and there are plenty of other games where you can kill innocent people in much worse ways. 

I thought it was dumb.

Truthfully, I thought it was brilliant. Surely it will go down as one of the most memorable, epic, and controversial moments of this generation of games. While disturbing, I wouldn't consider it to be tasteless. It put you into that dangerous situation, and you did what you had to do for the greater good. My jaw dropped while playing the mission, and completely hit the floor with the way it ended. I really loved that twist. That was one of the coolest moments I've experienced this gen, no doubt about it.

I thought it was a nice mission with good scripted animations, etc. As for the ethics of it, I was never uneasy or anything since I know it's a videogame. But I'll have you know I never shot any of the civilians.

Well I knew the context of the situation so it wasn't anything mentally destructive or something. Granted though I only killed the crowd in the beginning and just shot police.

As far as I played, there was no mandatory shooting and I could witness the massacre with no bullets shot at people, so I didn't find it much different from the regular GTA pedestrian killing.

The problem is, it didn't have much of an emotional impact. "Hey, man, let's kill some people on the airport". If they established it more, I'd probably be shitting my pants. Like I did in Mass Effect 2 during the suicide mission, despite the fact that I planned everything and executed it in the best way, I was still concerned for my men.

I never really understood the controversy.  I imagine it caused a stir because you were a normal dude (unlike Prototype, in which I killed a LOT more civies) and it took place in an airport so people freaked on the terrorism side of things.  The entire thing got blown completely out of perspective in my opinion, hordes of civilians have been killed by gamers over the years.  Why the fuss now?

I have no idea how anyone cared about this. I gladly killed everyone I could find, and thought it was funny. Its a video game. Damn.

The scene does exactly what it's supposed to do...  You feel uneasy doing it( at least I did), and as someone else mentioned: It gives you a hate against Makarov..
I'll bet the developers are really happy with it (including the amount of free PR of course)

I know it's supposed to be shocking and disturbing but it was just a videogame so it didn't really bother me, also, I shot everybody I could see
 
I'm really glad that Infinity Ward put that in the game, it was effective

Perhaps I first need to say that I'm not American, just to put things in perspective and while I understand why that mission could be very unsettling for some I do find myself surprised that a gamer who is familiar with scenes of violence (please realise that when I say this I do understand the difference between violence on a battlefield and watching a shoot-out in an airport full of civilians) could actually be psychologically damaged by that level. Personally I thought the level was very well done in a cinematic sense but it didn't carry the emotional weight and shock for me that it did for some, although by the time I played it I had been subject to a deluge of statements about how it was the most atrocious thing ever seen in a video game, not that I took any of that too seriously.

" I felt no emotion whatsoever and killed as many of the people I came across as I could. Does that mean I have sociopathic tendencies? Nah, it just means I realize it was a game and that the characters on the screen were no more human than the ones in multiplayer matches who are controlled by actual people.   I just find it hard to suspend my disbelief during a game such as MW2 in a way that let's me associate characters in it to real people. The object of the game is to kill anything and everything that comes across your path with extreme prejudice (oh except, some civilians in Favela, but they just slap you on the wrist for that, whoopie), so the characters in No Russian were just targets like any other level.   Were it an RPG doing that scene, I probably would have felt something akin to what you did, as I'd be in the proper mindset to associate characters on screen to real people. That's just me, though, and I'm certain;y not trying to berate you for feeling the way you did. Things impact us all differently. "

it was fucked up and didn't belong in the game.  
seriously, it could have just been explained in the beginning and then a more coherent story could have taken place afterwards. allowing you to take part in a fucking columbine simulation is ridiculous and i cant believe they didnt catch more flack for this.  
 
or it could have just been a cut scene and no gameplay. but allowing you to take part is just stupid. 

I didn't fire a single shot unless I absolutely had to. I felt pretty terrible the entire time, to the point where I gave minimal assistance to my allies when the riot squads arrived.

I remember I felt something the first time I played that mission. 
I think it was "Huh? alright let's do this!" 'pull trigger' 
 
I know crazy right? 
But then again, in the real world where I live, it's just a videogame.  
I used to run over old ladies and get points for it back in the day, but today it's just a baaad thing to hurt people who hasn't done anything. 
Give me a fucking break..  

" To me, it seemed like they only put it in there to be all 'edgy'. I have no qualms with the scene itself, I didn't feel 'uneasy' watching it or anything, but it just felt unnecessary. Like others have said, it had no emotional impact or anything. "

" it was fucked up and didn't belong in the game.  seriously, it could have just been explained in the beginning and then a more coherent story could have taken place afterwards. allowing you to take part in a fucking columbine simulation is ridiculous and i cant believe they didnt catch more flack for this.   or it could have just been a cut scene and no gameplay. but allowing you to take part is just stupid.  "

The real problem with this sequence was, in my mind, that it was too obviously manipulative. Whoever was responsible for coming up with the idea behind "No Russian" obviously knew about the impact that similar scripted sections of the previous game had and was a little too eager to capitalizes on this. Actually, that sort of one-upping was the biggest issue with the single player side of that game as a whole, as has been pointed out time and time again. 
 
I should go back and play it once more, come to think of it. Maybe it would have a little extra impact now, but I doubt it. It wasn't awful, it just didn't really accomplish, for me at least, what I think it should have. Especially since knowledge of the level was leaked just before the game came out, it couldn't quite survive just based on shock value. Very quickly I got into an "I get it, you guys are pretty bad" frame of mind. Though I felt like I should have felt more, it was simply a little bit too contrived, too static, to have much of an impact on me. 
 
Still didn't kill any of the civilians, though.... 
 
Edit after actually watching up to that point in above video: On film, even without a lot of context, it's pretty darn effective. So I think the problem had something to do with execution and perspective, especially being set in the game as a whole. Can't quite put my finger on it, though. Something to do with not reading the victims as being fully human when minutes ago the player was blasting through dozens of similar figures. Guess I'll go look it over again.

" @TwoOneFive:  that's why there was that warning thing in the very beginning of the game: if you didn't want to do it you didn't have to "

It wasn't that impactful except for one point. some guy was dragging his friend who had been shot, so some blood was dragging along the floor, then a russian walked up to them and shot them both. that only happened the first time i played through the mission and it was pretty crazy. but as others have said, its not really that great of a scene. i shot a couple civilians but not too many.
but at the same time i think theres a different mindset to shooting civilians in that game as opposed to in GTA, since it only occurs in one scene and its somewhat unexpected.

I approached it with the attitude that it was a game and that I was shooting pieces of code.  I joined in with the shooting then accidentally hit one of the bad guys and got mission failure

"

"

" @Shinri said:

" To me, it seemed like they only put it in there to be all 'edgy'. I have no qualms with the scene itself, I didn't feel 'uneasy' watching it or anything, but it just felt unnecessary. Like others have said, it had no emotional impact or anything. "

Erm...it was pretty much the main story point of the game that set up most of the game...were you not paying attention? "

That scene had absolutely no affect on me, I'm not sure what that says about myself but it did absolutely nothing. It was just a scene like any other, after all it was just a video game. I wasn't shocked, I wasn't disgusted and I sure as hell wasn't moved enough to bitch about it and it's disgusting visual realism. Considering all the massive hype that scene had been given prior to release I was expecting something totally mind-blowing and shocking, which I didn't get.  
 
Again, not sure if that makes me a bad person. For one I know I would NEVER do such a thing in real life. The problem with that scene was that you were playing a character we knew bugger all about, if it was a character that had been developed over hours of gameplay then maybe it would have made more impact on me. But due to this exact issue it was a forgettable scene.

The only time a game would mess with my head was if you had to do Heavy Rain type stuff. Like with the PS3 Eye cam or Natal recording you have to like cut off a finger or something to get to the next part (in real life :o).  
Now that is what I call sick. 

Fucking NPCs all looked the same, they deserved to die. That and the fact they're only made of polygons. I've been "killing" innocent civilians in games such as GTA for over 10 years, it's hardly any different. 

I even shot the guys crawling on the ground trying to get away..
 
Haha am I a bad person?

No. I'm not a fucking pussy.

I could not gun down a single person, even if they shot at me, i killed maybe one or two swat members. It was pretty disturbing to me.

It was intense and pretty unique, but I think the story failed to capitalize on the emotion/intensity created.