Battlefield 3: Let's talk about the story, gents
By delta_ass 4 Comments
I've been thinking about the plot for the campaign for a while, since it's been over.
Okay, it was a little bewildering at first when they just throw you into it. The debriefing scenes in between each mission just leave you mystified and confused for a while. But after about the midway point it all starts to come together. By the end of the game, I thought it was actually a pretty good story. The specter of Russian suitcase nukes is realistic, terrifying, and believable, as opposed to Bad Company 2's weird ass scalar super weapon bullshit. Who really knew or cared about that?
The Misfits squad itself isn't quite as colorful as Marlowe's Bad Company, but they do have personalities which grow on you, much like the guys in Generation Kill, the miniseries DICE seems to have cribbed an awful lot from. I felt the deaths in this game much more then the deaths in any Call of Duty game, so they should pat themselves on the back for that. The tone of the narrative is consistent throughout and one of the most well executed aspects of the game.
Blackburn: Dude looks like a very young Lance Hendricksen. That's all I got.
Al-Bashir: Some sort of Bin Laden-esque character.
Aaron Pierce from 24: He and his pal work for the CIA.
Dima: Good guy Russian who fails to stop the Paris nuke and gets radiation poisoning. I assume he blows his head off in the ending, because any time somebody sits in their dark apartment and mournfully cocks their pistol, it's probably going to be used to commit suicide.
Solomon: The one problematic character in the game. And this is a biggie, because Solomon is the main villain of the entire storyline. He's the ultimate mastermind terrorist. But we just aren't given much to know about him. Is he American, or Russian? He doesn't look Iranian. He looks Russian from the appearance, but Solomon isn't exactly a Russian name. I don't know shit about why he's doing what he's doing. We know he double crosses Al-Bashir, but why does he want to nuke three cities and start a world war? Dima and his pals talk about him getting his revenge at any cost, but why does he want revenge? Did I miss something? Maybe I skipped a cutscene, I dunno.
Kaffarov: Arms dealer who worked with Solomon. I got all that. But what happens to him? Dima and his pals work really hard through an entire mission to take Kaffarov in alive and then... tells Blackburn that "If you don't kill him, millions will die." So he's telling Blackburn to kill Kaffarov? Why would millions die if he doesn't shot him? This didn't make sense to me. He could have easily taken Kaffarov into custody and then he'd have a witness to corroborate Solomon's plot. An actual living witness. Instead, Kaffarov ends up dead offscreen. I don't understand what happened.
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