War Has Apparently Changed

Hey, I threw up in my mouth a little!

scary.

How is Call of Duty still relevant in the year of Jebuiz 2014?

Well I feel a little grossed out now. =P

Soooo... what's going on here? Are VICE and Activision teaming up to co-produce both the next Call of Duty alongside some PMC documentary...? That'll then theoretically tie-in together at least thematically I suppose?

For some reason this all just seems kinda... icky.

"Hey they got a man from dat der Institute to talk on the TV. I'm going to buy the game! Derp."

Who is the target audience for this? People who want some more faux-intellectualism behind their CoD? Does Activision even understand their fan base?

I'll take strange blustery talk about "The WAR economy" over a Call of Duty game any day.

Because millions of people still buy it and play it religiously. Its popularity is slowly waning, but it's not going to suddenly disappear off the face of the earth.

Finally, evil PMCs in my video games. Because that's not a thing that was done to death in popular media following the Blackwater incidents or anything.

Exactly. Didn't we get enough shooters that took themselves too seriously last generation?

Reddit is leaking again

I get this is an unpopular opinion, but if there is real passion behind this game from Sledgehammer, maybe they can breathe life into this fractured genre.
At the very least it seems this video has more effort and thought behind it than every plot point Ghosts.

eh

@themichaelryan: You are saying that like the devs had some to say in the making that documentary

IS THIS FROG FRACTIONS 2?!?!

But war never changes...

Ripped from the headlines! Mecha-Cheney confirmed as end boss!

Shooters really need to get out of this modern military rut.

I thought it was a pretty cool video at least. I didn't know that PMC's were an actual thing, I always just heard the term thrown loosely around in Metal Gear games.

As a game trailer this was pretty poor.

War has always been linked to economics. There's always been mercenaries. Empires have always relied on them.

None of this is all that new, unless there's one centralized PMC, acting as a nation with its own political interests. Which is not the case, they are a network of competing companies just as mercenaries usually were. We are an empire as we have been for over 200 years, using mercenaries to secure the economic interests of the elites. As was the Mexican American war, so is Iraq.

But if the next CoD frames warfare like that, there could be a really interesting reaction from its fanbase.

@soundlug: If they are drawing information from that, and not just doing the whole dark skinned people are invading the US, it's already an improvement over most games in this franchise. I hope Sledgehammer has some input in what the story is going to be about? You think they are unaware of this, you think it's completely unrelated?

So, Syndicate of Duty or Call of Company.

I don't think "I'll slavishly buy this game like I buy every yearly iteration." is a very interesting reaction.

Despite the worrying video, there's nothing new to this idea. Mercenary groups of ex-military (and even an entire military) made of mercenaries, have existed throughout human history. It's only within the last few hundred years that they've grown out of style due to the shift in battlefield tactics and strategy But since there's been a resurgence of small group tactics, it would only make sense that a lot of ex-military would be jumping ship from being tied down to a country (and being poorly paid) to find greater opportunity elsewhere doing the same thing.

Cant we just go back to WW2 already? I haven't shot any Nazi's for at least 3 years and im getting withdrawal shakes.

Call of Duty and VICE are PERFECT for each other. They both have, at best, an ignorant bemusement regarding other cultures (at worst expressing outright racism), one is an overly-scripted shooter and the other produces overly-scripted shock docs, and both make a downright annoying amount of money.

PMCs are good for suppressing civilians or poorly armed rebels. Good luck getting a guy to sign up for a suicide mission if you aren't going to bury him with a flag on his casket, though.

Fuck blackwater and that pos Prince.

Vice makes documentaries for douchebags. Still, hope the game turns out better than Ghosts did. I just want a fun campaign to play through.

Video games.

"Hey guys, we've got this amazing new idea we just came up with: PMCs!"

Apparently the people who make Call of Duty think the people who play Call of Duty don't play any other video games.

I wouldn't mind the idea though, if they would just do something a little different with it. Like, how about instead of PMCs "turning against" the USA, what if a future, corporate-dominated USA instead starts using PMCs to accomplish so much "consequence-free" military action that it ends up accidentally becoming an evil empire? And then the dwindling forces of the legitimate, enlisted US military has to lead a coup d'etat against itself to save the Constitution and democracy and shit?

Now that would be provocative and interesting. This is just Army of Two.

Ummm. that "third largest company", G4S, is a Danish company that does stuff like ambulance services, money transport, mall security and alarms. So sure, they're a "private security firm" but if they've invaded any countries recently they're the best covert ops outfit yet.

We have pmc's, but what is the status of The War Economy and SOP?

@vodun: You are being silly now

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24694214

Cool Video

Douglas Shetland did it

Peace Walkerrrr

Setting aside the actual real-world discussion of PMCs, this seems like a "safe" move for a Call of Duty game. Focusing on one or several "evil" PMCs would allow them to go for shock value way easier without offending any other countries/groups.

Aaand I guess it would be kind of a cool idea to pull directly from Syndicate and let you have your own corporation within your inner circle of friends.

War never changes.

I hope this isn't the case, but I half expect this game to be your character taking orders from a non-self-aware and un-ironic version of Senator Armstrong.

Wow no one has ever done a military game about PMC's taking a bigger role in waging wars....except for Army of Two, and Metal Gear Solid, and Tom Clancy's HAWX, and....just about every other military game in recent years.

And the question "what if they start taking over" gave me a nosebleed from the sheer stupidity....

@kacho_on: Yeah, so? That is still a private security job, just because they're in the news for being assholes doesn't mean they are mercenaries...They can still be an asshole corporation, but putting them together with Blackwater is silly. They don't do the same thing.

Hey, we've been feeding you the same rehashed unimaginative gameplay within the same limited game designs, so we've been working hard researching and writing a story revolving around PMC's!

"Spend some of your billions on some new goddamn game technology! Sit down and think up ways to expand your game design and make the player have more real-time interactivity with his surroundings and items! Hire some Hollywood people to come up with new and exciting missions and operations that don't have mounted MG's every five feet!"

No no, we're researching PMC's for the story, that'll get you talking and completely overlooking gameplay...

Nowadays it's either safe/typical game design or Dark Souls and Spelunky, and if you dislike the latter well then you're fucked for another 20 years with games like Bioshock Infinite, Mass Effect 3 and the new Wolfenstein.

*feels fucked*

戦争、戦争だけは変わらない。（War, War never changes.）

Fuck this!

PMCs, bros

So, I am unsure, from this video should I conclude: "war has changed"?

I saw the title and thought this was news on Fallout 4. = (