Ludonarrative Dissonance: Call of Duty 2

Ludonarrative Dissonance: Call of Duty 2

[Ludonarrative dissonance is a term used to describe a conflict of interest between the story and game elements of a videogame.] 

June 6th, 1944: D-Day. The waves lap like quiet warnings on the outside of your small Higgins boat. Men around you are coughing, a couple in the back chatting anxiously. There is an ominous silence in the air, somewhere between the quiet hum of engines and the noises of your crew. Something is upon you and your men, some inexorable thing that compels you inward; into the belly of hell.

The bow ramp before you plunges forth and you are beset with reality. You burst from the boat, acting on pure adrenaline, charging forward toward something -- anything. You hardly hear the cries of dying men, hardly register the sight of soldiers crumpling to the impact of bullets. 

An explosion screams just to your left, leaving you deaf and rattled. You are on your back. 

The sand feels cold against your cheek.

Call of Duty 2's beginning felt very reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan. I'm sure this choice was deliberate; as film depictions of war go, Saving Private Ryan is among the best. But let us examine why -- why is Saving Private Ryan so good?

Saving Private Ryan effortlessly shatters any illusions of war. In the beginning, a small group of men are huddled tightly in their Higgins boat, drifting toward Omaha beach. Several other identical boats surround them, as well as larger boats loaded with tanks. The scene is somber and quiet. And then the ramps fall.

The camera stumbles from the boat and immediately the reality of the situation besets you: war manufactures one thing: corpses. War is not kind.

Noble men lay with their innards bursting from their ravaged guts, weeping in confusion. The site of war is visible. The tone of war is felt. This is as close to the real thing as you will ever want to get. 

And then there is Call of Duty 2, a game I admire greatly. Call of Duty 2 begins on D-Day, similarly to Saving Private Ryan. The ramp lowers and you run forth, caught by an explosion. A fellow man drags you to safety, and soon after you are free to control your character. Up until this point, the tone of the game feels not unlike Saving Private Ryan's.

Once control is abdicated to you, though, the tone of the scene switches. What was once a sight of horror has now become a playground. I am now having fun. It is at this point that a dissonance arises between what Call of Duty 2 is about as a story, and what it is about as a game.

Like Saving Private Ryan, Call of Duty 2's story asks me to ruminate on the violence of war, especially the horrors present at Normandy. Call of Duty 2 is purposely setting a tone through its imagery which connotes frustration, angst, disgust, futility. The story of Call of Duty 2 is trying to express something honest and horrible, while the gameplay is expressing an antithetical sense of fun.

I took joy in running around the beach, trying to kill enemy soldiers. And it is this sense of fun which directly conflicts with the emotions I should be feeling. After all, war is not fun. 

Though brief, I feel as though this is a useful -- if minor -- criticism of Call of Duty 2 and games like it. Would it not be wonderful if Call of Duty actually made you feel dutiful? Or if Medal of Honor made you feel honorable? It will be a hard road in getting there, but the first step is addressing the inherent issues between the narrative and ludic elements of a game. Only then will the floodgates fall open.

Gravity Explained:

"The psyclonic legs overcome this problem by rope-braiding their psyclonic necks about themselves; each reinforces each other. The cavitation zone boundary (or unigy boundary) of one psyclonic throat, will help hold the psyclonic throat of its sister, psyclonic swirls, together. But at the same time, similar spin directions, create a chaff confliction at the rim of conflict, between the same spin direction, psyclonic leg capitations. This acts as an additional governor on the spin rate any leg can achieve, in excess of the spin rate of the other legs. This chaff condition in a proton is mediated by the neutron counter directional turns. No matter how strong the force -- the strong nuclear force -- of the legs rope-braiding about themsleves, if the diameter of the neck keeps decreasing, then the spin-speed keeps increasing, they will reach a spin-rate at which the rope-braid can no longer maintain the integrity of the psyclonic swirl. When this point is reached, the high speed end of the nucleus will be spinning too fast to remain contained, and will explode and go swimming off as a zip particle, carrying with it its own cavitation unity."

Passage, a memento mori

An elderly man sits in his lounge chair, burdened by a lifetime of regrets and difficulties. His shoulders slump forward with the weight of it, his ass sinking into the cushion; he is dying, and he knows it.

The world has not been kind to this man. He has seen all he cares for die, withered in hospitals and sprawled limply on living room floors. Through this, he barely endures.

The past is all he knows now, all he sees. He once hoped for the future, but now he hopes only for the present -- that he will exist in this moment. And in this moment, all that he is has passed.

His eyelids close softly, and he feels weightless. The eyes of those once living flash before him. He knows them each, can connect them to specific aches in his chest. Today was his wife's birthday.

His limp body sits in the recliner for almost a week before it is discovered.

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A middle-aged man recalls his childhood pet briefly as he purchases a new dog for his daughter. She is growing so old and wise -- soon college, he thinks, then anywhere.

The man lives long enough to see his daughter become a surgeon. He does not know how many lives she has saved, but he feels her accomplishments. Through her, he succeeds.

He dies in an operating room as his daughter waits outside.

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Passage is more than every image depicted above, and the experience of Passage cannot be adequately verbalized. You must play it and understand it to grasp the enormity and clarity of its message. But once you do, you will feel something: maybe a hopeless or bleak sense of station, maybe a feeling of utter contentment. Either way, you will not leave unchallenged.

Passage is a memento mori. It exists as a reminder of your own mortality, but also of life. Play it and see for yourself.