Reznov brainwashed Mason to internalize his decades-old vendetta against Dragovich, Kravchencko, and Steiner, Reznov’s vendetta becomes Mason’s vendetta in ways that compromise the larger mission. Mason, however, has unknowingly internalized the revenge drive of an embittered ex-Soviet soldier named Viktor Reznov. In the first game, David Mason is driven by an all-consuming drive to kill a group of Soviet and ex-Nazi conspirators, repeating the phrase “Dragovich, Kravchenko, Steiner. It is ambivalent in ways gamers and critics do not perceive. Black Ops’s Cold War portrayal of covert operations is not glamorous. But the biggest true-to-life problem inevitably boils down to problems with proxies. Almost everything that can go wrong does, forcing players to fight desperately in bloody battles like Vietnam’s Tet-vintage struggle for Khe Sanh. The paranoia and ambiguity of the time are reflected in Mason’s obsessive pursuit of Russian operatives who may or may not be operating in Vietnam, engrossing the player in the sensitive, dangerous, and often futile hunt for shadows implicit in proxy war. The emotional depth of Black Ops 2’s main characters is enhanced by a realistic depiction of the ad hoc, hazardous, and often purely improvisational character of Cold War covert missions. Woods is alternatively the wily survivor, the cranky and impatient covert veteran, and rage-fueled fighter. We see Hudson break his cool in the first game as he struggles to save a brainwashed Mason. While these characters sound one-dimensional in brief, they reveal remarkable emotional range during the Black Ops games.
Over two Black Ops games, we come to know the game’s Cold War covert trio – the audience stand-in David Mason, the cool professional Jason Hudson, and the survivor Frank Woods. In other words, Noriega is a figure familiar to any reader of international news since, say, the late 1950s.Ī pivotal and emotionally compelling moment in Black Ops 2’s plot hinges on the consequences of Noriega’s betrayal for characters we come to care about. In Black Ops 2, Noriega is portrayed as a faithless despot who double crosses the player and commands a brutal security force whose lives he is willing to throw away at a moment’s notice for his own convenience.
The case was just dismissed, and rightfully so given the precedent it might create for depiction of historical figures in entertainment media.
In July, Noriega sought compensation for Black Ops 2’s depiction of the former dictator as a corrupt, double-dealing murderer.
However, a recent lawsuit by former dictator Manuel Noriega against the use of his image and likeness in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 puts into focus one area where Activision and Dave Anthony are arguably ahead of the policy community – the messiness of black ops and proxy wars. This vision alone, I argued, would constitute a poor contribution to defense policy.
In a series of articles at War on the Rocksand Slate, I heavily criticized Black Ops 2’s vision of future warfare for – among other things – a stale consensus vision of future conflict that prizes fluff and fear-mongering over realistic threat scenarios.