Modern Warfare 2The campaign is full of fun mechanics and experimental missions, all presented using cutting-edge visuals, stellar sound effects, and weapon animations that really blew my mind.
On the other hand, its narrative ignores much of the events of the 2019 reboot, focusing instead on a new character while reimagining the interesting dynamic between Ghost and Soap.
While some of Modern Warfare 2’s campaign missions do evoke the original game — and other classic moments from the franchise’s long history — those of us who played the original Modern Warfare 2 look forward to a return specific moment.
Event spoilers.
Of course, we’re talking about the controversial mission “No Russian” in Modern Warfare 2. The mission casts you as an American soldier working undercover as a member of a Russian terrorist squad. The group, led by Makarov, infiltrated an airfield in Russia and opened fire.
Although you’re never asked or rewarded for shooting civilians, you accompany a mob of scumbags slaughtering innocents on Call of Duty’s most disturbing missions. Of course, the purpose of no Russians was for Makarov to incite war between the two countries by leaving the body of an American soldier on the scene and link the attack to the United States.
No Russians started what ended up being a staple of Call of Duty: Content Warning before the event, even though most other Call of Duty events never actually had anything close to the brutality of No Russians.
So, is there a Russian equivalent in the new Modern Warfare 2? The answer is no, but Infinity Ward won’t necessarily surpass it. After the credits of the game, we see a place where terrorists assemble pistols on a passenger plane.
The person shown received a text from a person called M. The text reads: “No Russian”, and before the character – whose face we can’t see – standing up may have committed the act.
In this case, M is definitely Makarov, as he is called Task Force 141’s next target in the endgame cutscene. Of course, Makarov was the villain of the original trilogy, but he barely appeared in the reboot.
If Makarov is indeed the focus of the next storyline, we might see more of him in Modern Warfare 3, or maybe see his character in a reported campaign DLC in 2023, rather than the full Valuable Call of Duty title.
This begs the question: we are Actually Redo without Russian? The terrorist on the plane sounds like Captain Price or Ghost, so it doesn’t make much sense for them to work with Makarov unless the whole thing is a setup and the roles have been reversed.
It’s hard to say, but I doubt Infinity Ward will be interested in No Russian 2.0, in which heinous terrorist attacks take place on commercial airliners rather than at airports. However, the nod to it is a little concerning.
Sure, we might just be overthinking it, and the end credits scene might just be a cheeky callback, but it also doesn’t match what we’ve seen from the studio in the past.
Warzone 2.0 could be one potential way to achieve this. The story of the battle royale mode came out just a few weeks after launch, a follow-up to the events of the campaign. The new No Russian might just be the inciting event that kicks off the mode’s story.
Considering how the events of the original Warzone led to the start of Modern Warfare 2 (in some ways), that’s a real possibility. Let’s not forget Special Ops, Infinity Ward officially confirmed it will pick up where the event left off, so that might be one way to get into it.
Regardless of the end result, however, it is unlikely to repeat “No Russians” as we know it. Just look at the Modern Warfare 2 campaign, many of its missions start in a way that suggests they’ll be played out as remakes, just to turn around and introduce something new.
