Making a Good Modern Military Shooter

[V da Mighty Taco]

What would it take to make a good MMS Singleplayer campaign these days? While most of us can agree that the genre today is the very epitome of uncreativity and linearity, I don't think the basic concept of setting a game in roughly the present day with roughly modern weaponry and militaries is inherently broken, just poorly executed the vast majority of the time. What do you, my fellow Escapists, think would be required to make this concept work?

EDIT: Try to be more specific than just "be / don't be like (insert game here)". What particular mechanics / design decisions / storytelling / etc. would make this tired-out concept work?

 

[Skin]

The setting has been so overdone that its not even worth investing time in even thinking on how we can improve it. Honestly, would much rather see some WW2 games make a comeback or something.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Take the first Bad Company, expand on it. Done.

 

[Full]

Take the first Bad Company, expand on it. Done.

The first Bad Company is criminally underrated IMO. So I second this.

 

[Professor Lupin Madblood]

What would it take to make a good MMS Singleplayer campaign these days? While most of us can agree that the genre today is the very epitome of uncreativity and linearity, I don't think the basic concept of setting a game in roughly the present day with roughly modern weaponry and militaries is inherently broken, just poorly executed the vast majority of the time. What do you, my fellow Escapists, think would be required to make this concept work?

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

. . . That's it, really. That game was the high point of modern warfare shooters. Hell, it named the entire genre.

 

[Pulse]

Take mw3.
Increase the size/openness/paths of levels.
No hand holding in missions (ie follow this guy and do everything he says, word for word).
Far, far, far fewer scripted events/on-rails sections.
Make it 3x longer.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Yeah, CoD 4 was probably the highest point.
I reckon the big problem with the later CoDs (aside from there just being so many of them) was that they just got way too far fetched and at some points tried to fully dive into total grimdark territory seemingly just for the sake of it to try and 1-up the previous game. MW2 had No Russian, MW3 had the mass super gas attacks and that ridiculous segment with the family vacation, which I actually laughed at because it was just so silly, ineffective and out of place. This kind of thing kicks itself in the balls anyway when every 2 minutes the game pretty much tells you 'Look at all this tradgedy! Now heres an M4 and a laser designator to call in airstrikes, go kill a bunch of Russians, then we'll drag you out of the gameplay for a bit again then have you kill more Russians!'
Anyway, CoD 4, and the earlier WW2 era CoDs did the whole 'war is hell' thing much better, because, aside from maybe the nuke, it just didn't beat you over the head with it so goddamn much.

Bad Company and Bad Company 2 also had quite good campaigns. There just wasn't enough...stuff overall. It'd be great to see more of those crazy bastards again in a longer, bigger (not too big, but this is Battlefield) game.

Aside from ones in dev, like ARMA 3, I think maybe we should get just a couple more big modern military shooters (shit, we'll get more than just a couple...) then perhaps move on for good. A Bad Company 3 and some CoD-esque game with only a campaign mode. A really, really good campaign mode, well designed, fun to play, lots of replay value, not too light or too heavy on the story elements and absent of the pretentious crap which seems to permeate though many games today.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Honestly, I'm not sure anything really needs to be done with the genre. Is it uncreative and linear? Sure, but that's part of the experience. It's the typical summer blockbuster movie experience and it scratches a certain itch in a certain variety of gamer. As things like Spec Ops, Battlefield or even Far Cry to some extent show, just because one side of the genre is pretty much set in stone at this point doesn't mean that everything is.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

Honestly, I'm not sure anything really needs to be done with the genre. Is it uncreative and linear? Sure, but that's part of the experience. It's the typical summer blockbuster movie experience and it scratches a certain itch in a certain variety of gamer. As things like Spec Ops, Battlefield or even Far Cry to some extent show, just because one side of the genre is pretty much set in stone at this point doesn't mean that everything is.

Battlefield's singleplayer was as uncreative as it comes within it's genre.

Anyways, just about everyone who often plays MMS's either hates the singleplayer or just completely ignores it at least 95% of the time (I don't think that's an exaggeration either). In fact, the only MMS's I can think of that's singleplayers were received fairly well are Spec Ops (which I haven't played myself), CoD4, and maybe BF:BC1 (which I also haven't played).

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I'd like to see a military shooter that just puts you in a massive sandbox with two huge armies and the only objective is to win the war. That would make for a cool singleplayer campaign

 

[shrimpcel]

What would it take to make a good MMS Singleplayer campaign these days? While most of us can agree that the genre today is the very epitome of uncreativity and linearity, I don't think the basic concept of setting a game in roughly the present day with roughly modern weaponry and militaries is inherently broken, just poorly executed the vast majority of the time. What do you, my fellow Escapists, think would be required to make this concept work?

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

. . . That's it, really. That game was the high point of modern warfare shooters. Hell, it named the entire genre.

My thoughts exactly. The game is just perfectly balanced in its amount of wackiness vs. seriousness, action vs. stealth, number of toys, learning curve, everything just fits. No other "modern warfare" game has ever captured that before or since COD 4.

 

[mrm5561]

honestly the only real creative option i can think of is to go the with a hitman style level design. that way the player will be able to decide if they want to snipe the enemies one by one of go in guns blazing. other than that maybe just focus on building characters instead of just making us play as Americana badass #56565. And also if you havent played spec ops make the time it is worth the hype this site gives it.

 

[sammysoso]

Keep it plausible, the reason the first Modern Warfare was so good is that I could see the events in the game actually occurring.

And while the game was linear (which is perfectly fine) it never felt like I was being forced somewhere.

 

[NewYork_Comedian]

Like many others have already said, Call of Duty 4 is a good modern military shooter. In my opinion, its actually a fantastic shooter and one of the best (if not the best) I've ever played. All those cliches that now stagnate most AAA games? Modern Warfare 1 created about half of them.

The entire concept of multiplayer that is now used by almost all shooters (perks, killstreaks, ect.)? It invented that to, for better or for worse.

I almost feel sad because five years from now most gamers will probably look at it as the same old crap that only cares about the multiplayer and shoves in a singleplayer game for no reason . Ironically, it is the first really big modern military shooter that is also the pinnacle of what we are going to get out of the genre as well.

NOTE: I understand that Battlefield 2 came out before it, but I feel that Cod4 had a much greater impact on the games industry (hell, BF3 uses the perks system from Call of Duty!)

 

[Squilookle]

I can tell you exactly what it would take to make a good MMS Singleplayer campaign:

Put the entire concept to bed for ten years.

 

[Professor Lupin Madblood]

What would it take to make a good MMS Singleplayer campaign these days? While most of us can agree that the genre today is the very epitome of uncreativity and linearity, I don't think the basic concept of setting a game in roughly the present day with roughly modern weaponry and militaries is inherently broken, just poorly executed the vast majority of the time. What do you, my fellow Escapists, think would be required to make this concept work?

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

. . . That's it, really. That game was the high point of modern warfare shooters. Hell, it named the entire genre.

My thoughts exactly. The game is just perfectly balanced in its amount of wackiness vs. seriousness, action vs. stealth, number of toys, learning curve, everything just fits. No other "modern warfare" game has ever captured that before or since COD 4.

The thing about CoD4 was that it was a wholly new experience: it was a shooter, yeah, but, nobody did modern shooters in those days. It's interesting to examine, because the developers had to ease people into the setting but still make it engaging. They had to moderate the huge set pieces with normal stuff and quiet parts.

Man, I remember the halcyon days when developers knew what the word "moderation" meant.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Maybe play through a different set of eyes for once, the other side. Of course, this would cause too much turmoil for people, just like Hollywood movies with sad or open endings, but I would love to see it. From the eyes of Russians, or Arabs, or Koreans, or whoever gets the rap as the bad guys these days. Can play it from both sides if you really have to, somehow.

Also, I think improve on suspense and impact rather than just making everything as big and hectic as possible. As in, a bit more realistic instead of running and gunning your way through 80 guys to a checkpoint 20 meters away. But then that might go a bit towards the pace of older Rainbow 6 games (which I love) but I don't know if straying too far from the formula would be very appreciated.

 

[Captain Billy]

I think the biggest problem in these kinds of shooters is a lack of appropriate context. This is one of the reasons I prefer WW2 shooters to most modern fare; while they share a lot of the same problems, the WW2 setting at least affords a clear, albeit shallow reason: Nazis are evil, and therefore must die. As context goes, it's incredibly facile, but it's solid context nevertheless.

I enjoy shooters, though I'm not very good at them, and several of my favorite games have been linear, so I guess I can't object to the mechanics (aside, of course, from a troubling habit of gadget cockteasing. I'm looking at you, Codblops 2). But I just can't really enjoy any modern military shooters because almost all of the time, I can't think of a single good reason why I need to be committing these acts of violence. And truthfully, I can't imagine a way to actually address the issue head-on. The enemies in this kind of game, by its very definition as "modern," have to be human, and I've never been able to get involved or be entertained by a game that commands me to murder a fellow human being and doesn't tell me why in a way that I can understand and sympathize with. Games like Dishonored get a pass, because you can complete the objective without killing them. Games like inFamous and Arkham Asylum get a pass, because you're knocking them out (and in inFamous' case, if you actually kill them, you're explicitly called a dick). Games like Bioshock get a pass, because there's very little left that's human about the enemies. But games that specifically demand unprovoked murder in order to complete a mission just don't really entertain me.

Spec Ops has probably been mentioned ten million times, but it bears repetition, because I think that's really the only you could supply real context in this kind of game. it knows that actual human beings have families, childhood memories, and all kinds of inconvenient moral protection to player characters mowing them down by the hundreds, and so it calls the player character a monster for doing so.

 

[thesilentman]

Take mw1.
Increase the size/openness/paths of levels.
No hand holding in missions (ie follow this guy and do everything he says, word for word).
Far, far, far fewer scripted events/on-rails sections.
Make it 3x longer.

I've fixed something for you. Anything that improves upon the first Modern Warfare is a-okay in my book.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I still fail to see how all MMS games are seen as bad. They are fun, have decent stories and differ enough from each other that none of them are really 'unoriginal'.
I couldn't name 3 things about Call of Duty that make it a bad game, beyond 'Its brown', 'Some people I don't like play it' and 'Its not an open world game, therefore its linear'.
If you are going to insult games or genres, at least get some decent arguments.