MW2: how did the [spoilers] blow up?
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Character motivation is easy to spot in the game. The problem I see is that the motivation does not match the events that unfold. Shepard is upset that he lost 30,000 troops and nobody cared. So, his reaction is to hatch a plot that starts a full scale conventional war between Russia and the United States, killing tens if not hundreds of thousands more Americans? Only the most twisted mad-man, completely lost inside the horrors of his own mind would concoct such a scheme. A plot to kill hundreds of thousands of the enemy (the russians technically) would be as far as one could take this scheme and still be able to present Shepard as anything but an absolute lunatic. The trouble is, as a three star general, Shepard will have his actions scrutanized, and since he is quite obviously completely nuts, how exactly did he manage to maintain his command? Surely someone would have noticed.duchaked said:
What's more, the logical counter argument (well, a lot of Russians died too) makes little sense. For the plot as a whole to have any merit, it would seem that Shepard contracted the terrorist to frame the United States. In order for any invasion of the US to happen (which appears to be the ultimate goal), a critical satellite had to end up in Russian hands or the secrets (which Shepard would likely not have access to, even if he asked really nicely while leveraging all of his contacts - he had no need to know afterall). It was this acquisition that allowed the Russians to make their early advances. The short version of this entire thing is quite simply this - Shepard's reason for being the villian do not seem to meet, in any way, the actions he would have had to have taken in order to actually be the ultimate villian.
And, while many points raised in this thread are matters of nit-picking the realism of a particular sequence, the game has plenty of plot holes. In order to ensure this does not become an argument regarding definition, I will simply state that I am using the usual definition of plot-hole, which is, a scenario in which a plot advances without any clear explanation of points that logically had to come about in between.
The most damning plot holes I see were:
1) Russia begins it's invasion via airborne incursion. Were russia actually hoping to do anything other than throw men into a grinder, additional assets must have been en-route. Unfortunately, shipping the massive numbers of tanks, aircraft and the like is something that would have been noticed at some point. The United States is a big country and the military force it wields is sufficient to assume we are talking about thousands of peices of equipment and millions of men required to have any hope of true victory. While it may be true that such moves could be done in secret given enough time, the game implies that there are at best a few days preparation. Thus, we are left with a problem - either Russia had no intention of actually winning this war and simply sought to have a short, brutal bloodbath or we somehow missed the maneuvers of entire army corps, the grand armada of ships and any of hundreds of other signs US intelligence would almost certainly be scrutinizing. Some of these signs are subtle and easily missed, but the movements of enormous parts of a powerful nations military are something that are both difficult to hide and closely watched.
2) The ranger batallion was last seen in Afghanistan at roughly the same time the entire ordeal begins in russia. This same ranger unit is later defending the greater DC area. While this may not be a plot hole in the traditional sense, the game offers absolutely no indication of the timeframe between the first and second missions. Given that most of the game takes place over less than a week, the natural assumption is that there was not a significant period of time between these missions. Since this obviously cannot be true, we have to assume there is an error in the timeline.
3) The Rangers are stationed several hundred miles away from the DC area (At Fort Bragg, NC). There are no batallion sized maneuvers that take the rangers to the DC area. Somehow, this ranger unit was in the DC area from the earliest moments of the war and we are given no explantion for their presence.
4) In five full days of fighting, various pieces of medium equipment are seen on the russian side but only a single medium vehicle (the Stryker) finds it's way to the American side. If one can simply assume that the attack achieved complete strategic surprise and further assumes a similar force disposition as we have today, we still find that there are significant elements of the US military that could be expected to respond well inside this period including: 82nd Airborne Division, 10th Mountain Division, 1st Cavalry Division, 101st Air-Assault Division, 4th Infantry Division, at at least 1 MEU, in addition to being able to leverage local National Guard units, police units, significant air assets etc. Even assuming constant movement of troops and an absolutely absurd number of aircraft from the russian side, there is no way that a simple airborne incursion is going to overwhelm such forces. This is related to the first point - there would have to have been a significant esclation in aircraft manufacture and overall military size expansion to allow for the Russian operation.
5) Russia achieved complete strategic surprise in an invasion of the US thanks to possession of a magic key. Somehow this key not only allowed them to bypass satellite reconnisance but also all ground and air based radar early warning systems. Given the general understanding in military systems that single points of failure are stupid (because military equipment will always break, such is the nature of these things), it can only be assumed that magic was somehow involved.
6) The terrorist who kicked off the attack somehow knew where his recently acquired arch-nemesis was. There are reasonable explantions for how this could be true, but none are given.
7) Captain Price is presumed KIA but is later found alive in a prison. No explanation is given for why he was captured and imprisoned and Soap was freed.
8) Captain Price is able to single handedly launch a nuclear device. In order to do this he has must not only have posession of launch codes, but also the capacity to stretch his arms several times their natural length, navigate and operate a system that he would not, under any reasonable circumstance have any previous knowledge of and properly calculate (or at least select) very specific targeting parameters. Moreover, he also had to somehow acquire information on the location of a russian ballistic missile submarine without the apparent aid of a national intelligence service. In any reasonable scenario in which the nuclear arsenel is left in the submarine, the vessels would have crew members that would be available to resist and they would almost certainly know he was coming. These people never once thought to lock any door it would seem nor put up any significant resistance. One is lead to believe the boat is empty.
I'm sure there are more, but I think the case is fairly clear - the storyline in MW2 has more than enough holes to warrent pointing them out. That said, I still enjoyed the game in spite of their presence, which is a testament mostly to well tuned gameplay. The storyline proved servicable enough in the heat of the moment but this was mostly thanks to above average voice acting and the sympatetic carry-over from excellent gameplay.
Some variation of this (such as a wizard did it) would have provided a logical (though incredibly terrible) response to each and every hole in the story. Except the part about Shepard apparently being utterly insane and nobody noticing.Dommyboy said:
Canceling that idiotic project would be the best thing that could possibly happen to NASA.iBagel said:
Congress: "Basically, we want to waste money. In space. And let all the other countries in the world waste their money with us."
Nasa: "um, really we'd rather be pushing for..."
Congress: "You do it or we cancel your program.
Ontopic:
the jews did it to pass the time after they did 9/11 and carrot top
A bomb did it I expect. Although that's as far as I can go with theories because I lost my tin foil hat.
Thank you, I've played the game through once and then watched my brother and had no idea what the hell happened there, that actually makes sense. Now other than Price being alive (when I entered the gulag I actually guessed that twist but thought "wait, thats fucking rediculous") my only beef with the story is that any country other than china has the population and might to even somewhat succesfully invade America. America has double the population of russia (thank you wiki) and multiple guns available per person... Oh and the fact that 'the world' actually believes that the American DoD would for some reason sanction terrorism, and for some reason Allen doesnt just wack Makarov, maybe he was in on the conspiracy.orannis62 said:
None of the america supporting arguments were patriotsm, I'm Aussie.
While it wouldn't do it via shockwave, a nuke at that distance could still theoretically destroy the ISS, it would've instead just vaporised the station and the astronaut. My guess is the shockwave just looked cooler.
To get back to the basis of this thread.
It is because when in space if a nuke goes off it doesn't explode it just makes a super heated ball of heat that sends out radiation and keeps on moving in a straight line(you know because of the vacuum).
that ball of heat is not dangerous except for the radiation but as soon as it hits anything it causes it to instantly vaporise the gas expands and bam you have an explosion.
as you can see the nuke is traveling in a straight line towards the ISS so the ball of heat keeps traveling in that direction too.
the time that it takes for the "shockwave" to get to the ISS is unrealistic however as it would have traveled at the same speed as the missile so it would have taken longer.
(this is just a theory probably the people who made the sequence never even taught about this when they made it but it could happen)
there is your scientific explanation hope you like it.
It is because when in space if a nuke goes off it doesn't explode it just makes a super heated ball of heat that sends out radiation and keeps on moving in a straight line(you know because of the vacuum).
that ball of heat is not dangerous except for the radiation but as soon as it hits anything it causes it to instantly vaporise the gas expands and bam you have an explosion.
as you can see the nuke is traveling in a straight line towards the ISS so the ball of heat keeps traveling in that direction too.
the time that it takes for the "shockwave" to get to the ISS is unrealistic however as it would have traveled at the same speed as the missile so it would have taken longer.
(this is just a theory probably the people who made the sequence never even taught about this when they made it but it could happen)
there is your scientific explanation hope you like it.
I thought it was the EMP.
And what's with everyone going on about explosions not being possible in space. How come I never heard you guys complain about Star Wars or Star Trek or Mass Effect.
And what's with everyone going on about explosions not being possible in space. How come I never heard you guys complain about Star Wars or Star Trek or Mass Effect.
In space...
no one can hear you argue about real world physics.
Look, that would be the last thing I would question when it comes to MW2. It's the rest of the game which has dubious physics and storyline.
Like the part where they are in that place and they attach themselves to that thing and get pulled up through that you know, and yet you'd think they'd have hit their head on the what you call it on the way up.
no one can hear you argue about real world physics.
Look, that would be the last thing I would question when it comes to MW2. It's the rest of the game which has dubious physics and storyline.
Like the part where they are in that place and they attach themselves to that thing and get pulled up through that you know, and yet you'd think they'd have hit their head on the what you call it on the way up.
It's honestly pathetic reading some of the dribble you guys churn out. Ragging on MW2 is apparently the cool thing to do. I bet half of you haven't even played the game but have some deep-seeded hatred towards games that sell well, or you're sad you have no dedicated any more, or whatever other silly reason there is.
Next we'll have people complaining that having the wall/door breaching go bullet time was unrealistic and super lame. Play the fucking game with an open mind and you will get your moneys worth. Stop being a bunch of whiners.
Next we'll have people complaining that having the wall/door breaching go bullet time was unrealistic and super lame. Play the fucking game with an open mind and you will get your moneys worth. Stop being a bunch of whiners.
I think it's really quite simple:
Games have their own physics engines that have a bigger flare for the dramatic than our own real-world physics engine.
Games have their own physics engines that have a bigger flare for the dramatic than our own real-world physics engine.
