Screenwriter Jesse Stern (“NCIS”) worked with Infinity Ward on the first phenomenally popular “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” and was asked back to work with the game developers for the even more popular, record breaking sequel.
Last week, the writer talked to gamepro.com about his involvement with the games, including that controversial “airport massacre” sequence that even generated discussion in the UK parliament. “We didn’t just want to make a straight sequel to “Modern Warfare”,” he says. “We started kicking around anything and everything to weed out the bad ideas.” That includes some outlandish premises that seem all the more bizarre when compared to the eventual sequel’s gritty realism. “In the beginning we talked about having things in “Modern Warfare 2” like outbreaks, viruses, chemical warfare, and even outlandish things like aliens and the living dead,” Stern admits. “We worked our way through it before we finally ended up with a more grounded version of the real world as it’s depicted in “Modern Warfare 2”. And as we were kicking around scenarios for conflict, we kept stumbling into things that were happening in real life, which was honestly unintentional… We didn’t intend on doing anything ripped straight from real headlines or based directly on current events. We did want to capture that feeling of unimaginable scenarios that are prevalent, but so distant from the psyche on any given day.” Those scenarios include that now infamous “airport massacre” scene. “People have really strong reactions (to it),” Stern acknowledges. “We’ve done our best to treat it with care and not make it gratuitous… It feels so real but at the same time it’s a video game.”
