 Okay, I know this isn't my normal topic of discussion, but it's been bugging me for a while and I need to do something about it. If you follow my channel, you'll know I had surgery a few months ago and that I was unable to work during my recovery, so I decided to play through a bunch of Call of Duty games. It was a fun journey, I won't go into a lot of detail since this isn't a review, but they're mostly fun games. The storylines are sometimes just excuses for explosions and swearing, but others are interesting and kind of intelligent. Same goes for the settings they take place in. It's clear that the writers don't put much thought or effort into making worlds that make sense, at least on the occasions when the games aren't just set during World War II or something. It seems like they just went with something that sounded neat on the surface, which is probably fine for most people, I just think way too much about this sort of thing. If you're new here, welcome. Prepare to listen to me point out issues with continuity and realism in the world building of Call of Duty games, separate from things like story and gameplay. There's no real attempt to maintain continuity between most of the games, which is fine since they're mostly self-contained stories, so I won't point out how Black Ops 2 canonically ends with a cold war between the US and China alongside a massive economic crisis and armed uprisings around the world, or other things that should probably change up the world in specific ways and don't. But despite all the complaining, I do like these games. They're great action romps full of explosions, tense stealth segments, action set pieces, and a couple of genuinely effective story beats. Except Black Ops 3 and 4, those were trash. With the compliments out of the way, let's get to complaining. Before that, sponsor time. Spooky podcast that takes place in a well-lit suburb just like where you live. A podcast by James Tullis, Jimmy Tullis, and Jimbo Tullis. Again. After finding that note telling me to come to a secluded area alone without telling anyone, I decided to follow the directions without thinking about it. I needed to discover what exactly had happened that fateful night four years ago when my brother disappeared, and my girlfriend, and my best friend, and my parents. Was that a supernatural occurrence? Some government experiment? Aliens? Stay tuned, and maybe you'll find out one day. As I trekked further into the woods, I played sound effects to indicate that leaves were crunching underfoot. Another stock sound effect rang out from deeper in the trees. My feet froze to the ground as I saw some sort of creature emerge from the brush. I didn't get a clear look at it because leaving its appearance up to your imagination is spookier, but it had a mouth that looked almost human. The creature spoke in a gravelly voice that sounded very similar to mine for some reason. It sent a chill through my bones. Campfire Blaze is a browser-based suite of tools that keeps track of all your worldbuilding and story notes, with character sheets, maps, timelines, encyclopedias, and more. This sort of organization is unparalleled when it comes to worldbuilding, RPG campaigns, and any other sort of writing. Your creations can be shared publicly with others, but only if you want to. Even real-time collaboration on projects is possible, and it's far more intuitive than Google Docs or anything else comparable. All these modules can be yours, or you can pick and choose the parts you need. At either a one-time purchase or a monthly subscription, Campfire Blaze can be customized to suit whatever purposes you need it for and whatever price you can afford. This autumn, Campfire Blaze is coming out with an offline desktop app, and this winter, they're releasing a 100% free-to-use mobile app. Not sure if you want to commit to paying for all this? There's a free tier, so you can try everything without paying a dime. It even has a month-long free trial and refund option if you change your mind. Click the link in the description to see if Campfire Blaze is right for you. The creature's words couldn't be true. A deal like that just doesn't exist. I turned and ran. A mysterious creature that might be connected to the mystery of the series, or might be something the writers forget about in two episodes, didn't give chase for some reason. End of Episode 74. Let's start with arguably the worst world-building from 2013's Call of Duty Ghosts. This game takes place in an odd setting. At some point prior to 2014, there was a conflict called the Tel Aviv War that devastated the Middle East so badly that all countries involved collapsed, and oil ceased to be exported. This then caused the economies of many other countries to slow down or fall apart, weakening most major powers. I know this is vague, but it's all the details we're given. Around this time, several South American countries merge into a new government calling itself the Federation of the Americas. The Federation quickly gobbles up most of Central and South America, spreading around a message of pan-Latin American nationalism that paints the United States as an imperialist aggressor. Well, broken clocks. The Federation is a brutal, authoritarian, borderline fascist state that suppresses any and all dissent, and a lot of its annexations are less than cordial. To deter attacks, the American government builds a weapon system called Odin, which is basically just a giant cannon that fires tungsten rods to Earth with the force of nuclear bombs. Then the Federation takes control of Odin, attacks American cities, launches an invasion, and thus the game begins. Now that we're all caught up, let's examine all the ways in which this is dumb. First the formation of the Federation is, uh, unlikely. Here's a shitty map I made of it. Green denotes member states and black denotes occupied territories. These are all countries with very distinct histories, cultures, politics, geographies, and in some cases, languages. They have distinct identities. People from Peru are different than people from Chile or Guatemala or Mexico. San Colombia was an attempt to unify a large chunk of South America back in the early 19th century, which fell apart in only a few years. The idea that they might form some sort of economic union in the wake of the rest of the planet shitting the bed is believable. In the best case scenario, they might even form a political union similar to the European Union. But a full-on Federation? Hell no. And if we accept that the Federation forms, its rise is even stranger. Over the course of three years, the Federation gains not only the capability to invade and hold on to unruly territories, but the capability to invade the United States and take over a large part of the Southwest. To what end, I don't know. Do you know how difficult it is to build up a large professional military? First, you need the economy necessary to support it, and when you consider how, let's say, undeveloped many Latin American economies are, that alone would be a Herculean task. You'd have to build infrastructure, root out corruption, stamp down on large criminal organizations, educate the parts of your populace that haven't gotten it yet, and so on. A single aircraft carrier costs around $13 billion to build, and another $6.5 million per day for maintenance. A single American Marine's equipment costs over $17,000, and M1 Abrams tank costs nearly $9 million, and so on. The Federation certainly has the potential to build to this point. Venezuela has massive oil reserves. Brazil's agricultural output is huge. Other countries have large deposits of metals, like copper and lithium. In 2014, the Federation, not counting occupied territories, would have had a real GDP of around $6.4 trillion, barely over one-third of what the US was at the same time. It would also have a giant population and diversified economy. According to the Americans' level is doable, but not overnight. Once you have the needed money, you need to build all the needed equipment. You can buy some of it, but sooner or later you would have to become self-reliant in order to have enough. That means you need engineers and researchers to design it all. Then you need factories and resources to build it all, and that's a learning process that takes quite a while. And then you need an officer class to properly lead every branch of your military. For the Navy, you need admirals. For the Army, you need generals. For the Marines, you need someone with crowns and a lot of patience. A government can function with a certain level of corruption and incompetence. A military can't, at least not in times of war. You can't just ignore that your frontline is collapsing until your citizens get tired and accept it. You have to be able to fight properly, or you'll lose. Educating the thousands of officers that such a large military would need takes years, if not decades. Then you need someone to train various specialists, like pilots and special forces. You can bring in foreigners to help with that, but it only takes you so far. Sooner or later, you'll need to cultivate your own talent. Yes, before unification, every Federation state will have its own armed forces of varying quality. However, they will all be different, with different tactical doctrines, different equipment, and so on. All of that has to be standardized and brought up to the level of the U.S. military, so it's not like it would save much time. Taking all this is possible, but it takes time. Generations, in fact, since a lot of combat expertise can only be learned by engaging in combat. Taking the American military from a bunch of semi-trained militias to a united professional force took, uh, well, it depends on who you ask. It definitely wasn't three years after the country was granted independence, though. Oh yeah, the Federation's invasion was land-based too, which means that they had already occupied Mexico and the U.S. hadn't done anything to stop them from expanding further. They're an openly fascist power that hates you, and all you do to prevent an attack is build some orbital strike satellites? You're already a nuclear power. You have all the deterring power you need. If you're worried about a conventional war, you need to do things like reinforce border defenses, or frustrate the enemy's ability to invade. Instead, the government spends God knows how much money building this giant orbital fuck you cannon during a time when its economy is supposedly in trouble due to the collapse of many of its trading partners. Even later, the Federation builds a similar satellite array despite being in a favorable position. Not to mention how absurd it is to imagine the Federation being able to launch such a successful surprise invasion in any case. For starters, the sheer size of it means it would take a long time to build up the needed forces, and in the modern day with things like satellites, they'd see it coming with plenty of advance notice. I can buy that the Federals would be able to make rapid gains after they used Odin under ideal conditions, just not that the invasion is a surprise. It's not under ideal conditions, though. For starters, all the infrastructure, stuff like roads, would have been destroyed in the attack. Then consider that the Federation is already occupying territory with nearly 200 million people spread out over a large geographic area. The American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan used over 200,000 soldiers at their peak, and that was a much smaller area with a much smaller population. The Federation holding on to places like Mexico, Panama, and Colombia would be difficult even if there weren't insurgents making hell for them in their supply lines. Having a foreign occupier is a great way to get people to do things like plant IEDs on the highway and assassinate officials. That goes for anyone in Federation territory that takes issue with the authoritarian nature of their government, too. It's not too much of a stretch to say that the American government would be willing to send weapons to any rebel factions making life hell for the Federation. In fact, if history is anything to go by, it's almost guaranteed. Plus, there's currently no land route between North and South America. It's not too crazy to think that the Federation government could build one after taking Panama. Granted, taking Panama is already kind of a stretch since there's a heavy U.S. military presence there to guard the canal zone. Maybe they could take it after they crippled the country during the Odin Strike, but that ties into the next issue. How the hell do they transport all the needed men and material to the American border before the invasion? Building all that by ship is possible, if you have a navy, but building one of those takes years of time and stupid amounts of money. You can't do that from 2014 to 2017. You just can't. And if you ship it all that way, it's even more obvious than it would be on land. So the Federation is a new country that lost its authoritarian leader, is building up large amounts of infrastructure, trying to get its economy off the ground, fighting off domestic unrest, and dealing with insurgents both at home and abroad. And all of this while undertaking a land invasion that would rival Operation Barbarossa in terms of scale. If they put the point of divergence between the game's timeline and real-life earlier, say, in the mid-90s, then a lot of this would be more believable. It would give the U.S. more time to fall apart and the Federals more time to grow their power. As it stands now, they have far too much growth and too small of a time just for an excuse to have a, quote, intimidating villain for the players to fight. Yeah, whatever. It's still a decent game. Specifically, I'm talking about Black Ops 3 here. Mostly, I'm just looking at the alliances that make up the world's military powers. Here's another shitty map I made. Blue is the Winslow Accord, headed by the United States after the collapse of NATO. In red is the Common Defense Pact, led by Russia. And in green is the Nile River Coalition, which later joins the CDP. The Nile River Coalition is the most plausible of the three. Climate change is a big part of the new political order. And desire to control resources, such as fresh water, makes perfect sense. A few countries banding together to keep control of what they have? That's believable. I have no issues here. The CDP is the dumbest by far. You mean to tell me that places like Finland, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, and Greece all sided with Russia, while places like Serbia and Venezuela didn't? Both countries are fairly close to Russia today, or at least they tend to be anti-American. That's why Steven Seagal likes them so much. I can maybe believe some countries in Eastern Europe becoming Russia friendly if they invaded and set up puppet regimes like in the aftermath of World War II, but at least give us a throwaway line to justify it. I feel a bit sorry for Cuba, too. In the event of an all out war, they're fucked. The WA isn't great either. Both India and China entering on the same side while they have territorial disagreements is laughable. And are China and Pakistan still working together on the Kashmir situation? Seems difficult if they're in opposing alliances. If China decided to instead side with India there, then did they finally stop fighting over Arunachal Pradesh? How about the Sinkaku Islands? Did they acknowledge those as Japanese territory? How about their, frankly ridiculous, claims on the South China Sea? Did they give those up? Have the US and China come to an agreement on Taiwan? Does China still prop up North Korea? And if not, what happened there? These are just the territorial disputes involving China. If we include other countries, the list gets even longer. Places like Halaib, the Spanish North African territories, all of Israel and Palestine, or Northern Ireland could all be flashpoints for the beginning of a war. That's why before a country can join NATO, they have to settle any territorial or irredentist claims. If they didn't, it would be too easy to pull the entire alliance into conflict. That doesn't even count all the disputes within the NRC and CDP either, who have their own list of places a war might start. I'm also curious about why the entire WA didn't go to help Egypt when it was invaded by the NRC, but I've already thought about this more than the writers. Why did the NRC invade anyways? They're upriver from Egypt. If they want to control all the water, just build a dam. They can build an army of murder robots, but they can't build a dam. I feel awful criticizing this one since it's my favorite entry in the series and the only one to truly embrace the sci-fi aesthetic. Plus, Spacenautsy John Snow is one of the only memorable antagonists from any of the games. We don't fight. We attack. I'll survive through this at gunpoint and breathe by permission of the front. But I can't stay silent. Backstory. Hundreds of years in the future, the solar system has been colonized by humanity. At some point, Mars rebelled and gained independence, calling itself the Settlement Defense Front. It grows and strengthens our nakedly fascist governments until it attacks Earth and the events of the game unfold. First, the name doesn't add up. Settlement Defense Front would make sense as the name of the armed forces, especially during the War of Secession. Kind of like how China's army is called the People's Liberation Army. As a name for a country, though, it's weird. It would make more sense to call it something like the Martian Republic or the Colonial Federation or the United States of the Outer Planets or something. It's just odd. Then let's look at how the SDF managed to become so powerful. Much like the Federation, it just kind of builds a giant army and a giant space navy somehow. I can believe that they might be able to build up to a certain level since they had around 30 years to do it. But their population would be a few hundred million at most compared to the billions Earth and her colonies have. It's hard to build your economy in that situation. Not to mention that every male citizen is required to serve in the military for 15 years, which would take them out of the workforce and further slow productivity. I don't want to harp on this too much, since I already made similar criticisms and the Templin Institute did a video on the same thing, but I needed to at least mention it. One other thing that stands out to me is how every SDF soldier, at least everyone we see, is fanatically loyal to the regime and its supposed ideals. If they've been inundated with propaganda for a generation, then that makes sense. Real-world countries have done similar things plenty of times, from Nazi Germany to Imperial Japan to Communist China. However, one of the first things we see space Nazi John Snow do is murder one of his own men. He doesn't sacrifice him to win a battle or execute him for a crime. He shoots him to prove a point to an Earth soldier, who he then kills right afterward anyways. I guess it was more to prove a point to the audience then. Why would anyone be willing to die for a regime like that? The reason nationalistic propaganda works is because it ties in the identity of individuals with that of the state. It tells them that they're better off as part of a whole and for that reason, they should be willing to sacrifice for the whole. Like that famous JFK line, you're supposed to be willing to give up everything for the state. If space snowman can so casually murder one of his men, he's probably done similar things before, even if he and the other SDF leaders prevents any solid evidence from getting out, there were eyewitnesses and that means word would get out eventually if only as rumors. And once that's in the public consciousness, the idea that officers are just murdering their men for no reason, it'll never go away. Some people will believe it and that brings the level of fanaticism in the population down considerably. This may not collapse the regime right away, but it will weaken it. For that reason, John the Jingle would have been court martial afterwards, no matter how good of an admiral he is. What interests me most and is probably the weirdest thing about this setting is how fast the ships move. See, the entire war that the game focuses on takes place over the course of a single day. During that time, the battleship retribution goes from Earth to the moon, to Titan, to Mercury, to Pluto, to Uranus, then back to Earth. Then the main cast steals a Martian ship and hops back over to Mars. When the ships go into warp speed or whatever the hell it's called, it takes literal seconds to go across the solar system. That changes the entire geopolitical calculus. Imagine for a moment, if Russia could send an entire invasion force to Washington DC in an instant and vice versa. Defending against that would be impossible for either side. If the SDF ever defeated Earth in a war, Earth could just send a kamikaze attack to Mars that kills millions of them. There would be mutually assured destruction here. Not to mention how such quick transit would affect the economy. Oh god damn it, I keep going back to that. Look, the point is that it's impossible to stop something that moves too quickly for you to react to. Not to mention if they moved that fast, humanity should just be able to colonize other solar systems no problem. Why bother fighting Earth when you could just head off to be space Nazis in Alpha Centauri? And why does the SDF use forced human labor when they have intelligent humanoid robots? And what do they use for fuel? And why doesn't firing guns in space send you flying backwards? And why do strangers get uncomfortable when I try talking to them? Here I'm talking about the 2019 game Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Not to be confused with the 2007 game Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. Because whoever names these things has no imagination or regard for not confusing the fuck out of people. Short version, it takes place in the modern day, mostly in the fictional country of Erzikstan. 20 years ago, Erzikstan was invaded by Russia and the West has funded armed anti-Russian groups to fight in a proxy war. And one of these groups also attacks the West for some reason, we'll get to that later. Except wait, it's not just a proxy war because the US has soldiers fighting on the ground. And it's not actually the Russian military that's invaded, it was a rogue general. But there are also ultra-nationalist rebels helping him out. And they're fighting alongside the terrorists and the terrorists are attacking both the Russians and the West. Did they just slam like eight scripts together when they wrote this? Erzikstan is on a chunk of land that doesn't exist in real life, a little peninsula sticking out of the Caucasus. And that's fine, both Middle Eastern and Caucasian borders are controversial enough already. The developers probably didn't want to look like they were taking sides by carving a new state out of real ones. Despite the location, the people there are Arab, speak Arabic, the climate is desert, and the name is Turkic. If you're unaware, there aren't any deserts there, nor are there very many Arab people. It's a distinct region, separate from the Middle East in basically every way it can be. Here's an ethnic map of the region. It's kind of a mess. The geography and culture might make more sense if Erzikstan was a peninsula in the Persian Gulf or the Mediterranean. So I'm not sure why they didn't just do that. It gets worse though. The two big armed Erzik groups that we see in the game are the Erzik militia and Alcatala. The militia is straightforward. Just some folks who want the Russian occupation to end and they get support from the Americans and British to do so. Makes sense. Alcatala is weird. At first, they seem to be an Islamic terrorist organization similar to Al Qaeda or ISIS, which is fine. But some of the game's death screens imply that they're fighting against both Russia and NATO forces because they want to get all foreign influence out of Erzikstan, which suggests that they're some sort of ultra-nationalists rather than religious extremists, not that those are mutually exclusive. Okay, that's a little different. Gameplay and story-wise, it doesn't change much, but it's something. It turns out, though, that Alcatala is an anarchist organization. What? As an anarchist, no, this has nothing to do with our beliefs. This is just a Hollywood depiction of them. I'm not offended or anything. It's just inaccurate. That said, if Alcatala's beliefs and tactics still made sense, it wouldn't bother me at all. And they don't make sense. For starters, they want foreign interference gone from Erzikstan, most notably the occupying Russian army. They're indirectly being helped by the United States and the United Kingdom in this endeavor, so they decide to commit terrorist attacks in London. All that would do is make them hated in the Western world. I'm not even objecting on grounds that it's immoral or that it's ineffective, though those are both true. I'm pointing out that they are literally attacking someone who isn't their enemy. What were they hoping to accomplish here? You should put that on the front of the box as a quote. If anything, this would make the UK government start supporting the Russians since the average Westerner probably can't tell the difference between Alcatala and the Erzik militia. Some reasons are given on the game's wiki page. Apparently, Alcatala wants to use terrorist attacks to draw the world's major powers into an untenable war that will collapse the world's economy. After that, all hierarchies will be gone, I guess. I suggest a return to the drawing board. That plan is stupid. If they want to collapse the world's economy, then they should attack, you know, economic centers, blow up stock exchanges, airports, railways, things that are directly connected to the economy. This whole strategy is so nonsensical, it's kind of hard to even explain how nonsensical it is. Maybe you could argue that Alcatala used the Erzik militia as an American puppet, which would be reasonable for them to think. And there are plenty of civil wars throughout history and the modern day, which are multifaceted. So this isn't totally unrealistic. But these sorts of terror attacks would only work well if they targeted the Russians. It's just an odd choice. And very little of this information comes across in the main game. It's mostly in death screen quotes and other tiny, easily missed material. If they're trying to kick off some sort of worldwide revolution, then they shouldn't actively try to draw negative attention, which is what terrorism does, the purpose is to terrorize people. You don't see Rojava or the Sapatistas committing these sorts of atrocities for that very reason. Some half-assed reasons are given here, but let's be real. The creators just wanted to take advantage of the controversy that came with opening the game with a massive terrorist attack. They wanted to be able to point at it and say, look, we're adult and edgy and dark. And all this sort of thing does is make video games seem childish. And hey, if the developers wanted to put that in, they should be allowed to. It is a brutal, unpleasant opening that shows what the stakes are should the heroes fail. If nothing else, it makes me hate the villains. So even if it's a tad exploitative, I don't have moral issues with it. I just wish the developers had justified their decision better. Maybe have the heroes fight ISIS or something. It's not like anybody likes them and you'd have to do much less explaining to have it make sense. But that's about all I have to add here. Call of Duty is a fun series, if uneven. And even though they could easily get away with making the storylines nothing more than excuses for gunfights, they usually put in more effort. Usually. If they want those storylines to be even better though, they need a strong foundation in the world building. The games are all about conflict between nation states and other armed groups. If that conflict doesn't make sense or has other issues with it, then cracks will start to appear. Things like the Russian military staging a successful invasion of the US East Coast is far-fetched. But since Russia is a military power in both real life and in the games, we can suspend our disbelief long enough to buy into the idea that they would build up to a point where they could do that. You don't need to think of everything. You just need to spend a little time examining things from all angles. It's a fun intellectual exercise, at least for nerds, and it helps add a layer of immersion for the audience. And fuck Activision and fuck Bobby Kotick by their games used. Special thanks to everyone who watched this far, including and especially my patrons and channel members. My $10 up patrons include Oppo Savalainen, Olivia Rand, Brother Santotys, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Christopher Quinton, Dan, Dan, Echo, Joel, Karkat Kitsune, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tiebreaker, Madison Lewis Bennett, Marilyn Roxy, Microphone, Sad Mardigan, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, Vavictus, and of course, all the other names listed here. You guys are great. Without you, I wouldn't be able to do this. If you wanna get your name put up here, then consider becoming a patron. You get stuff like early access to my videos. And if you don't want that, then how about maybe just becoming a channel member or dropping me a tip over on PayPal or just sharing this video. Yeah, you get the picture. Goodbye. Bye.