The helicopter crash is a good example. The heroic, patriotic, and slightly comedic Marines go back for a wounded comrade, and then...their entire squad dies in a nuclear blast because they didn't evac quickly enough. Or the plucky SAS seize the only man who can give them the intel they're after, and then...commit a war crime and torture him, which turns out to be pointless when they get the information from another source anyway, so they commit another war crime and execute him in cold blood. The helicopter scene was genuinely shocking at the time, even though tragically killing off your heroes in the middle of the game is widespread today.
I felt the original Modern Warfare was the only Call of Duty that married the horrors of war from the first two games[0] to the Tom Clancy action of the later ones. Black Ops seemed more jingoistic and less willing to make the player uncomfortable, while in later games missions like No Russian that were meant to shock the player didn't combine it with anything philosophically unsettling (like the idea that "no man left behind" might get a much larger number of people killed).
That being said, I think a lot of what I got out of the game was due to where I was in life when I first played it, so it might just be sentiment tinting my memories.
[0] We don't mention 3.
The atomic bomb subplot seemed seemed laughably nonsensical in terms of the narrative and a mediocre example of a tragedy. The characters and relationships weren't built up to the point were it could produce the desired shocking effect in my opinion. They were just about to make an escape... and then what? Keep being random Marine bros, while everything else remains the same?
I recently watched The Last of Us, and I think the 5th episode is a stellar example of what I think makes up a good tragedy.
At the time I played the game, I didn't really pick up on the torture scene—not sure that was the never before seen, brave and shocking portrayal of the realities of the War on Terror that you remembered it as.
My problem with the plot was that it was logically incoherent, completely bonkers, and really ignorant of politics the middle east and Russia in that time period. I guess that's what happens if you don't have the benefit of hindsight.
Black ops was definitely more of a jingoistic Tom-Clancy-type epos, but it was great historical fiction with a narrative that was beautifully spun and made sense. It has a bit of Fight Club mixed with the Rambo movies and the Manchurian candidate. It plays on all the Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation, secret weapons programs, brain washing, sleeper agents, number stations, etc. and manages to create a great atmosphere. It ties in a bunch of famous places and events like the Bay of Pigs. Vorkuta Gulag, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Vietnam, the Rebirth Island chemical weapons facility and Kowloon walled city. The subtle hints and finally the revelation of the twist that Reznov is a figment of your imagination, a demon of revenge implanted into your psyche back in Vorkuta, are perfect. Your own comrades at the CIA are torturing you, because your they have realized you have been brainwashed after you kept sabotaging their attempts to stop the Soviet plan. It seems like you reveal the purpose of the numbers, because you remember the ship that acts as the transmitter, where you then kill Krevchenko, but his dying words reveal that the numbers were really part of the instructions to activate you as a sleeper agent to assassinate Kennedy. I found that ending incredibly satisfying.
And to be clear I meant the entire MW campaign, from 1 to 3. The story makes little sense as a while. There are many plot holes. But scenes taken in isolation were very powerful. The missions in DC were amazing, the lat stand in Paris, etc.
Black ops wasn't bad on the front of coherent, well told story. It's just that you can see the plot twist coming 10 miles away and the big reveal is a bit ridiculous since you figured it out 2 hours earlier.
