In essence, the airport scene serves the same function as the nuclear explosion scene in the first Modern Warfare: To establish the antagonists’ credibility as villains. In the scene, you’re playing an undercover CIA operative, who doesn’t know that the Russian terrorist cell he had infiltrated was planning this. The terrorists attack the airport, and the protagonist tags along to avoid blowing his cover. At the end of the sequence, the leader explains that he knew who the protagonist was all along, kills him and leaves his body behind as evidence, implying that the CIA (and by extension, the USA) was behind the attack. The Russian general population is understandably furious, which kickstarts the main conflict of the plot: A Russian invasion of the USA.

As far as the CoD:MW2 bit, they included a mission where you join a group of terrorists in massacring thousands of civilians in an airport. It plays a key part of the story, but many people are up at arms about it. Some people are starting to wonder if it was added in its current form merely for shock value and ratings, which plays into Mr. Kotick’s recent “acquisition.”

Wow…but how do you REALLY feel? I am not sure what has you so miffed about stock options (perhaps you should enlighten us) but it hardly seems like the one human being will be the death of Activision/Blizzard – especially one who is so button down, all business, profit line orientated. After all it was he who, not that long ago, announced that he was proud of the fact that the heads of studios were now coming in to his office to discuss budgets.

“…about lighting hair on fire…”

I am not sure why you wish it was Mr. Kotick making this comment, unless of course, you feel he has some aversion to burning hair (we here at NPNM know we do…it stinks)

And no…we had no plans for the discussion of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in a future show, with the possible exception of mentioning it in passing.

And no…we (that the NPNM Team we) hadn’t heard anything about “terrorism”.

By a 60 ton tank, Repeatedly, Until his head finally is about as thick as his brains are, and then ten times more for good measure, then finally being lit on fire, and have the ashes stored somewhere out in west Texas with the rest of the toxic and radioactive waste. If anyone is going to be the death of Activision-Blizzard it is him and the board of directors. That company used to care a lot more about the games and the developers than profit margins. Heck, they split from Atari just so that the developers would be better off and could make great games without being dictated to by a white-collar warlord.

I wish he was the one who sent you the comment about lighting hair on fire and extinguishing it with an ice pick.

Also, I don’t know if you have anything planned to discuss this, but you might have heard about the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Terrorism bit, and I am curious what your opinions are on it if you have seen it.

Julie