Call of Duty No Russian actors "tearful"

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 15 March, 2011

"Sometimes we become desensitised."

The voice over actors who played the terrorists in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's controversial No Russian level were "tearful" as they delivered lines, one of the developers has revealed.

"Sometimes they bring something to the performance that is actually even more tragic or more powerful than anything that we would have actually envisioned," Call of Duty director Keith Arem told GamesIndustry.biz.

"By them bringing that to life, it really engages the player emotionally.

"It's a difficult moral question for the player and directing the actors and hearing what the actors are saying in Russian is actually almost worse than seeing the action on screen, because these families [in game] are separated, fathers telling their wives to take the children and everything will be okay, and knowing that it's not... it was a difficult thing to work with a lot of the actors.

"Some of the actors were very tearful saying the lines because it was a pretty emotionally charged scene."

No Russian, the fourth level in Modern Warfare, sees the player take part in a Russian airport massacre.

It caused controversy in the mainstream media upon release, and was even blamed for a terrorist attack on Moscow in January this year.

While developer Infinity Ward knew No Russian would court controversy, Arem admitted that it's easy to forget the impact such scenes have on players.

"Sometimes we become desensitised to the fact that this is going to be so controversial and when it comes out we have to remind ourselves that people are seeing this for the first time and they're also taking in the complete experience for the first time as opposed to seeing it in the various stages of production," he said.

No Russian and other likely controversial Call of Duty scenes usually make the cut because management backs the teams' decisions.

"When you see it actually come together and you hear all the voices and you see what the team bought to that, it's very brutal," said Arem. "It's a difficult experience for anyone to go through.

"At the same time, creatively, when those decision are unanimous between the team we try to make them as engaging as possible. Unfortunately we're pretty much committed once we make that decision because the development cycle is so far in advance of the release of the game."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (49) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • metalangel #1 1 year ago

    Yeah, it was a terrible, terrible level.

    They didn't give you enough ammunition.

  • Eraysor #2 1 year ago

    It was pretty much the only moment in the game that wasn't completely generic, to be honest.

  • carlitoswagon #3 1 year ago

    Nonsense. It was a cheap soulless effort, which had no emotional impact whatsoever. Fail.

  • Raiten #4 1 year ago

    True eraysor, yet it was still compleatly forgettable experience.. it's funny to hear voice actors or the likes saying "this and this sequence was so emotional" when there's hardly ever been any fps game that'd have made you care about what's hapening the least bit.
    In all honesty, the only fps game moment that i _cared_ about recently was in bulletstorm when my poor dinosaur tallylicker bit the dust. Tho can't say i'd have cared too much about that either, but at least it made me smirk, which is more than vast majority of fps plots manage to do.

  • geeza2020 #5 1 year ago

    One question; who the fuck cares?

  • asphaltcowboy #6 1 year ago

    "The voice over actors who played the terrorists in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's controversial No Russian level were "tearful" as they delivered lines, one of the developers has revealed.

    Is that right? Because I played through MW2 again recently and I'm pretty sure there are very few lines from the terrorists apart from the starting "No Russian" speech and something about "sending a message" at the end. In between, all the terrorists say is stuff like "kill those cops by the luggage trolley/landing gear/duty-free perfume"...

  • menage #7 1 year ago

    Beh. No Russian is the biggest piece of overhyped tripe I had the joy of playing the last 4 years. Not fun, totally poinltess, storywise it's a huge fuckup (would a marine really kill 100 people just to keep his cover???, he could have shot the guy in the back and be done with it right there), and on an interactivity level it's even less engaging than the main game was, and that was a shooting gallery at most butaAt least you had to duck once in a while. NR was an on rails bit without actual gameplay.

    I don't get why Acti even bother with SP COD anymore.

    @Raiten

    HL2, ep 2 was pretty decent in that regard. Also the Darkness, and maybe even Bioshock.
    Edited by menage at 15/03/11 @ 10:45

  • Jim_Lahey #8 1 year ago

    There were lines in this scene? I just remember a lot of shooting and bangs. Like the rest of that nonsensical game.

  • Centrifugal #9 1 year ago

    "RELOADING!"

    *sob*

  • stephenb #10 1 year ago

    "The voice over actors who played the terrorists in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's controversial No Russian level were "tearful" as they delivered lines, one of the developers has revealed.

    What a load of old tosh. Do me a favour love!

  • StolenGlory #11 1 year ago

    "Sometimes we become desensitised."

    The same could be said of CoD fans to innovations and strides made in the genre which are not reflected in their game of choice.

  • spekkeh #12 1 year ago

    What lines? I can recall "remember, no games", and that was about it, before you pointlessly mowed down lots of people.

    Maybe the Russians owned a PS3?

    (yeah old I know)

  • pemberton #13 1 year ago

    i imagine they were weeping for the sorry state of their acting careers

  • RobotRocker #14 1 year ago

    Ah, the wonders of point missing.

    Modern Warfare 2 single player is the single greatest FUCK YOU ever given to players since COD4 and Kane and Lynch 2. The whole point is that you are just some punk squaddie being led around and being unable to do squat in the overarching narrative instead of the macho action hero bravado in Black Ops. "No Russian" amplifies this. You participate in/witness a pointless massacre and get shot at the end because the game wants you to know that you can't change anything. You cant be a hero and shoot the guy because they just shoot you (And it would still have the intended consequence anyway of pissing off Russia). Every mission you do mostly ends up with some catastrophic fuck up (Hey, who let that crazy English Captain run into that nuclear armed submarine) and the end of the game ends with you becoming one of the most wanted terrorists on earth after killing a US commander after finding out the US Military engineered a war between themselves and Russia as a petty revenge over Russian Terrorists detonating the Nuke in the first game

    You are being led through catastrophic fuck up after catastrophic fuck up and powerless to do anything about it just like COD4. It's genius and probably my favourite FPS campaign because it has no problem treating you like shit to get its point across.

    Also, any videogame that has the balls to say America started the war and have been the bad guys all along. Hope you enjoyed playing the bad guys is a winner in my book. Such a good plot twist.

  • jablonski #15 1 year ago

    Have I woke up in 2009 today?

  • stepneg #16 1 year ago

    Slow news day, goes to show how crap and unintresting BLOPS is to go back & trawl something out about MW2 just to get a COD story up.

  • koopahell #17 1 year ago

    Does anyone remember Hitman 2 where half the levels contained entire streets and buildings full of people that you could massacre and then arrange their bodies to spell out swear words?

    It's not real is it.

  • king26 #18 1 year ago

    I must have missed this, the only shooter I bought in 2009 was Killzone 2.

  • DwarfyP #19 1 year ago

    Sheeeeesh. The No Russian level wasn't that terrible.
    The biggest problem was not being able to run. Wasn't as dramatic or traumatic as the media or ActiBlizzard would have you believe.

  • Jamieb87 #20 1 year ago

    Emotion? The closest MW2 can get to genuine emotion is a high five followed by a fist pump.

    And it's definitely a cop out to say fps can't do emotion, as menage mentioned above, The Darkness is a great example of solid narrative and emotional investment in the characters. When jenny is murdered in front of you. I felt genuinely moved, and the pleasure i got in exacted my revenge beat any slo mo COD head shot.
    Edited by Jamieb87 at 15/03/11 @ 11:45

  • Zombie-Hamster #21 1 year ago

    Tearful actor says, "Shoot over there!"

    Tearful actor thinks, "Oh my God, this is the worst script ever, is my career really reduced to this? Boo hoo etc."

  • superstu1337 #22 1 year ago

    NoBodyCares.com

    Battlefield 3 news please!

  • username84 #23 1 year ago

    I quite like Modern Warfare 2.
    So did a lot of people.
    Although people who don't like it seem hellbent on making sure everyone knows it.
    If only they realized nobody cares what they think these threads would be a bit more interesting.

    Admittedly this is a nonsense article.
    Edited by username84 at 15/03/11 @ 11:54

  • retr0gamer #24 1 year ago

    What utter shit. If you want sincerity in acting then listen to the letter being read at the end of Silent Hill 2 where the actress really does breakdown crying. That's completely different from this insincere bullshit. And people were giving out yesterday about David Jaffe talking about how games journalists should shoot down this kind of crap 'our generic badly written game is art'?

  • Sodding_Gamer #25 1 year ago

    I sobbed when I realised I paid 37 quid for black ops.

  • Freek #26 1 year ago

    It was an attempt to bring something interesting to the storyline and explore a different perspective on war. But the end result was dull and meaningless.
    Walk through a level while terrorist shoot a bunch of civies and you have the option to either look or shoot too? There's no story there, no action and consequence, no impact. It barely changed the gameplay and was completly out of left field in otherwise straight up hollywood action movie.
    Tearfull? Come on, for what reason?

  • CaptainKid #27 1 year ago

    I found the whole airport scene pretty lame and tame.
    Since I was almost unable to follow or connect with the story it wasn't much different then going on a rampage in a GTA game.

  • SBfistfun #28 1 year ago

    Fucking losers.

  • Eraysor #29 1 year ago

    My favourite moment of MW2 was the level where you begin in a bunker below the Washington Monument, because you don't know where you are and you can only hear the battle above. There's just an emergency broadcast for a loading screen instead of a briefing as per usual. I thought it was a fairly stylish move compared to the rest of the game. Sadly, this appears to be the only time they managed to think a little outside the box.

  • username84 #30 1 year ago

    @Koopahell

    Or in the first half-life ushering lots of scientists into a small room along with lots of remote bag bombs.
    All topped off with a rocket resulting in a blissfull shower of assorted human body parts.

    Didn't make me cry.

    Although I think my mum may have.

  • coolbritannia #31 1 year ago

    I know I'm in the minority here but I really enjoyed MW2's campaign. The story was dumb, but set pieces like No Russian and the assualt on the White House were incredibly well done. As far as emotional game scenes go, I always thought Dom finding Maria all fucked up was pretty upsetting, Jorge checking out of Halo Reach swiftly followed by the covenant fleet he thought he'd destroyed was a kicker, and Simba seeing Scar kill his father was - oh wait.

  • randompanda #32 1 year ago

    Tragic is definitely the right word.

    I'd be crying too if I was in this shit.

  • PlugMonkey #33 1 year ago

    "It's a difficult moral question for the player"

    No it's not. There is no moral question. You are a passenger. It was about as profoundly moving as Duck Hunt.

    All it did was highlight exactly how far the series has fallen from the opening Russian missions in the first Call of Duty, which remain something of a highwater mark for me emotionally responding to a videogame.

  • spekkeh #34 1 year ago

    ^ mweh, I thought that was a bit of a me-too, where MoH:AA ripped off Saving Private Ryan and CoD therefore did the same with Enemy at the Gates.

  • geeza2020 #35 1 year ago

    But those are films. Its a bit different when you are participating in the battles. You get more of a sense of the horror. Well, with the Russian levels in the first CoD you did anyway, as Enemy at the Gates is actually a fucking awful film where I hated every character in it and wanted the German sniper to kill all the annoying Russians with English accents. MoH:AA on the other hand was never going to live up to the power of Saving Private Ryan.

  • BritishBlue1 #36 1 year ago

    I cried at this scene as well, I must admit. I was struck by the realisation of just how far Call of Duty had fallen.

  • PlugMonkey #37 1 year ago

    @spekkeh

    Not the Enemy At The Gates bit, the bit where they give you a clip of bullets and tell you to take the rifle off the man next to you when he dies. A First Person Shooter where you can't even shoot back.

    I mean, I had read that the Russians had done that, but being placed in that situation - and dying again and again and again - brought home the reality of it in a way that no book or film ever could. It genuinely shook me.

    "No Russian" was a pathetic stunt by comparison.

  • Bluetooth #38 1 year ago

    Surely this guy is milking it for the fame.

    "these families [in game] are separated, fathers telling their wives to take the children and everything will be okay, and knowing that it's not... it was a difficult thing to work with a lot of the actors. "

    WHAT? I didn't see or hear any of this family interaction.

  • spekkeh #39 1 year ago

    Not the Enemy At The Gates bit, the bit where they give you a clip of bullets and tell you to take the rifle off the man next to you when he dies.

    Eh? That is the Enemy at the Gates bit.

  • coolbritannia #40 1 year ago

    Bluetooth, that interaction was apparently in Russian. So, pointless article really.

  • The_Inquisitor #41 1 year ago

    I got over the distress of the level by thinking "at least one of the people I killed must have been a pickpocket". They thrive at airports they do...

  • metalangel #42 1 year ago

    @Bluetooth: Nope. All you heard was BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM

  • Alf-Life #43 1 year ago

    @RobotRocker

    I think you're missing the point and are giving too much credence to a ham-fisted B-Movie action plot. It's not meant to be ironic, or satirical. It's just bad.

  • PlugMonkey #44 1 year ago

    Eh? That is the Enemy at the Gates bit.

    Is it? I may have missed the start. I only remember the sniper duel (which they also did in CoD, and which I thought you meant).

    My bad. Was still more powerful as a game than it could have been in a movie though imho.

  • PlugMonkey #45 1 year ago

    Eh? That is the Enemy at the Gates bit.

    Is it? I may have missed the start. I only remember the sniper duel (which they also did in CoD, and which I thought you meant).

    My bad. Was still more powerful as a game than it could have been in a movie though imho.

  • Doctor_What #46 1 year ago

    @RobotRocker : I agree with you - at least they were trying to give the plot a bit more depth than simple 'go here, succeed in killing bad people, go somewhere else, succeed in killing more people', even if that is precisely the structure of a gameplay.

    FFS people, what do you expect from the plot of a game called a 'FPS'. It's always going to be about shooting a metric fucktonne of people, at least they tried to give some interesting twists to the plot (which is more than most developers have managed).

  • BuddyChrist #47 1 year ago

    @koopahell

    Hahahaha, you're a nut

    Half-life. When I loose hope in fps, I just say half-life.

  • TheGuvernor #48 1 year ago


    "Tearful' with joy as their paychecks cleared for such a shit sell out of a once hallowed fps title.

  • tinners #49 1 year ago

    Wow is EG all out of news?

    Who cares?