MW2 was not my idea of stellar storytelling (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Wednesday, January 13, 2016, 20:54 (3476 days ago) @ Durandal

They would introduce these new characters, have you fight this epic battle to save someone, and then cutscene kill you. I hated that with a passion. Cutscene deaths for player characters are the worst.

It was groundbreaking in the first Modern Warfare when the guy you were playing as for most of the first part of the game performed a daring rescue, only to slowly die in the ensuing nuclear explosion. You had control as he crawled out of the helicopter, struggled to his feet, looked at the too-close mushroom cloud, then died. That moment stuck with a lot of people, and unfortunately Infinity Ward felt like they had to one-up it in their subsequent games.

The upside to this was that you, the player, are not really the protagonist of these games, You're the guy working under them:

Price was the hero, you played as the newbie, Soap.
In a Flashback where you play as Price, he's a Lieutenant following Captain MacMillan.

After the events of the first game, Soap was the hero. You played as his underling, Roach.
Once Roach died, you played as Soap again, and avenged his (your own) death.

In the third game, you play as Yuri, assisting Soap and Price on their mission off the grid (and a plot point reveals that you were working under the Villain who detonated the bomb in the first game before defecting). You also play as a member of a Delta Force squad (Metal), who assist Price and Yuri.

Because you aren't the protagonist, you can die at any time, and this is a contrast to the unkillable one-man-army that most player characters end up being in games. You had a feeling that you were expendable, and more so after the protagonist of the series, Soap, dies in a cutscene while you watch. War is Hell...