Ugh--- this game. In your Squirty Play the "Press X to Pay Respects" bit was shockingly tacky. If the game is about being a soldier, I'd want to be doing cool combat things of course, but on an emotional level, the sacrifice felt empty because the story gives us nothing to latch onto about the characters for us to care about them as comrades in arms, friends, or even just as people.
Want the audience to feel something? Have an officer talk about the soldier's character and his accomplishments on and off the battlefield. Show his family grieving. Show the flag being honorably folded and given to the widow as she tries not to collapse under its weight. Show flashbacks of being him doing something goofy in the mess hall at basic. Give the audience SOMETHING. Not a POS quicktime event. I groaned and rolled my eyes. Noone should be groaning or rolling their eyes at a soldier's funeral.
You know what? Forget tacky. That scene was in bad taste, poorly handled, and approached being disrespectful.
Moving on: I'm so glad you mentioned the leniarity, Jim. I kept thinking, "This is really, REALLY close to being an on-rails-shooter".
I could tell imediately from the hype-building commercial, where the player just follows this guy around being told where to go and what to do and the player imagines that a goat is a girl, that this would be Instruction Following Simulator 7. Your carnival ride is about to start, keep your hands inside the cart at all times. Be sure to stop by the souvenire shop on your way out.
But people just buy these games for the multiplayer right? Which is weird because the other ad showcasing "Spacey" (quotes because any time a movie or game tries CG the likenesses of real people it looks horrible and wooded - ugh cg Jolie in Beowulf, what a complete mess) and and a few other things about the campaign, seems to suggest they've put some care into developing a robust single-player campaign. Nope. They didn't.
And another killer was when "Spacey" says, "This is advanced Warfare". Yes, we know, Weird Cardboard Kevin Spacey. We know. That's what it says on the box.
