Thomas Veil
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Ronald Reagan sends you to do war crimes in the latest Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War trailer
I read this and did a WTF?
I get that lots of games and movies and such are about antiheroes working outside the law. I’m not here to about the ethics or morality of that.
But using a real life figure? I dunno...
Let me be clear. I didn’t like Ronald Reagan. At all. I thought that benign grandpa act was phony as a $3 bill. If Trump is the potential end of America, Reagan was the beginning of the end. You can connect the dots between then and now.
But using a real person in this manner? It just bothers me.
I’m not a gamer so I don’t know if this has been done before (sounds like it hasn’t), but once you open that Pandora’s box, it’s hard to close. Would you want to see Barack Obama in a game about a nuclear war? Or maybe the My Lai massacre turned into a game?
Traditionally unless it’s a historical story, entertainment has used euphemistic stand-ins for real life people, and it works out fine. I’d hate to see this start a trend. What do you think? Cool or tacky?
Activision and its development studios, Treyarch and Raven Software, debuted a new trailer for the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and it happens to feature a somewhat eerie and unexpected new character in the series: actual President Ronald Reagan....
Incorporating a real-life historical and political figure — one whose tenure still has controversial effects on modern-day politics, including the imminent 2020 election — is definitely a move. It’s an even weirder one when you consider what the trailer has Reagan doing: ordering you, the player, and your fellow clandestine operatives to essentially break the law and commit potential war crimes in order to save the “free world.”
I read this and did a WTF?
I get that lots of games and movies and such are about antiheroes working outside the law. I’m not here to about the ethics or morality of that.
But using a real life figure? I dunno...
Let me be clear. I didn’t like Ronald Reagan. At all. I thought that benign grandpa act was phony as a $3 bill. If Trump is the potential end of America, Reagan was the beginning of the end. You can connect the dots between then and now.
But using a real person in this manner? It just bothers me.
I’m not a gamer so I don’t know if this has been done before (sounds like it hasn’t), but once you open that Pandora’s box, it’s hard to close. Would you want to see Barack Obama in a game about a nuclear war? Or maybe the My Lai massacre turned into a game?
Traditionally unless it’s a historical story, entertainment has used euphemistic stand-ins for real life people, and it works out fine. I’d hate to see this start a trend. What do you think? Cool or tacky?