a shot from the COD:MW2 trailer
Well, online anyway: the next iteration of Xbox game Call of Duty will be set, at least in part, in Washington DC. The most recent video trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 shows conflict scenes on the mall by the Washington Monument and on the south lawn of the White House.
Well I used to say something in my profile about not quite being a “tinker, tailor, soldier, or spy” but Tom stole that for our about us page, so I guess I’ll have to find another way to express that I am a man of many interests.
Hmm, guess I just did.
My tastes run the gamut from sophomoric to Shakespeare and in my “professional” life I’ve sold things, served beer, written software, and carried heavy objects… sometimes at the same place. It’s that range of loves and activities that makes it so easy for me to love DC – we’ve got it all.
I checked out the trailer, and one inaccuracy strikes me. The Washington Monument is depicted, apparently, with a steel framework, with the stone damaged and missing in parts. In reality, it’s a solid masonry structure with no load-bearing framework. Maybe there’s a little metalwork around the elevator shaft but it wouldn’t appear as depicted in the screenshots. :)
Fallout 3 did the same thing, unfortunately. Not sure why that rumor seems to have gotten a hold in the gaming industry.
I think it’s purely an aesthetic decision. They want to show that it’s worn and beaten and showing sections of rebar is stark and obvious. If they didn’t do that it would just be missing chunks which would only be visible in particular light and from certain angles.
I’m not necessarily saying they know better but I bet they’d still do it either way.
I’m going to be more interested to see how accurate they get our geography. Fallout3 you couldn’t really blame them for rejiggering; the supposed nuclear holocaust was set around 2080 as I recall. So new buildings and even different metro paths could be explained away that way.
Well, yeah, alternate reality and all. But having the White House directly north of the National Archives was a little weird… to say nothing of moving Germantown (the police station anyway) down by Bethesda.
Which, mind you, does nothing to take away from what I truly believe is the single greatest game I’ve ever played.
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