What follows are some pretty significant Call of Duty 4 spoilers. As the game came out last year I’m not feeling terribly guilty about this but if you haven’t finished the single-player campaign you should be forewarned.
I don’t know why, but the characters I find most interesting in fiction are so often people I don’t think I would like if I met them in real life.
On that note, I present to you Captain William Price of the British SAS and a supporting character in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Captain Price is the commanding officer of Sergeant “Soap” MacTavish, the primary character controlled by the player for the British missions in the game. Price acts as both a mentor to the player’s character and a guide for the player to keep them from getting lost. He’s stern, no nonsense, and not above using morally questionable means in order to achieve his mission. The story set-up would have you believe that the SAS is busy trying to clean-up a mess caused by the Americans, but as it turns out during a portion of the game where you play as a much younger William Price the Americans only had the problems they did because of a mistake made by Price and his former commanding officer. It’s a double twist with a little salt around the rim that makes the Call of Duty 4 story so interesting.
When we first meet Price he is the insult throwing and hard charging commander of the SAS team that represents the British portion of the missions. On the very first outing Price orders the elimination of a tanker crew, who may or may not be terrorists, and even has his team kill sailors in their sleep. If that’s not uncomfortable enough for you, the main character, the aforementioned “Soap”, walks in as Price is finishing up an interrogation. The bloodied terrorist and the pliers in Price’s hands are damning evidence. Look, I’m all over the map when it comes to the torture debate but I know it’s one thing to talk about it in the neat and tidy world we live in and something totally different for the people who may be putting their lives on the line. No matter how you feel about it though, that scene struck me with that same feeling of discomfort as killing the tanker crew in their sleep. Sure, that was probably a very bad man but the implications just gave me a chill.
At this point in the game I’ve developed a grudging respect for Price. I don’t know that I approve of his methods but I’m starting to get a feel for how far he’s willing to go in order to protect his homeland. Oddly, just about when I’m at the point where I wonder how he could become this way I get a mission where you play as Price when he was much younger.
Seriously, here is one of those rare moments where it’s like the developers look into the future and read my mind. “Hmmm, we’re going to have a lot of people wondering why Price is so hardcore. Maybe we should expand on his character?”
We get to play along as Price and his commanding officer botch an assassination attempt that leaves the main antagonist alive who would later cause so much trouble in present day. Not only do they assume ripping a guy’s arm off with a .50 caliber rifle will prove fatal, they barely hang around long enough to confirm the villain is indeed going to bleed out like they presume he will. They’re more than happy to declare him a confirmed kill and then race through the bombed out suburbs of Somewhere-vistan only to have Price’s commander badly wounded and the two narrowly escaping with their lives.
No doubt, before this, the story was simply the SAS trying to stop a nuclear terrorist threat, but for Price this is redemption. He screwed up big and he knows it. No one ever says anything about it, but the facts are clear to the player. Again, the story is strong enough that it doesn’t force feed these facts to the player. In the end, in their darkest hour, Price uses his last moments before death to slide his pistol to the player so that “Soap” can put an end to the megalomaniacal antagonist’s life.
In the real world I’ve known enough people in specialized military branches to understand they make tough choices most of us will never have to make. I’ve known people who were Green Berets and quite a few former Army Rangers and they’ve all had to be tough bastards at one point or another. I respected these men and the choices they’ve had to make. Facing this fictitious character who also is faced with tough choices, it’s the uncompromising way he goes about his job that makes me so uncomfortable with him. Does he regret his actions? Does he regret what he has to do in the name of his country? Not once does he show an ounce of remorse, he is all business from beginning to bloody end. By the end of the game that grudging respect turned to admiration, but I still couldn’t help feel that he and I would never hang out at the pub. The cost of his decisions cost him a piece of his humanity, making him something that could never be defined as “normal”. A compelling character far from the wise and seasoned mentor so often given to us in most stories. Flawed and haunted in the present by the ghosts of his past, he still retains a laser-like focus on the mission when he had every right to despair. None of it changes that he makes choices that would make it hard to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning.
