Why not just take it out and avoid the extra dev work? The campaign is short, at around five hours of gameplay, but it’s not like cutting this eight-minute mission – possibly replacing it with 10 seconds of voiceover exposition to explain what happened – would have dented that quantity much either. And its creators need to be willing to take responsibility for all and any of those emotional responses. Obviously, Modern Warfare 2 is a piece of entertainment, but – because of that – it’s in a place to move, surprise, or horrify us. How seriously should anything in Modern Warfare 2 be taken? The case against No Russian The Russians aren’t the only villains, either, with (spoilers ahead) the military general who guides most of your missions becoming the big bad before the end of the game is out. Modern Warfare 2 is a video game, and the story is pretty overblown already (you even go to space). There’s the entertainment argument to consider, too. Our Senior Editor of Home Tech, Gerald Lynch, stresses that you don't have to fire a single bullet in the mission, which feels important: "That you're the arbiter of whether you take part or not is on you – its failing is that you aren't given the opportunity to intervene in any way (unless you consider beating the game and taking down the end villain a form of correcting vengeance)." Achievements aren’t tied to the mission, either, meaning that those wanting every single game trophy on Xbox One won’t be hindered from their 100% goal for having taken issue with the level. Players are warned of “disturbing content which may offend some players”, with the option to skip the mission entirely.
The mission also still comes with the same trigger warnings and safeguards as it did in the original game. We can learn a lot from looking at the past from a modern perspective, and the remastered No Russian enters a different gaming landscape than it did originally. While No Russian was controversial back in 2009, you could argue that it doesn’t serve anyone to brush over this part of Call of Duty’s history. In the game, your commanding officer warns you in advance that the mission "will cost you a piece of yourself" – but is it worth it? We’ve brought together our thoughts on whether or not the No Russian mission should have been included in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remaster – and which side we came down on in the end. Unsurprisingly, the remaster won’t be released at all in Russia – but re-releasing the game with No Russian anywhere, especially after the intense media scrutiny and industry soul-searching that the controversial mission provoked, is a choice worth interrogating.