In Activision’s unending attempt to milk Call of Duty for every cent that they believe it’s worth, they rebooted the Modern Warfare brand for PC, PS4, and Xbox One gamers by retelling the story of how Captain Price saved the world from a rogue Russian general, and how there was plenty of feminism and race-swapping taking place to slap a postmodernist taint on the game for current-year gamers. For those of you not interested playing through the four hour story to get the gist, this article basically sums up the ending as neatly and as quickly as possible.
The story starts with Hitman team led by Gunnery Sgt. Alex infiltrating a Russian base, covertly, to retrieve a deadly gas agent. The team is wiped out, save for Alex, and the gas that they retrieved from the Russians is stolen by an insurgency group led by a freedom fighter named Hadir. At the time, Alex, the CIA, and the U.S., military were not privy to Hadir’s thievery and believed another terrorist group led by The Wolf and his accomplice The Butcher were behind the theft.
The CIA recruits SAS operative Captain Price to team up with Alex and a local insurgency group in a middle-eastern country being terrorized by the Russians to hunt down The Wolf and The Butcher. Price also manages to bring aboard a race-swapped Agent Kyle “Gaz” Garrick, who was the only surviving member of his squad from a terrorist attack that took place in downtown London.
The insurgents, a group of freedom fighters led by Farah and her brother Hadir, help Captain Price and his squad hunt down and capture The Wolf, only to find out that The Wolf denies having taken the Russian gas from General Roman Barkov.
The Butcher launches an assault on the U.S., embassy to rescue The Wolf, and manages to do so, but Farah, Alex and Hadir attempt to recapture The Wolf during a roadside ambush. However, Hadir uses the Russian gas to wipe out the forces, revealing to the others that he was originally the one who stole the gas in the first place, not The Wolf.
Captain Price, Alex, Kyle, and Farah track down The Wolf once more, and kill him. They also track down The Butcher in Russia, threatening to torture and kill his family to find out where Hadir is hiding out. The Butcher gives up Hadir’s position while Kyle proceeds to execute The Buthcer in front of his wife and child.
Price and Kyle track down Hadir, capture him, and trade him off to the CIA. Hadir, however, reveals that he managed to find the location where General Barkov has been manufacturing the deadly gas. Hadir gives the information to Price in hopes that Price will help Farah stop Barkov once and for all.
Interspersed between the missions we see flashbacks of how Hadir and Farah’s family died during a Russian invasion, and how the two were captured and tortured for years by General Barkov and his forces.
Since the U.S., State department labeled Farah and her freedom fighters as “terrorists” due to Hadir’s use of Barkov’s gas, Price and the others have to locate and attack Barkov’s compound without official U.S., sanctioned help. Price, Kyle, Alex, Farah, and the other freedom fighters assault Barvok’s gas factory in Georgia, and setup explosives around the facility to blow up the compound for good. However, during the firefight one of the detonators are damaged and Alex sacrifices himself to blow up the facility.
Farah, meanwhile, sneaks aboard a helicopter carrying Barkov and stabs the general multiple times in the neck and chest, and then kicks him out of the helicopter where he falls to his death below.
After blowing up the facility and killing Barkov, Price returns to his CIA handler, Laswell, and receives a new mission to track down Imran Zakhaev. The handler asks Price if he’s in, and Price brings up that he’s only going to sign up if he can use his own team, name-dropping iconic Call of Duty characters “Soap” MacTavish, and referencing “Ghost”. The CIA handler also mentions General Shepherd in passing.
This hints at Activision and Infinity Ward rebooting Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
