Call of Duty: Vanguard campaign review: shallow, derivative mythmaking

While recounting a story about the pilot Wade Jackson, one of the members of Call of Duty’s eponymous Vanguard, his squad leader, Arthur Kingsley, describes the American’s penchant for grandiose embellishment: “Every time he told the story, it was a little different.”

Call of Duty as a series has also been known to deceive historical facts. Like the Hollywood war dramas that inspired it, the series has long been engaged in the act of building larger-than-life narratives out of the 20th century’s major military conflicts, along with the soldiers who fought in them.

The conflicts depicted within these games are presented as tests and showcases of valor, with players sat in the pilot’s seat and given a taste of what it might be like to perform the role of these soldiers. Call of Duty can sometimes be very close to the history of its predecessors, which was what most of its games did. Sometimes it invents from whole cloth, like 2019’s Modern Warfare, which reimagined American forces’ “Highway of Death” onslaught in the Gulf War as a Russian war crime. Both approaches are in service of satisfying the series’ main thesis: Western soldiers are heroic figures, bulwarks against external threats of dissolution and defeat.

VanguardThis prerogative is followed in lockstep. On a structural level, the game conforms to all of Call of Duty’s Mechanical hallmarks include levels in diverse international locations, high tension shooting galleries and squad members shouting commands as shrapnel strews overhead. If you have ever jumped into one of the last two dozen versions, it will be familiar. Importantly, however, is the fact that it can be played anywhere. VanguardIs there a Call of Duty? Because of its role as mythmaking tool, game is a proud member of the family.

Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision

The game seeks to go back to the inception of Call of Duty’s lore. Prior to the The Private Ryan Savings-esque beach landings, before Soap MacTavish and Captain Price and the endless grizzled, keffiyeh-swaddled protagonists throughout the years, there was “Task Force One.” It’s a kind of primordial special forces unit that operated in and around enemy lines during World War II, hunting down Nazi leadership and their close-kept secrets. In a contemporary twist — and as a departure from many of the preceding games in the series — the members of the Vanguard are a relatively diverse bunch.

Led by the game’s main character, Arthur Kingsley, a Black British paratrooper, Vanguard’s playable roster of heroes comprises a variety of Allied nationals. There’s another Brit, an Australian demolitions expert, a Russian sniper, and an American fighter pilot. It’s a colorful, Whedonesque band of misfits: hyper-talented loners with chips on their shoulders and issues with authority.

Through flashback missions, the player narrates their own stories. in medias resKingsley’s journey from misanthropes and ruthless team players to their vengeful counterparts is a fascinating one. No matter the challenges thrown at this group, it’s impossible not to expect them to pull through. They are not nuanced, conflicted characters; they are heroes. They serve the same purpose as all previous series protagonists: to make complex stories seem easier than they really are, to affirm the goodwill of Western institutions and justify the sacrifices that were made for them to be whole.

This myth is deeper than just the games. It is reflected in the dissimulation carried out by Sledgehammer Games’ parent company, Activision Blizzard, which was sued earlier this year for its sexist and discriminatory work environment. Similar to how mythmaking processes must valorize and whitewash military image in games like Vanguard, it must also help establish an appearance of plausible deniability in how the game is received as a media object (going so far as to keep Activision’s logo out of its launch trailers).

Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision

Some things are impossible to ignore. Activision Blizzard’s workforce hovers at around 80% male and remains majority white. You feel strange playing a game such as VanguardWith this in mind, carries the variety of its cast proudly. Vanguard’s story spends a lot of time and energy tackling the unexamined cultural shortcomings that problematize the world’s “Last Good War.” Yet, as is often the case with marginalized narratives that are told by outside voices, there are clear missteps that reveal the developer’s blinkered, if well-meaning perspective.

It is easy to see that Lucas Riggs, and Polina Petrova, are straightforward characters. Riggs’ story revolves around class divisions and inept commanders — Australian “rats” versus posh Brits. Petrova’s missions, despite featuring innovative level design and movement mechanics, tend to fall into predictable tropes. Petrova rebels against gender norms and escapes the medical tent to terrorize Nazi soldiers in Stalingrad. Petrova’s quick movements and flexibility in mantling, which allows her to jump over walls and slip under desks, do an excellent job at evoking the chaos and control of guerrilla warfare. But her story ends in a close-quarters fight against a Nazi commander which is overlong and blatantly derivative of the famously tense diner fight between Ellie and the monstrous David in Naughty Dog’s Last of Us. This shallow conclusion to Petrova’s arc underlines the dated nature of its themes — a tough-as-nails woman trying to prove herself in a man’s world — and lays little new ground that has not been executed in more compelling ways elsewhere. As the game shifts away from whiteness the understanding gaps seem to widen.

Vanguard’s main character, Kingsley, is interesting largely because of how different he feels from the norms of the genre that Call of Duty helped create. It remains, unfortunately, novel to see a Black character (well-lit and moisturized, even) appear as the marquee image of a military shooter’s box art. A Black man being able to lead the charge is a refreshing change in the status-quo. And Kingsley cuts an aspirational figure: he’s multilingual and highly educated; he keeps the team together, and helps them overcome their self-destructive tendencies. As any person of color knows, to be the “single, outstanding negro” in a predominantly white world is to be tokenized and made to appear flawlessly as an entire race.

Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision

Kingsley’s character is swallowed up by this tokenization. In order to be trusted, he has to constantly fight to be accepted. He speaks flawless Russian to Petrova and she’s quick to dismiss it. To his Nazi captors, he speaks German and they make fun of him. There’s a certain tragedy in having a Black character as capable as Kingsley forced to spend all of his time in conflict against racist intransigence, forced to prove himself over and over again.

Chapters that focus on Wade (the white American airlineman) are another place where the game is unable to fulfill its potential. Wade and Mateo Hernandez crash-land on Bougainville after some enjoyable and on-rails dogfights. They come upon the 93rd Division, an all-Black military regiment.

The 93rd’s story, though based loosely on the real-life “Buffalo Soldiers” of both World Wars, drips with after-school morality-lesson artifice. The squad leader, James “Booker” Washington (see what they did there?) Wade is taught lessons in righteous sacrifice, patriotic duty and quoting John Adams. By the end of the mission, many members of Washington’s squad wind up sacrificing themselves to help Wade and Hernandez find a plane and escape. The 93rd are less a group of men, with unique lives and perspectives, than a smooth mirror, there to reflect and focus the white character’s path towards self-improvement. They’re two-dimensional, magical figures, not people.

Remembering the brand which effectively owns all these decisions, it’s not necessarily a surprise that they’ve been undercooked. Instead of truly innovative writing VanguardThis version still represents whiteness.

Activision Blizzard was sued by two Black employees who claimed that their workplace had been characterized as a hostile environment where they were continually undermined and treated harshly. One employee mentioned being “ … micromanaged such that her male coworkers were known to be playing video games without any intervention by her supervisor, but her supervisor would call and check on her if she took a break to go on a walk.” Both employees eventually left the company as a result.

What if these women had not been subject to the harsh additional pressure and remained? Would they have been considered more unique or worthwhile? It feels as though this is exactly what it means to showcase the exceptional behavior of multicultural minorities. Vanguard This is what it suggests: You can overcome the inequalities, take pride in being given the opportunity to enter the door. canYou will be the first to see a black or brown face within a racist and hegemonic cultural context. You canBe part of Vanguard

Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision

Every character will navigate their own backstory missions at the edges of crucial battles throughout the war. They show how willing they are to give up for the same old hegemonic structure. Activision Blizzard’s allegations about game development show that it often operates under similar cruel expectations. Employees who are sexually harassed and lose out on promotions and wages due to their gender or race, as well as quitting, all seem like examples of weak people being culled. Quitters apparently don’t deserve any credit, nor the adulation we save for the ones who gritted their teeth and bore it through to the end. It doesn’t matter that the ones who make it tend to be those with enough privilege and power to withstand the gantlet. Games like VanguardIt is a common myth that people who give up are not committed enough to helping the cause of the good guys.

In today’s corporate media environment, games like VanguardThe only thing the marginalized can hope for is a better life. We have here a new story that takes us back in time to a period when war was clearly good. It skips past the present, plagued by the West’s unseemly colonial interventions and wasteful acts of aggression; narratives which can no longer be salvaged or controlled (though not for lack of trying). It’s far easier to retroactively add black and brown characters to an overwhelmingly white and western struggle (with the brief exception made for the Japanese who are tastelessly presented as buffoons who swing swords and speak in mangled English).

There is a deep-seated desire to create something new. We are to retell mythology in order to trick ourselves into believing that things have changed. We have the responsibility to uncover all that these stories are trying to conceal.

Vanguard: The Call of Duty November 5, 2009, was the day that it became available on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. Activision gave the pre-release code to review the game on PlayStation. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions for products sold via affiliate links. Here are some links to help you find. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here