I have some strong thoughts about Call of Duty: Ghosts.
As far as I am concerned, the game was always going to fail. It was supposed to be the next-gen Call of Duty title that had to be made with the previous generation’s limitations in mind, stunting its potential from the very start.
It had some of the most notorious marketing in the gaming industry, with the developers finding it more pertinent to discuss the integrity of the AI for fish and the graphical fidelity of a dog, rather than their multiplayer mode — the main attraction of Call of Duty — at the time.
The multiplayer itself was unimpressive, featuring maps that were way too large for their lobby sizes and encouraged camping, and unnecessarily watered-down scorestreaks like the SATCOM. Then, there’s the campaign, which, to Ghosts‘ credit, was written to be standalone. What does not deserve credit, however, is the bland storytelling, confusing antagonists, and plot threads held together with the narrative equivalent of duct tape.
The point of this piece is not to beat the dead horse that is Call of Duty: Ghosts’ failure, however. Ghosts is known for being the worst Call of Duty game of all time, at least until Call of Duty: Vanguard (2021). The meaning behind this preamble is instead to ask a question.
While acknowledging the myriad of its failings, Ghosts had an insane amount of potential for memorability. Despite all the game’s flaws, it is seriously possible that, had there been at least good or even iconic characters within the lore of Ghosts, it would have been more successful.
So why aren’t these characters memorable? It’s evident to even casual players or viewers that there are many similarities between the iconography present in Ghosts and the character of Simon “Ghost” Riley in the Modern Warfare series, specifically the original trilogy.
Upon first glance, it may seem that there are no differences between the implementation of Riley and the main characters of Call of Duty: Ghosts. Both Riley and the titular Ghosts are soldiers part of an elite task force. They’re no strangers to either espionage, brute force, or even torture to get their hands on what they need. To top it all off, they’re all very visually appealing from a design standpoint.
The most significant difference is that Simon is remembered well enough to be essentially the face of the Modern Warfare series, and none of the characters from Ghosts have ever appeared or been mentioned again. That is, aside from Gabriel Rorke, Ghosts’ main antagonist, who returns as a non-canonical playable operative in Call of Duty: Vanguard’s multiplayer.
To theorise as to why this is, it’s likely because of the contrast between Simon Riley’s candid cool factor and the way Call of Duty: Ghosts’ characters had all been designed to be cool from the start. Fans love Riley because he’s just a guy who was a member of Task Force 141. He wasn’t significantly plot-relevant, but he made a strong impression by excelling at what he did, boasting a cool design, and having one of the most iconic death scenes in gaming.
The characters in Ghosts just come across like they’re trying too hard. Almost everything cool that the Ghosts do in their game is accompanied by slow motion, which is an extremely poor use of the concept.
Slow motion can be used for a variety of things, such as creating downtime for viewers to think about what they just saw, allowing viewers to comprehend something that would be too fast to notice otherwise, or just plain emphasis. When doing so, however, one must be extremely careful not to overuse it, because if it is, then it lessens its impact. This ultimately serves to counteract the intended purpose of including slow motion in the first place.
So when there’s a slow-motion segment in every mission of Ghosts, then the things they’re doing just stop being interesting. When cool is the standard, it becomes boring. This also isn’t helped by the fact that the Ghosts didn’t have good introductions in the first place. The first Ghosts the player encounters are Elias, Rorke and Ajax, and the former two are not even revealed to be Ghosts until later.
Ajax is being held captive by Rorke and is clearly in distress. This already hurts the image the players have of the Ghosts in their minds, as the first one they see clearly failed his mission. Later on in the level, the player then encounters two more Ghosts, Merrick and Keegan, whose introductions involve tackling and scaring away a pack of wolves. This is another horrible first impression, as this scene, ignoring how contrived it is, overdramatises an act that should be rather mundane for Special Forces.
Essentially, the Ghosts are hyped up way beyond any reasonable expectations, and instead of even attempting to meet them, the writers decided to portray the Ghosts as either incompetent or unremarkable. The reason the Ghosts aren’t as memorable as other characters in the franchise is that they were trying too hard on a conceptual level and were not able to course-correct with the execution. It is because of this that Call of Duty: Ghosts is forgotten entirely by the Call of Duty community at large.
It failed as a game from a mechanical and entertainment standpoint, and nothing about its aesthetics, iconography, or characters was worthy of note, leading it to fall into obscurity forever.
