MW3 campaign’s version of ‘No Russian’ is a little too real—and now there are 2 of them

The original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in 2009 made waves with its harrowing “No Russian” mission. But 2023’s Modern Warfare 3 has two that may be even worse.

Spoilers for those who haven’t played the MW3 campaign are ahead, but I need to discuss how sickened I felt by the missions I was playing through and how it’s somehow even worse than the airport scenes from 14 years ago.

The first shocking mission is found in the first half of the campaign and follows the cutscene from the cliffhanger at the end of MW2’s campaign when an unidentified man was assembling a pistol on a plane and then received a text that said “No Russian.” The new mission immediately picks up where it left off. It’s called “Passenger.”

The segment is played from the perspective of a woman named Samara on a plane bound for Sochi, Russia. She’s from Urzikstan, a fictional Middle Eastern country in CoD. It’s here where she soon finds out she’s sitting next to the same man from the MW2 ending cutscene, and he accosts her for being a member of Farah’s liberation army from Modern Warfare 2019.

He pulls the pistol on her, and she takes it from him. That’s when air marshals see what’s happening, and stand up and aim their weapons at her. She tries to plead with them, but terrorists advance from the front of the plane, killing the air marshals before being taken out by Samara.

Samara gets knocked out by a flashbang, wakes up, and sees Vladimir Makarov, who straps a bomb to her chest. Makarov flees the scene after explaining that he’s basically framing her for what’s happening.

One of the hijackers, with a shit-eating grin, asks Samara if she’s a terrorist. She says no, to which he replies “you look like a terrorist.” My skin crawled as I can only imagine what it must feel like to hear those words.

The terrorist then throws the detonator phone into the plane. She attempts to retrieve it, pleading with passengers to help her, but is instead taken down by a man who sees the bomb on her chest. The bomb detonates, killing everyone on board.

I sat in shock, describing the events to co-workers in Slack. But it wasn’t over yet. In fact, that’s just the first half of the too-real horror that the campaign has to offer.

The second shocking mission takes place in a flashback, four years prior to the events of MW3, in the city of Verdansk, made famous by the first Warzone game. The mission “Flashpoint” kicks off with Captain Price and Soap MacTavish urgently making their way to the soccer stadium, which is in the midst of a terror attack.

It’s been orchestrated by Makarov—the first time Task Force 141 had a run-in with him.

The imagery in this mission is especially horrifying and not unlike something you might see on the news on any given day. Terrorists disguised as police are openly mowing down civilians attempting to escape.

The terrorists use civilians as human shields and execute them around every corner. I felt my lunch creeping up in the back of my throat as I made my way through the area, trying to be careful not to hit civilians when returning gunfire to the terrorists.

It all felt so real—too real, like something I’d already seen before. And it’s probably because I have—on the nightly news, especially recently.

Eventually, Price and Soap are able to find the orchestrator of the attack, Makarov, and escape with him. But the horrifying images are everlasting.

Art imitates life, but life also imitates art sometimes. CoD has always been inspired by real-world events, but for some reason, this one isn’t sitting with me as well as all the others I’ve played.

I shudder to think about the scenes I just witnessed, as I needed to take a break midway through the campaign to process the terror I saw. There may even be more later on, but I may need to step away for a while and decompress.

Please, all I ask is that you listen to the content warning that pops up at the beginning of the game. Many CoD gamers know what they’re getting into, but this one hits harder than most, especially in light of recent real-world events. So think hard about whether you’re ready to see what happens.

Some of the images depicted in the campaign are brutal, not unlike what we see in the real world on a daily basis. I just wish this bombastic, big-budget, silly video game didn’t feel so true to life nowadays.