Modern Warfare 2 Confusingly Censored in Japan

The Japanese localization of Infinity Ward's controversial yet ridiculously popular Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 came with a bit of a snag. During what could easily be considered the plot-maker for the game's story, the famous airport massacre scene received a rather inaccurate translation. The original line spoke by Makarov was, “Remember, no Russian.” The idea is that, in order to disguise the terrorist attack, it's paramount that the terrorists hide their own Russian nationality. But the Japanese audio dub for this line is, “Korose, Roshia-jin da,” which means, “Kill them, they are Russians.” Needles to say, this isn't a little, insignificant mistake or a typo, as the entire context of the game is changed.

But what proves to be even worse for this “little” slip up is the actual content of the mission and the way it develops. The mission itself is censored, but still playable. It's not a parental lock that removes blood, gore or foul language, but it does something even more devious. If, at any point during the mission, you actually pull the trigger and kill any of the civilians spawned on the map, you will instantly get that terrible game-over screen and it's back to the last checkpoint.

Combined with wronged translation, this makes the airport scene a logical nightmare. If we look at the Japanese version of the game alone, without any other one to compare it with, the game first tells us to kill the Russians and, when we obey and actually do it, it kills us for it. To call it confusing would be quite the understatement.

A similar censorship is found in Germany, another country that has a low-level tolerance for video-game violence, but chances are pretty high that the same confusing situation is not repeated. An international release pretty much assures that something will be lost in translation and differences will exist, but, with interactive media like video games, these changes have dire repercussions on the actual product experience.