History is every day.
The last time I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla (no colon in that title, apparently) was as historical as the Norse raids into England. But what separates me from the supposed setting of this game? It seems that, more than the natural erosion of memory and artifact that time alone would bring, there is a barrier being formed between me and that which came before. There is a mythological veil being placed over my eyes, not blocking my vision completely but blotting it out, replacing what is there with tall tales and improbable stories. This veil is more effective than any blindfold. The veil acknowledges the light that bleeds through. It frames it. It melds it into any shape it pleases. It picks pieces from museums and places them into strange hands. It bleeds together a thousand years of art and architecture into a uchronic fairy tale.
What could the world be?
History tells us: anything.
The veil disagrees.
To the veil, the world is. It's order is right. It's shape is righteous.
There is no wonder. There is no curiosity. There is no joy. There is only to be the dour politics of a reality game show. The Danelaw might as well have been a series of Big Brother alliances.
Are the events of England in the 800s so sacred as to demand their emotional preservation?
Perhaps not, but
history is every day.

What is modern warfare? Call of Duty understands, even if it's players -- the impressionable young Americans that will inevitably be it's core audience -- only come away knowing less than before. Warfare in the modern era is about information. The powers that be know that if they shower people with enough incorrect information through the lens of Marvel's Avengers then enough will either believe it or believe enough of it to not have any real idea what's going on in the world.

The style is slick and gritty. The night-vision levels have the aesthetic of military snuff films. It wants you to think you're looking behind the curtain of the terrible things you see in the news. When you're pulling the trigger on a mother and crying child in some forgotten basement in St. Petersburg to torture a terrorist, when you're doing a no-knock raid in London where Muslim women maniacally pull assault rifles on you, it draws to mind the "no hesitation" line of police training targets featuring pregnant women and children, the assertion that War Has Come Home, and that your neighbors, hiding behind the veil of innocence, are the real enemy.

The Middle Eastern country that hosts this year's Islamic shooting gallery is entirely fictional, and does it matter? Would Call of Duty appropriately enhancely interrogate a real history? The game, which is set in 2019, features flashbacks to "20 years ago". In this funhouse timeline we see Soviets invading Urzikstan (in the year 1999), which is described as being Northwest of Georgia, and Southwest of Russia, conveniently overlaying and replacing the very real Abkhazia. Thankfully for US military censors, the Russians end up committing the same crimes that the real life Americans would, and for bad reasons instead of our very good ones.

So much of the game is spent morally laundering the horrors of what our military and intelligence agencies do that it's kind of all there is to talk about. This game is one of many recent huge media properties that star the heroic CIA. They do fucked up things, but its a fucked up world, man. Someones gotta be the wolf to guide the sheep. That's the thesis of this entry. Someones gotta do fucked up crimes, there's no debating it, so it's either us or them. The masses have no idea how bad things really are, it's only our elite operators -- who are really good guys, completely morally incorruptible, trust us -- who get to know what's going on. The things you hear about in the news? Listen kid, that aint the half of it. You really think our guys are out there committing terror attacks, torturing people, kidnapping women and children, sponsoring and funding militant right wing theocratic terrorists, destroying infrastructure, committing political assassinations, killing millions through starvation and famine, and then working with media giants to make sure that, whether you're gaming, watching TV, or scrolling Netflix, everything you see is trying, desperately, to make sure that when you think of the Central Intelligence Agency your first thought is of Captain America?

Now that's Modern Warfare.