Late last year, I finished playing through the Modern Warfare trilogy on PlayStation 3 for the umpteenth time. I grew up playing these games and they have been some of my favourites of all time. But playing through them again felt very different this time. I still enjoyed these games, but not as much as before.
As I mentioned before, Armored Piercing was inspired by the Modern Warfare series. My first draft was a fanfiction sequel to Modern Warfare 2. Shepherd’s betrayal in that game was quite shocking the first time I played it. Call of Duty games beforehand had black-and-white stories with clear good guys and bad guys. A “good guy” being a bad guy all along was a fresh take in a series with simple storylines. That betrayal inspired my own “Shadow Company” villain in Armored Piercing.
So why was the Modern Warfare trilogy not as much fun to play this time around? One revelation I had while playing was that the storylines of the games are very simplistic and none of the characters have much depth. The plotline isn’t deeper than “bad guys do x, so the good guys must stop them.” Worldbuilding also isn’t much of a thing in these games, especially compared to games like Mass Effect or Resistance. There’s no real character development either. Series favourites like Captain Price and Soap MacTavish don’t change all that much between games. Characters are either “cool guys” or irrelevant.
Despite shortcomings in both story and character development, the Modern Warfare trilogy succeeded in offering a thrilling experience. Each mission is action-packed and fun to play through. Video games are a unique medium where you don’t need character or story to enjoy them. There have been frequent debates about character-driven vs plot-driven stories, but I think there’s another aspect that's not talked about: experience-driven. By "experience-driven" I mean a type of storytelling that doesn’t focus on plot development or character development, but on providing an engaging experience. This can be akin to watching fireworks or going on a roller-coaster. The Modern Warfare games have plenty of missions that don’t add anything to the story and simply exist for gameplay. For example, in Modern Warfare 1, there’s a mission you play as an AC-130 gunner tasked with providing cover to an SAS team. This mission doesn’t add to the main plotline in any meaningful way. I used to think the Modern Warfare games had a deeper story because I was an active participant in the “story.” Playing through the missions, like the AC-130 mission, felt like story progression. I came to my revelation about the games’ simplicity through the realization that these missions didn’t add to the main plot. Essentially, these missions were “busy work.”
Experience-driven storytelling isn’t necessarily bad. I still had a lot of fun replaying through the Modern Warfare games. If you’re making an action movie or a first-person-shooter game, you can get away with flat characters and a flat plotline, but in slower-paced stories, you can’t do that. If you’re writing a drama, any scene that doesn’t add to the story or character is filler. Filler can kill pacing and make things very boring.
So how does this tie in Armored Piercing? The Modern Warfare games are experience-driven and so in my first drafts of Armored Piercing 1 and 2, I emulated that. If you had read the sample chapters of my first drafts for both Armored Piercing books, you would’ve seen a hyper-focus on over-the-top and cheesy action. The drafts had a story, but similar to the Modern Warfare games, it only served as a setup for the action scenes. My goal was to outdo Call of Duty, which led to many scenes simply existing for the action. As I learned later on, action scenes that serve the plot are more impactful because they feel more important and add to the stakes. Writing action for the sake of action resulted in logic issues and ridiculousness. Many scenes ended up feeling like filler. My first drafts have aged poorly due to this. The Modern Warfare games weren’t as enjoyable because many missions felt like busy work due to their lack of narrative importance. Thankfully, I learned this lesson with the final versions of both Armored Piercing books. All action scenes in the books do serve a purpose to the plot.
It has been over two years since publishing my last Armored Piercing book. Armored Piercing 3’s first draft is about 1200 pages long on paper. For context, Armored Piercing 1 was 100+ pages and Armored Piercing 2 was 200+ pages. I’ve been procrastinating, so I haven’t started working on a final draft to publish. A huge problem with my first draft for Armored Piercing 3 is the frequent filler action scenes. Sure, they’re “fun” but they don’t add anything to the plot. I predict I’ll have to cut at least 30% of the book. At least the book has a lot of character work compared to the first two books. When I wrote my final drafts, I wrote them to better complement Armored Piercing 3.
At the end of the day, the lesson learned is that action must be supplementary to plot and/or character. Without either, you have a lacking story. Doing an experience-driven story can be very limited and hollow. That’s not to say that type of storytelling is illegitimate, but with my Armored Piercing series, I strive to have a strong plot and interesting characters. When it comes to the best storytelling in any medium, plot and character are both present.