In Call of Duty's most infamous mission, Infinity Ward was 'basically just trying to think of the most atrocious things that could happen'

pcgamer.com:

October 28 marked 20 years of the Call of Duty series, as part of which some of the key designers  have been talking about the greatest moments. The foundation for its overwhelming success, however, will always be original developer Infinity Ward, in particular the leap forward the studio made with the Modern Warfare series. It delivered an unforgettable and oft-controversial singleplayer campaign reflecting one view of contemporary geopolitics, alongside a best-in-class multiplayer experience that the wider series has followed ever since.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 contained what is still the most polarising level in any of the games. No Russian is an early campaign mission in which an attack is carried out at a fictional Russian airport (Zakhaev International), with civilians being shot by a terrorist group that includes the player character. It is a deeply disquieting experience to shoot unarmed civilians and, even though the latter half of the mission returns to typical COD form (with the FSB flooding in to return fire), that made No Russian a focal point for wider conversations about the genre, the nature of entertainment like COD, and even whether such things should be allowed in games. 

The initial idea for No Russian came from Steve Fukuda, one of MW2's design leads. «Steve's original pitch was you're with a bunch of guys and they're all in Kevlar and they have M4s,» designer Mohammad Alavi tells IGN. «And he knows all he has to say is M4 and everybody realizes, 'Okay, so we're the Americans.'»

The M4 carbine is the standard-issue rifle for most units in the American military, and the central premise of the mission is a false flag attack executed by Russian terrorist Vladimir Makarov and his troops. Players