"The Weapon"

Rabbit-holes are really weird…

I emulated Battlefield Bad Company last night, which led me to thinking about Bad Company 2's campaign, which made me remember its original Trailer, pitching the premise of military team "Bad Company" hunting down a Russian Weapon that "scares the shit out of" the US.

Bad Company 2's campaign even has a WWII prequel mission to demonstrate the weapon in-action and why it scares the shit out of the American government.

It's…

IT'S…

A Nuclear Bomb?

But it causes more waves in the Ocean?

Whoa.

Good thing that because of Bad Company, the Russians only have Nukes now…

It's weird to think we've become desensitized to Nuclear Annihilation but… looking at media, it really seems we have, maybe because since I was a kid, I've been watching media that for the sake of stakes, tries to pitch "NUCLEAR BOMB BUT ____".

Nuclear Bomb + Laser.

Nuclear Bomb + Storm.

Nuclear Bomb + Bomb.

Maybe that's why I liked Season 2 of 24…

It wasn't a Nuclear Bomb + Cheese, it was just a fuckin bomb, because once you're talking explosions that wipe out thousands of people single handedly, what's the difference?

I'm reminded of a scene from Lord of War, when the arms dealer protagonist is telling a (rather annoyed) Former Soviet Major-General that his warehouse of 40,000 AK's "looks more like 10,000… because no one else will know the difference."

My corpse certainly wouldn't. 

Now, I do understand why these flavors of nukes were marketed in the first place… it was for marketing.

Shadow Ops: Red Mercury names its own damn game after its Laser version of a Nuclear Bomb because that instantly distinguishes it from the Tom Clancy and Delta Force franchises its competing against.

Even Goldeneye's an approximate.

"EMP" ain't exactly a great name for a Bond movie, and Goldeneye is much easier to build a bitchin theme song around.

But if marketing did this all by itself, then that would mean it as their original idea, and that's an oxymoron.

Marketing isn't original.

So… when does Nuclear Annihilation, or a unique version of it, work?

I still get goosebumps at the end of World at War's campaign, flipping the trope of almost every WWII game, where its most bombastic and over the top heroics aren't what roll us into the credits, but instead, the game's most haunting track scoring archived footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Its final words being simply "60 million lives were lost as a result of World War II. It was the most destructive and deadly conflict in human history."

3 Body Problem doesn't have a weapon of Nuclear scale, but it is somehow even more horrifying… if you've seen the show, you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't…

You'll know it when you see it.

And perhaps that's because at the end of the day, the Nuclear Bomb is portrayed in most media as just a big boom.

I don't think it’s a coincidence that more recent works like Oppenheimer and Fallout have really emphasized its light and initial silence, to make it seem far more alien and shocking.

Though there's still that relatable element of being able to see it… assuming you weren't blinded already.

Meanwhile, there are things that kill people without being able to see, smell, taste, touch, or hear… and that's really fuckin unnerving.

But I think the last time I was properly moved by a big scale weapon in media was Black Mirror's Hated in the Nation.

It's not the visuals, it's not the sound, and it's not twist combined with them… its everything.

Ultimately what makes all of these depictions of devastating weapons work is what makes any tool in a piece of media work, context.

Bubble Gum Flavored Nukes are such an eye-roll because it's just gluing a Bow-Tie onto Styrofoam. There's a line of relatability that once you cross, the human-mind just becomes mush.

Meanwhile, World at War evokes the horrors of its devastating conflict from the instant you're in the main-menu, 3 Body Problem demonstrates what we're individually weak to, and Hated in the Nation directly connects us to the atrocity, rather than just treating the public like bugs being stepped on.

There's also that big glove thing in The Avengers, but I didn't see that one.

In the end, "The Weapon" is something that I still see in games pop-up every once in a while, mainly because it's easy to justify gameplay with, but for everything else, I'm rather glad it seems to have gone out of style.

Whether that's from being bored of the trend, or not wanting to be attached to current events, I don't know, but either way, I think it's something the 90s can keep.