Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Message Scolds Players for Shooting a Baby

There’s a particularly tense level in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s campaign that also [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

There's a particularly tense level in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's campaign that also apparently includes a stern message for players who continually act out of line to fail the mission on purpose. The scolding message appears during a campaign level where players have to breach a multi-level building while clearing rooms in the dark as they try and figure out who's a threat and who's not. There are some characters including a baby who are clearly not threatening, and if you fire on them repeatedly, you'll be booted to the main menu.

For those who haven't played the campaign yet, be aware that there are likely spoilers below as the scenario is explained. There's also a video that shows the message in question that's wrapped in Modern Warfare's gritty, dark take on war, but the game cuts to a black screen the second players pull the trigger so that it doesn't actually show a baby being injured.

The scene takes place within one of the many levels where players accompany Captain Price. You'll find yourself in a place called Camden Town this time as you make your way through the building full of hidden threats. At one point, you open a room and find a woman who races to reach her child that's in a crib. People often run away from the player within the levels, sometimes to get away and sometimes to reach for a gun, so it's already a tense situation where players must decide what to do. If you choose incorrectly and end up shooting at the baby, you're met with a mission failure that tells you "Children are non-combatants."

Say you didn't learn your lesson from that though and you keep trying to shoot the child. If that's the case, the video below shows that you'll receive a different message asking, "Are you serious?" Again, know that the footage below is still disturbing even if it cuts to the black screen almost instantly.

From there, you'll be booted back to the campaign's level select screen. You'd typically be able to restart at your last checkpoint after failing a mission, but this repetitive action will cause you to go back to the menu.

When Activision first previewed Modern Warfare through behind-closed-doors demos, there were concerns about this exact scene and questions of whether or not players would be able to shoot the baby and their mother. It looks like you can, though certainly not without consequences.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is now available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

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