Hey , to each their own , but in my opinion it was lazy story writing . Picking on the easiest and arguably most stupid example , every time I land back on the deck of the ship there is a news broadcast waiting in the rec room , including footage that obviously would have had to have come from a camera mounted on my helmet ? Like , the game is reminding me of shit I did literally 15 minutes ago , for what purpose ? It doesn ' t drive the narrative save for the little jingoistic comments from the NPCs standing between you and the screen , and treats the player like they have some sort of short term memory retention problem . Spoilers below if someone has not played IW . The relationships between characters were forced excluding perhaps the relationship between you , the main character , and Ethan , and the emotion of losing characters was forced on the character through the response of other characters . Something like from another character Oh no ! The Sergeant we just met an hour ago , who was your best friend suddenly kicked the bucket . We left him behind . How horrible we are ! Let me , as the character , feel the emotion , or give me time to actually establish a relationship with the characters before you try to force some sort of emotional response . Not to mention , what the hell were Kotch ' s motives ? Blind rage ? Not knowing what drove the character left me completely indifferent when you finally storm the Olympus Mons . I guess what I ' m getting at is that in my opinion the game failed to keep the plot tight enough to cause a player to naturally feel a connection to the characters in the story again , excluding the scene over Titan with Ethan , so they had to resort to ham fisted writing to force a emotional response in my case , the response was typically rolling my eyes . I ' m not suggesting people shouldn ' t enjoy or play the game , I ' m merely saying after CoD AW I was hoping for at least more nuanced characters and writing . I loved the setting , and I just feel like it could have been an exceptional Battlestar Galacticaesque Us vs the universe game plot had they not half assed the writing .