Does ‘Call of Duty’ have anything to say with its controversial Texas level?

In overhead view, it’s appalling. A closer look reveals murkier motives, though. Modern Warfare II , like most entries to the Call of Duty series, is big-budget commercial art that’s always savvily attempting to appeal across demographics. In “Borderline,” this takes the form of ideological sleight of hand—the illusion that the game’s creators are expressing a coherent political viewpoint.

As the mission begins, Vargas bluntly informs his CIA handler that “terrorists don’t cross the southern border.” When it looks as though the game plans to dismiss this xenophobic talking point, though, Vargas is told, in turn, that everyday migrants are also commonly used as a shield by cartel members smuggling more dangerous border-crossers into the U.S. Then, when it seems Modern Warfare II is veering back into Trumpist rhetoric, Parra and Vargas follow their target into Texas by quickly and easily climbing over a stretch of the kind of towering border wall the American right claims will stop migrant crossings.

The Mexican special forces' ensuing run-ins with everyday Texans similarly bounce between embracing and challenging these kinds of viewpoints. As they chase the terrorist through a sleepy neighborhood, Parra and Vargas must “de-escalate” stand-offs with angry people by pointing their weapons at them. This violent approach is justified when a couple of residents actually bring out their own weapons to attack the operatives if a gun isn’t trained on them. While this could be read as an endorsement of aggressive policing, part of the mission’s tension derives from the fact that Parra and Vargas are Mexican men trespassing in American yards and houses. Though the player knows they’re doing so in order to thwart a terror plot, the Texas residents see only armed foreigners who must be treated with potentially deadly suspicion.

On one hand, “Borderline” props up conservative paranoia by showing the town as vulnerable to weakly defended borders where gun-toting men may appear to harass families in the middle of the night. On the other hand, the game suggests that the locals’ response is motivated by xenophobia. This is highlighted when—partway through the chase—the operatives are apprehended by local police. After learning of their mission, an officer apologizes by telling the Mexicans that it’s “hard to tell you boys apart from the cartel,” apparently unable to notice the difference between a bordering nation’s criminals and military. Frustratingly, this, too, can be understood as an attempt to reverse the player’s sympathies once again by conflating Mexican authority with its drug cartels.

Ideologically speaking, this is all deeply confused (or just confusing). Within minutes, right-wing talking points have been both validated and, if not entirely refuted, at least complicated. The player is whiplashed from one impression of the game’s intent to another, furnished with enough material to argue that the level either condemns or supports violent border policing depending on their preconceptions. Some might call this an appropriately balanced portrayal of hard-nosed realpolitik. More will see it as a profoundly cynical attempt to ride the fence for mass market appeal.

Viewed in this light, “Borderline” becomes just another provocation in Call of Duty’ s long history of them. For more than a decade, the series has tried to pack at least one “shocking” mission into each of its stories. In 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 (which, confusingly, is not the same game as this year’s Modern Warfare II ), a sequence casts the player as a deep cover CIA agent who massacres civilians at an airport. In Modern Warfare 3 , a family on vacation is killed by a car bomb. In the Modern Warfare reboot, a mass shooting takes place in downtown London, and, later, players experience a gas attack from the viewpoint of a young girl.

All of these scenes sound, in basic description, like little more than exercises in bad taste. All of them play a little better in the context of the games that contain them, where their narrative function becomes clear. And all have been designed to drum up controversy and attention—to inspire debate without actually contributing anything to a larger one.

It’s a weaselly kind of Rorschach test, allowing everyone to see what they want to see. More irksome than the charged imagery of “Borderline” is the lack of any real conviction backing it up; it grazes important matters but never risks alienating anyone with a concrete perspective on them. That’s the Call of Duty way: Hot buttons are pressed, but only for the sake of a marketing hook or shock tactic.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is now available.