Talking About Game Music #4 - "Piccadilly Circus"

The line between good and evil is becoming blurred.

Hello.
How's it going, this is Kekozero.

This is the fourth installment of my series talking about game music.
I've been talking about "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" for days now, and this time I'll be focusing on "Piccadilly Circus" from the same game.
While this game does have a main theme, this track is an arrangement of that theme that I hear so often in both the campaign and multiplayer that it has left a lasting impression on me.

Piccadilly Circus

As mentioned, it uses the same melody as the main theme, but this version has no lead melody and is an unsettling arrangement.
As the opening quote suggests, "CoD:MW" depicts a war where the line between good and evil has become blurred.

It's a dark song, but it's also strangely memorable.
It plays during the second mission of the campaign, "Piccadilly," and it also plays during the end credits after the story concludes.
When I listened to it just recently, I actually got goosebumps.

The repeating low-end strings make me feel uneasy, but they seem to represent the gritty worldview of "MW" perfectly.
I replayed the campaign for this game in 2022, and I was very surprised at how much more realistic the story felt compared to back in 2019.

"Modern Warfare" is also translated as "Gendai Senso" (Modern War).
I feel that FPS players tend to prefer "modern warfare" games set in the current world using real-world guns and locations over those set in the past or future.
I'm no exception, and the appeal of the "CoD:MW" world is that it depicts such modern warfare more realistically.

Piccadilly

Let me introduce the campaign mission "Piccadilly."
The track title "Piccadilly Circus" is the name of an actual square in London, and you visit that same location in this mission.
There is a map of the same name in multiplayer, but to be honest, it wasn't my favorite.

The character you control here is one of the player characters, Sergeant Kyle Garrick.
Despite having intelligence, he was bound by rules of engagement, and as a result, he couldn't prevent the terrorist attack, leading to a catastrophe in Piccadilly.
In this mission, you are forced into a tense battle where you must confront the terrorists while ensuring you don't harm the fleeing civilians.

Furthermore, this is where you meet Captain Price, and the story begins to move in a big way.
You work with Captain Price to rescue a hostage, but they have a bomb strapped to their body.
Kyle looks for a way to disarm it, but upon realizing there are only a few seconds left before detonation, Captain Price throws the hostage away without hesitation.

It was an emergency, but Captain Price calmly assessed the situation and made a cold-blooded decision.
I was shocked by this.

After this incident, Kyle vents his frustration to Captain Price.
He was bound by rules of engagement and couldn't prevent the terror attack despite having the intel.
Captain Price then recruits Kyle into his team.

Afterward, Kyle serves as a sergeant alongside Captain Price on missions all over the place, and after the campaign, Kyle becomes "Gaz," a familiar face from "CoD4," and a member of Task Force 141 led by Captain Price.

That was an introduction to the track "Piccadilly Circus," which could be called the main theme of "CoD:MW," and the mission "Piccadilly."
I'm glad I was able to touch upon Gaz, whom I had forgotten to mention in my "Talking About CoD:MW" post.

It seems Gaz, a.k.a. Sergeant Kyle Garrick, will also appear in the sequel "MWII," so I'm looking forward to that.
He was also playable in the "MW" multiplayer, and he was an operator I used quite frequently.

See you next time.