Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2's "de-escalate civilians" moment is the new press F to pay respects

The recently-launched Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 campaign sees players "de-escalate civilians" by pointing a gun at them, and it's turning into the new 'press F to pay respects.'

As pointed out by @yacobg42 on Twitter, there's a surreal moment in the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 campaign where players walk through a trailer park and are asked to "de-escalate" a heated moment situation. Instead of using the traditional techniques though, they are instead prompted to hold R2 to point their guns at random civilians, which seems a bit extreme. 

Another Twitter user has pointed out how bizarre this situation in the game is by quote retweeting the original tweet and adding: "Hold L2 to de-escalate civilians is the new Press F to pay respects," referencing another iconic but equally out-of-place QTE moment in the Call of Duty series that required PC players to literally hit a key to pay their respects at a funeral. 

The Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 campaign went live at the end of last week. Its launch, unfortunately, didn't go exactly to plan as players who tried to access the game via Steam had to deal with 'connection timed out' errors. Thankfully, this was quickly ironed out and allowed players to get stuck back into the campaign and witness the moment we're talking about above. 

In other Call of Duty news, developer Infinity Ward and publisher Activision Blizzard have revealed that the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Raids begin in December. Not much is known about the mysterious mode right now but what we do know is that it will be a part of Spec Ops mode and will become available to players on December 13. 

Can't get enough of the Modern Warfare 2? Take a look at our list of the best Call of Duty games to see where it placed.