Call of Duty - Civil Warfare And Other Shooters We Need

[Zelderahn]

And yet no one has a problem with games and movies depicting the Nazi flag. Go figure.

The Germans take rather fierce umbrage with it.

 

[RJ 17]

And yet no one has a problem with games and movies depicting the Nazi flag. Go figure.

The Germans take rather fierce umbrage with it.

Indeed, I hear trying to purchase - or being caught with - any Nazi memorabilia over in Germany is grounds for immediate incarceration.

I was talking about here in the States, though.

 

[Kahani]

And yet no one has a problem with games and movies depicting the Nazi flag. Go figure.

No-one in America has a problem with games and movies depicting the Nazi flag. No-one in Germany has a problem with games and movies depicting the Confederate flag. Oddly enough, people tend to be a little more sensitive about their own history.

I'll have to parrot the notion put forth by the others here, the acts of the singular warrior which the Call of Duty franchise revolves around were quite frankly imperceptible as he/she disappeared into the miasma of uniforms and death.

Plenty of books and films have focussed on the actions of individuals though, not just in the American civil war, but throughout the whole period where similar weapons and tactics were in use - the Sharpe series was set a few decades earlier, while Zulu was just afterwards, to give a couple of obvious examples.

Strike two I think probably hits it the hardest, which is that Call of Duty is nearly entirely built around adrenaline and run'n'gun, the only way I can think of getting this feel in an era close to the civil war would be in the wild west. Revolvers and carbines with plenty of lone warriors and bandits,

Or a small scout group stuck behind enemy lines. Skirmishers clashing for position before the main armies arrive. A messenger crossing dangerous territory. Just because the main battles were mostly fought between massed line infantry doesn't mean there aren't plenty of scenarios in which individual action would have been important. Best of all, this would also mean they're not stuck to the pure historical record - a player can't alter the outcome of a well known battle, but can easily be involved with a minor action that could have plausibly influenced events leading up to one.

Or of course, they could simply say fuck it and not bother trying to be that historical at all. It's not like anything since Modern Warfare has been at all realistic, so what would be so bad about having a different setting treated in the same non-realistic, over the top manner?

far better at evoking the spirit of the franchise for the all-important multiplayer that it is predominantly designed for

Given that the entire point of the article was about the need to do something different, worrying about what you think the spirit of the franchise happens to be right now seems a bit silly. It wasn't all about the multiplayer at the start, that was the interesting new thing that has now become old and stale. Trying to stick with that while coming up with newer and more interesting ideas would be rather counter-productive.

 

[Johnny Thunder]

I don't mean to offend any of my lovely neighbours to the South, but does anyone outside of the US really give a damn about the American Civil War?

There's at least one: I have watched the Ken Burns documentary several times (all 12 hours of it) and two of my favourite films are Glory and Gettysburg.

Also, it may surprise you to know that there's a complete comic book series from Belgium; Les Tuniques Bleues, that's about the American Civil War.

 

[RJ 17]

And yet no one has a problem with games and movies depicting the Nazi flag. Go figure.

No-one in America has a problem with games and movies depicting the Nazi flag. No-one in Germany has a problem with games and movies depicting the Confederate flag. Oddly enough, people tend to be a little more sensitive about their own history.

So one madman commits genocide and we're fine with the flag that represented his faction. One psycho shoots up a church and we immediately ban the flag that was shown in a picture he was in.

Nope, no double-standard here. I don't rightly care whose history it's a part of, if we're banning flags because of atrocities then there's plenty of other flags that should be banned as well.

Personally I don't think any flags should be banned as, to me, it represents an attempt to bury and forget about the past...and I think that's a silly idea regardless of the context.

 

[BrotherSurplice]

There are several points in the First World War that could make a good Call of Duty game. The Western Front 1914 to early 1915, before the serious trench digging began. The Western Front again in 1918, when the war became mobile again. The Eastern Front and Mesopotamian theatre with their large, wide ranging manoeuvres. Mountain warfare on the Italian front. Guerilla warfare in East Africa. So many possibilities . . .

Although that said, the moral complexity and ambiguity of the First World War makes me think that the Call of Duty developers would be exceptionally poor candidates for making a good game out of it.