CoD: WW2

[Hawki]

As above - imperialism. Anywhere other than Western Europe or certain areas of the Pacific are too dubious in todays climate for a cautious AAA developer.

Would be my guess.

Doubt it. If anything, killing Nazis has become more politically incorrect than killing Japs.

That said, I doubt it. It's easy to understand from a business standpoint why it's in 1944 Europe - US soldiers from a predominantly US audience, taking imagery from iconic WWII media (Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers), and feeling in sync with CoD's roots. And apparently it paid off as I've read that WWII has outsold Infinite Warfare 2:1 already.

Which is sad, because Burma could be done incredibly well with modern engines.

Medal of Honour: Rising Sun had you on an elephant.

WHERE'S MY ELEPHANT GODDAMNIT?!

 

[Dalisclock]

I don't know why COD has forgotten they can have more then one character and just swap back and forth as needed to show what they need to show.

It doesn't knit into stories that come together well, though, if they are in completely separate fronts.

I mean, you could have Cretan resistance delaying the Eastern offensive, sort of thing, but that's a lot harder to show and a bit beyond the attention span of your average COD player. El Alamein leading to the invasion of Italy.

And at the end of the day, people just want to shoot Nazi's. They don't want reference to the imperialistic past of the "good guys".

.

I can see that, but let's face it, COD stories and characters aren't exactly 3 dimensional to begin with. The last one I liked was Advanced Warfare and that was mostly due to Kevin Spacey playing a Bond Villian(some of the setpieces were fun too). The last COD plot that could pass as good was BO2, and even that game split the gameplay between two characters in two different time periods(and even let you play the villain for once).

I don't even mind that the series went back to it's WW2 roots. It's more that it went back to "Americans on the Western Front in 1944-1945". Except I played COD 1 and 2 back in the day and they did the exact same thing, and they had the British and Russian Campaigns to boot.

So this basically feels like they did a stripped down remake of the first two games, covering pretty much the same ground.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

The Germans are using Russian weapons on D-Day.

Enough said.

I'll pick it up when it's heavily cut down in price.

 

[Nedoras]

The Germans are using Russian weapons on D-Day.

Enough said.

I'll pick it up when it's heavily cut down in price.

I can see where they got the idea to throw that in though. Russian smallarms were used by Germany in small numbers on the Western front. Granted, nowhere near as much as they were used on the Eastern front, but it did happen. Did it happen on D-Day though? That I'm not all too sure of, although it is possible. Hell it's quite possible French weapons were used too. I imagine the game makes it seem much more prominent though considering how much I've seen this be brought up. The way I see it they learned about that and thought it'd be a neat thing to include, but instead of giving a small amount of soldiers Russian weapons, they opted to make it seem much much more prominent than it really was. Or maybe it is just a few and people saw that and instantly complained? Don't really care enough to watch someone play though that section to find out.

From what I've heard about it and saw for myself, they went with the same old WW2 tale that's already been told a hundred times over. That alone killed any interest I had in the game, which was little to begin with. As for it getting good reviews, I imagine it's not a bad game if someone is new to the series. It's uncontrollably bland though considering the age of the series, but a nice "fresh" coat of paint is more than enough to appeal to people. I mean look at Battlefield 1, what with it's "emotional and so very amazing" shit show of a campaign. It's multiplayer wasn't much different either, but it drew people back in anyway. You can functionally have the same game, but just change the theme and all of a sudden it's fresh and different....somehow.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The Germans are using Russian weapons on D-Day.

Enough said.

I'll pick it up when it's heavily cut down in price.

Not impossible at all. The 716th and 352nd Infantry Divisions, those manning Omaha Beach where the 1st ID landed on D-Day, both had a lot of second hand equipment to fill out their ToE. Their artillery was mainly Soviet 76mm field guns and 122mm howitzers and their small arms, particularly those of the 716th, was a hodge-podge of guns taken from defeated nations. This included Czech machine guns, Soviet Mosin-Nagants and various french rifles. Considering that several units on and around Omaha Beach were also HiWi (Hilfswilliger), former Red Army soldiers that had joined the Wehrmacht, and that they tended to be equipped with captured Red Army equipment, it is not nearly as far-fetched as you'd think. The Wehrmacht never had enough equipment to go around and the Normandy front was not considered high priority when it came to getting equipment.

 

[hermes]

Except you can, and WWII games have done it before (e.g. Medal of Honour: Frontline). Not the best story in the world, but still a story. And even if you have to stick to one location, surely anywhere would be more interesting than 1944 Europe?

As above - imperialism. Anywhere other than Western Europe or certain areas of the Pacific are too dubious in todays climate for a cautious AAA developer.

Would be my guess.

Which is sad, because Burma could be done incredibly well with modern engines.

I don't think "imperialism" is the word you are looking for; more like, "playing it safe". They took the most traveled path imaginable to portrait WW2, for the audience you want to target, with nothing new to say about any of those scenarios that hasn't been covered by better movies, TV shows or games. They didn't went to the eastern front not because of fear of political backlash, they didn't went there because to have several scenarios was expensive and it would need more actual research to write and ask more of the audience than just recalling scenes from Band of Brothers and Private Ryan...

That would be my guess.

 

[Catnip1024]

I don't think "imperialism" is the word you are looking for; more like, "playing it safe". They took the most traveled path imaginable to portrait WW2, for the audience you want to target, with nothing new to say about any of those scenarios that hasn't been covered by better movies, TV shows or games. They didn't went to the eastern front not because of fear of political backlash, they didn't went there because to have several scenarios was expensive and it would need more actual research to write and ask more of the audience than just recalling scenes from Band of Brothers and Private Ryan...

That would be my guess.

Well, I imagine the Eastern Front is also a dodgy one to do. Considering the treatment of the Red Army by its own leaders. And the whole aspect of Stalin being virtually as bad as Hitler in terms of body count. An Enemy at the Gates style mission would have been cool, though.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I don't think "imperialism" is the word you are looking for; more like, "playing it safe". They took the most traveled path imaginable to portrait WW2, for the audience you want to target, with nothing new to say about any of those scenarios that hasn't been covered by better movies, TV shows or games. They didn't went to the eastern front not because of fear of political backlash, they didn't went there because to have several scenarios was expensive and it would need more actual research to write and ask more of the audience than just recalling scenes from Band of Brothers and Private Ryan...

That would be my guess.

I'd reckon it is this. Despite what the average game forum might imply, the vast majority of people, even gamers, don't know much about WW 2. If you crib on SPR and BoB by including Overlord and the Bulge, you are using imagery and scenarios that are well anchored in pop culture and which even those uninterested in WW 2 can recognize and somewhat relate to. Because the simple truth is that most people are only vaguely aware of Operation Torch, Operation Husky, Operation Avalanche, Operation Dragoon or any other major US operation in Southern Europe or North Africa. And while people might recollect Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima (thanks to the Pacific) as places the USMC went, they'd probably not know off Tarawa or the New Guinea campaign.

If you want to maximize your player base, you need to be able to market scenarios that people know. And while I drool at the thought of a Red Army Operation Bagration scenario, most people can only really sum up the Eastern Front as "Invasion then Stalingrad and something something Battle of Berlin". And that's not even getting into the special cases that's places like Burma or Anzio.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Well, I imagine the Eastern Front is also a dodgy one to do. Considering the treatment of the Red Army by its own leaders. And the whole aspect of Stalin being virtually as bad as Hitler in terms of body count. An Enemy at the Gates style mission would have been cool, though.

Not to be that person, but Stalin has about 5-8 million deaths to his name, including the Holodomor (a most likely intentional famine) and other famines that could potentially have been prevented, of which "only" (a stupid word for these numbers) 800,000 were intentionally executed and another 2-3 million dying due to poor conditions in the Gulag system. This over 30 years of Stalin in power.
With 12 years of Hitler in power Nazi-Germany managed to kill 11 million people in the Holocaust, via industrial genocide, and another 5-10 million via terror and death squads in occupied territory. Add to that the 30 or so million civilians that died indirectly from World War 2, including Soviet citizens that starved to death in wartime induced famines, and you can comfortably say that Hitler is a lot worse, with deaths in the order of a magnitude higher then Stalin.

More pertinent to a game is that the Red Army would be a tricky thing to portray, as it underwent significant change during WW 2. The first wave of soldiers fought bravely and well, hampered by poor leadership and supply shortages, followed by a wave of almost 6 million men that were thrown into battle piecemeal to halt the Wehrmacht during the fall of 1941. The Red Army casualties in the last half of 1941 account for over 60% of their total wartime losses, to put into perspective just how disastrous it as. From the winter of 1942 onward and escalating after the summer of 1943, the Red Army was an increasingly effective fighting machine, very adept at maneuver warfare and arguably the best army in the world at the time when it came to orchestrating strategic scale offensive operations. The Red Army that orchestrated Operation Bagration in 1944 was arguably the best military force in the world at the time, compensating what it lacked in tactical acumen with excellent operational and strategical planning and maneuver. It is a far cry from the Hollywood picture of human waves charging machine guns, with evil commissars machine gunning down retreaters (blocking units from the NKVD were a thing, but only some 4% of soldiers they stopped were executed for desertion, the vast majority were simply guided back to their units).

I'd love me a good game about the Red Army, but it won't happen as it would be a game completely different from Western pop culture understanding of the USSR and the Red Army in WW 2.

 

[laggyteabag]

See, I'm conflicted.

On one hand, im not particularly interested in the multiplayer. There is nothing wrong with twitch shooters, and Call of Duty is often twitch shooting at its best, but the map design in the beta irked me to the point where I just found the game woefully unenjoyable. Not to mention that the game will basically become a DLC fest, and I just can't be bothered with that.

Where the game does interest me, though, is with the singleplayer.

It has been a long time since I last played a WW2 game, and what can I say? Im just itching to assault the beach on Normandy. Besides, from what I have seen, the game goes to some often unexplored (at least in games) locations for WW2, and I would love to play through that.

Unfortunately, this is Call of Duty. A franchise in which the games are never a reasonable price. There is a Steam sale on at this very moment, and MW2, BO, and MW3 are all on sale. MW2, a game that is almost 10 years old, is still 13GBP. MW3 and BO are both sitting at 20GBP. Its just a piss-take.

Chances are, I will never play this game.

 

[Catnip1024]

snip

On the bright side, it would be the first FPS where dying for going outside the set mission zone would make sense...

No, I admit my view of the Eastern front is kind of skewed because the main bit I read about was Stalingrad. Which was a clusterfuck all round.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I've been hearing that the campaign is rather boring, and it sounds like it here as well. I dunno, maybe I got my hopes up a bit that maybe, just maybe they'd try something a bit fresh with the scenario. Maybe go into the ambiguities of war and enemies.

The weird thing is that there's one section where that does happen. You're driving past some dead Germans and one of the soldiers makes a joke about it and your character responds, "Hey! That's someone's son down there!"
And it comes completely out of left field. The only reason I remember that line is because it felt so forced, so out of place, so "See? We're showing that these guys were human!" that it baffled me. Now if your character had been pondering this stuff throughout the game--like Chernov in World at War--then it would have worked. But nope, that's the only time it happens, and it's never brought up again.
I suppose there's one part late in the game where you come across a wounded German who--I think--is asking for help, but since there were no subtitles and no prompts to aid him, I can't be sure.