Homefront, implosibility in games.

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David Hebda

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Apr 25, 2011
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So I haven't played it, but I have read up on the history of the game's universe (what little I could find) and basically N Korea fights a war with S Korea, wins and then launches a successful invasion of the USA? I know its just a game, but do highly impossible/impossible scenarios kill a games atmosphere for anyone else? I had a hard time with COD:MWII but let it slip do to the story campaign being fun. But Korea successfully invades America? I think including reserves the American Military could mobilize more people than Korea has, and even if the American government was in shambles, I think, with invasion the Military structure would take command. And I do believe that non gun owners and foreigners totally miss and dismiss the number of gun owning Americans. Admiral Yamamoto famously said "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a man with a rifle behind every blade of grass."

Thoughts? Comments? Random flames of hate?
 

Internet Kraken

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This was discussed to death before Homefront came out. I'm hoenstly surprised to see it again, considering nobody gave two shits about Homefront as it was thoroughly mediocre.

But yes, Homefront's plot is ridiculous and they really shouldn't have branded it as "shockingly plausible". People tolerate fiction so long as your not trying to say that these ridiculous scenarios could actually happen in any logical and realistic world.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
really any invasion of the states is pretty silly unless its by canada or mexico and they havent had any reason to invade in awhile

the wonderful thing about an ocean is its hard to cross and your very vulnerable when your crossing it and when you land so an invasion is stupid
 

Busdriver580

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I wouldn't put too much stock in Homefront, the story is either just a set up to shoot at unambiguously evil dudes, or a right-wing shut-in fanfic. Either way its slightly more credible than the way that terrorists always happen to organize and get advanced military hardware in media. Also Implausibility.
 

bob1052

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Its a bit more than N Korea invades the world.

They spent more time developing the back story than they did the game.

The back story starts in 2012.

USA basically kills itself on its oil dependency. Oil prices go so high that eventually some states recede, others impose martial law and rioting takes over.

Meanwhile N Korea takes most of Eastern and Southern Asia through a cross between Blitzkrieg and diplomacy with the blown up nations, eventually getting Japan's tech.

In 2030ish the game actually starts.
 

PlasmaFrog

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Feb 2, 2009
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I'd simply accept it and move on. There isn't any sense in nit-picking at a game, but instead enjoying it. After all, I don't believe that there's anything historically related to Homefront.
 

Zantos

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I think Homefront is waaaaaaay down on the list of most implausible games. Films and TV have already trained me against letting that get in the way of my enjoyment though.
 

Catnipassian

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Apr 24, 2011
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But the U.S. isn't as stupid as the game portrays us. Isn't the main character a civilian? Don't the Koreans cross the ocean? Why do the marines fail to kill six Koreans where the main character is out there killing hundreds? They make an interesting game that is why
 

Gregg Lonsdale

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Yeah, the back-story was pretty much the most interesting bit about the game. You could pretty much watch the opening cutscene on youtube (it it's there) and that would account for %99 of the artistic or narrative value of the game. It did strike me as being a somewhat plausible premise, though mainly just the bits about Afghan/Iraq wars escalating, skyrocketing gas prices and causing national chaos. I think a game about a new American civil war based on that situation alone would be more interesting and realistic, but I live in Australia so maybe I'm not qualified to be talking about that sort of thing.
 

Booze Zombie

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David Hebda said:
Thoughts? Comments? Random flames of hate?
Just because some civilians own guns doesn't mean they're going to be particularly effective with them, if I'm quite frank and this idea that America being invaded makes the game unrealistic is quite annoying, as America was orginally invaded as its primary form of settlement. That's kind of how it started, I would be completly unsurprised to see it happen again.
 

SenorNemo

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I love foreign policy, so I really liked that they seemed to put a lot more effort into creating a backstory, if only because it gave me something to discuss (I joined The Escapist right around when the massive Homefront plausibility threads were exploding). I don't mind that the chain of events required to build the world in which the game takes place is kind of out there, because it's much less out there than a thousand other genuinely good game stories that don't get nearly the amount of crap that Homefront got.

I think part of the reason that people had a strong reaction to Homefront's exposition is related to why people will react strongly to a villain killing the lovable supporting character, but shrug off the death of a million, happening offscreen. With most games, the screen fades in, and you're dropped into the world of the game. "How did it get like this?" "I dunno, that's just the way the game's setting is." With Homefront, you get a blow-by-blow of America's fall from grace and North Korea's rapid rise. It tries to make you care about what happened, and because of that, it brings the question of what happened under far greater scrutiny than it otherwise would.

But here's the thing that people don't seem to understand: Homefront is about how unified Korea fails to conquer the United States. What's more, they fail for a lot of the same reasons that people use as arguments against Homefront's plausibility.

Anyway, that's just what I've observed. I wasn't curious enough to buy or rent the game, so I can't attest to anything about it other than what I've seen on the internet.
 

Dogstile

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Jan 17, 2009
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You know what annoyed me about the Homefront flamers? They were all "HERP DERP N.K IS TOO WEAK TO INVADE" without actually looking at the backstory to it at all.

The event I would say is plausible. In the sense that mythbusters use's it though, in which it could happen but it is REALLY unlikely. In answer to your question it really doesn't bother me at all if the game itself is fun.
 

CWestfall

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I'm with you. I decided I wouldn't buy Homefront even before the reviews came out. I took it as an insult to my intelligence that they have North Korea, a country still using WWI planes invading the USA, the country that spends over half the world total on defence. (Pop quiz- Which one of those facts is more ridiculous?) That's not plausible at all. North Korea's airforce could literally be shot out of the sky by a kid on a tall hill with a BB gun.
 

Gutlord Grom

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Oct 27, 2008
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My main problem is that it's a game with a single player campaign that is under five hours long advertised as a AAA title, much in the same way ODST was released with a campaign that could completed in three hours or less, and a single game mode besides. While I've seen that homefront has decent multiplayer, its not something that will tempt me away from Bad Company 2 or MW2. In many ways, its a derivative of those two games, with more then a dash of the second modern Warfare's over the top plot.

But what bothers me about Homefront's plot is that it wields imagery such mass graves, massacres and dead civilians(and children) with a certain heavy handedness that doesn't really do it any favors, and in truth is just bad writing. To put it simply, those are images that in some ways have to be earned; a character's death must have meaning, or to see a base ruined (such as the suburban hideout of the resistance) by the enemy must have some value to the player as both a refuge and a 'home'. Freedom Fighter, a game that operates on much the same thesis as Homefront (except its Russians led by Ivan Drago's and Georgi Zhukov's clones, and is basically Red Dawn in New York ) does to a much better degree when your sewer hideout is invaded by the enemy, and its unsettling to be betrayed in such a manner, because it signals that there is no going back, and the final confrontation has begun.

I know they wanted to make the North Koreans (or Norks as the game throws out)the unquestionable bad guys, but using imagery like that to create an atmosphere not only doesn't work, but its in truth more disquieting than anything else, and not in the intended manner. It doesn't inspire patriotic feelings to resist these foreign invaders, but instead questions the game designers taste.It's trying for pathos but its not getting it because of a clumsy narrative.

Further, they make the American character's hard to empathize with primarily because they're you're standard band of cliches, and the Connor Morgan is a psychopath. The white phosphorous mortar strike was again, disturbing because it makes a character even harder to like or empathize with, while you watch people burn to death right in front of you, screaming for mercy.

I just think it's been done before, done better, and the writing is right of a survivalist's nightmare, the pacing is poor, and the character's are cardboard cut outs fulfilling the bad shooter party roles ( 'likable' meathead, tech guy, woman with bared mid riff in a gun battle, mentor/leader killed dramatically by villain to raise the stake)
 

Gutlord Grom

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SimpleJack said:
I didnt read this because you spelled implausibility wrong...

I'm sorry.
To be fair, it does raise questions as to the possibility of a Homefront disk imploding.
 

dyre

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My guess is that because they wanted to add a whole lot of near-propaganda drivel, with the enemy rounding up Americans and shoving them into mass graves for no apparent reason, they had to choose a country that wouldn't create a shitstorm.

So, Russia and China were out of the question. No one likes North Korea, so there you go.
 

wrightguy0

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it's story was written by the same guy who penned Red Dawn, so, right wing fanwank from a man who is remembered for creating the biggest cold war fanwank movie in history, you know just as a reminder to those who stopped caring about the cold war twenty years ago that the commies are still out there man.

so yeah, that's why i don't like homefront's story
 

AmrasCalmacil

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wrightguy0 said:
it's story was written by the same guy who penned Red Dawn, so, right wing fanwank from a man who is remembered for creating the biggest cold war fanwank movie in history, you know just as a reminder to those who stopped caring about the cold war twenty years ago that the commies are still out there man.

so yeah, that's why i don't like homefront's story
Yep. This guy beat me to it.

Just for people who don't know what Red Dawn is, it's about attractive young American teenagers killing Spetsnaz after the USSR invades America.

Yeah, y'know.
'cause Special Forces < Schoolkids.

Ironically, as I type this, I have just discovered they're making a remake of Red Dawn.
With Koreans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn_(2011_film)