The Medal of Honor Curse

[SiskoBlue]

I often wonder if the Pacific Theatre was largely ignored because there was no obvious villian like Hitler and the Third Reich. The enemy was Japan and the Emporer but without the obvious villiany of the holocaust and Nazism.

Or was it because designing realistic jungles is hard. I remember the early attempts at jungle warfare FPS and the plants were always those 2D models that rotated to face the player but if you walked through them were paper thin. Buildings and streets are much easier to make.

Personally I've never been bothered much by the "look" of a game as I am the sense of gameplay. I like MoH and earlier CoD because tactics had to be used, you had to push ahead, suppress, flank. Strangely all these games have become more linear corridor shooters than their forefathers (except of course the inevitable "bunker" missions that must have made level designers breath a sigh of relief).

The lastest MoH Warfighter was panned but I can honestly say I enjoyed it. I love the Tier 1 stuff and the soldier's story is far more entertaining and believable than anything CoD has done since CoD4. And the multiplayer feels pared back to something that feels almost like Counter-Strike. No stupid cheap spawns, sensible cover and placement (camping) better than hopping around like a moron. Seriously, where is your realism when the "better" method of playing is jumping around a corner shooting. Then again we all have our limits. I don't want to play ARMA or some similar "realistic" shooter where you're shooting at people 500m away that you can barely see. Then spend 20 minutes "covering your sector" with nothing happening. So realism be damned, it's about finding your own subjective preference of how much realism you want.

 

[Playful Pony]

I think we're all tired of this "realistic" look by now, great article!

What seems to "rescue" me from this situation is actually the wonderful new game called Planetside 2 (currently in beta, release on the 20th as Free-2-Play, check it out now at www.planetside2.com! /advertizing). It already has 3 varied continents to battle on, one more beautiful than the other! Amerish is by far my favorite, the huge biolabs look amazing on grassy fields surrounded by tall, sharp mountains. The gear is colorful, looks great and the game sound simply amazing. Knowing that every shell fire, every explosion barly audible is created by another player... I can't explain it! My favorite moments include 400 of my friendly players charging across the open desert towards a heavily defended enemy outpost. Seing hundreds of enemy rifles open up on us as we run makes me shiver with fangirl excitement! The nights are great too. We lose much of the colorful world the day presents, but in return we get some SERIOUSLY good looking lighting effects. Flying over the continents in a gunship and seing the headlights of enemy armored collums slowly crawling along a windy mountain road, or on the ground observing the previously mentioned gunship get torn to shreds by enemy AA tracers darting across the sky... Watch some Youtube videos, google some pictures, but on Nov 20th... DL this game damnit! If you have any kind of half-decent PC, do it! I should stop shamelessly promoting my new favorite game now X3.

Spoiler: Just look at this!

You know what would have been impressive, is that at the start of every map (if not already on fire) started out brilliant and bright, but as the war waged on it would slowly turn greyish/brown due to smut and smoke caused by the fighting.

Honestly, what you described is exactly what I expected from BF3, and it is my absolute main reason for being very disapointed with the game (also, no mod-support or LAN capabilites, WTF?!). I was shocked to see how grey they made the game look. Desert maps, jungles, fields, cities and snowy mountain alike all have this heavy gray filter over it. Your gun looks gray, your friendly players look gray, the vehicles look gray... It's shocking, truly!

 

[XMark]

I remember in the mid-2000s everybody was getting sick of every shooter being based in World War II and every World War II game trying to one-up the other one in how much they looked and felt like Saving Private Ryan. Then the first Modern Warfare game came around, and we were all excited because of the way the gameplay translated into a more modern aesthetic.

But I think now the modern military shooter has reached the same kind of saturation point that the World War II shooter did before 2007. The question remains... what's the next big trend that's gonna be awesome for a few years before it gets overplayed?

I'm thinking the only two options are either near-future high-tech warfare (with Black Ops 2 leading the pack) or we go back to World War II again.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Critical intel is the best read on the escapist now.

 

[AlwaysPractical]

I'm glad someone has finally admitted that it wasn't all Halo's fault for the modern shooter.

 

[Arif_Sohaib]

I'm sure I had lots of intelligent thoughts after reading this altogether well-written article but all I can think of know is "Fuck yeah I want to play a game where I'm a Gurkha." Seriously, those guys kick so much arse the toes of their descendants must be pre-emptively sore.

You cant make a game with Gurkha's though. Soon as you start the mission, the enemy completely surrenders...

You actually can.
The really interesting thing about playing as the Gurkhas or Indians is playing as subjects of the British Raj with divided loyalties. One the one side, if they knew what the Nazis had been doing, they would want to fight them but on the other side they were conquered subjects of a foreign power and were fighting their war. Some even fought their own people due to the Free Indian Army's loyalty to Imperial Japan.
Then there was the political strife among themselves(if you are playing the Indians) as the Hindus and Muslims weren't on very good terms since the failed 1857 rebellion and in 1940 the Muslim League finally decided that the communities were too different to live together forever (the biggest example; Hindus worship cows, we eat cows, especially on Eid ul Adha) and announced their intentions for a separate country, Pakistan after years of campaigning only for equal job rights and separate electorates(as voting was usually based on ethnicity or religion and Muslim candidates, being part of the minority, had no chance of winning and so had no chance of getting their voice heard by the British rulers).

Add all this and you have a World War 2 that would still be very original and that most developers would find difficult to emulate like they did with Call of Duty.

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

Nice. It is a damn fine idea to change from common and well-known shooter locales. I for one am tired of sand, concrete and drab colours.

Why not get a bit heart of darkness, and set a shooter in something like the Amazon. Make it bright, colourful, put a lot of effort into plants and animals. Your tough grunt stomps around the jungle, a snake bites him, now deal with the poison.

Fighting mercs, aliens (predator influence?) or drug cartels in the brightest of surroundings could add a lot more to the genre. People have powerful gaming machines, let's use it.

Dead island was mostly a bore, but some parts in the jungle had the right feel and could be used for something new. The Indonesian military in PNG could be another theatre, or Indonesian anti terror units against JI.

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

I'm sure I had lots of intelligent thoughts after reading this altogether well-written article but all I can think of know is "Fuck yeah I want to play a game where I'm a Gurkha." Seriously, those guys kick so much arse the toes of their descendants must be pre-emptively sore.

You cant make a game with Gurkha's though. Soon as you start the mission, the enemy completely surrenders...

You actually can.
The really interesting thing about playing as the Gurkhas or Indians is playing as subjects of the British Raj with divided loyalties. One the one side, if they knew what the Nazis had been doing, they would want to fight them but on the other side they were conquered subjects of a foreign power and were fighting their war. Some even fought their own people due to the Free Indian Army's loyalty to Imperial Japan.
Then there was the political strife among themselves(if you are playing the Indians) as the Hindus and Muslims weren't on very good terms since the failed 1857 rebellion and in 1940 the Muslim League finally decided that the communities were too different to live together forever (the biggest example; Hindus worship cows, we eat cows, especially on Eid ul Adha) and announced their intentions for a separate country, Pakistan after years of campaigning only for equal job rights and separate electorates(as voting was usually based on ethnicity or religion and Muslim candidates, being part of the minority, had no chance of winning and so had no chance of getting their voice heard by the British rulers).

Add all this and you have a World War 2 that would still be very original and that most developers would find difficult to emulate like they did with Call of Duty.

Following a Japanese infantryman in Asia could be a good game. There at Singapore, fighting the warlords in China, stomping through south-east asia.

 

[bificommander]

Settingwise, why not take the Korean War? There's like, what, 2 niche strategy games that take place there. It's a mountainous area, sufficiently different from European or Middle Eastern areas. And you're still using most of the weapons from the WW2 era, so you have to choose between short range SMGs or long range rifles, without the all-ranges assault rifles. Plus, narrative wise the war can be interesting for keeping the tension high. Just check how the frontline moved:

So we'd actually be fighting a narratively dangerous foe, instead of the terminator-vs-rockthrowers idea that Yahtzee ranted on about. Early in the war, allied tanks and AT weapons were vastly outclassed by the enemy's T34 for instance. Should make for tense gameplay.

 

[oliver.begg]

I often wonder if the Pacific Theatre was largely ignored because there was no obvious villian like Hitler and the Third Reich. The enemy was Japan and the Emporer but without the obvious villiany of the holocaust and Nazism.

Or was it because designing realistic jungles is hard. I remember the early attempts at jungle warfare FPS and the plants were always those 2D models that rotated to face the player but if you walked through them were paper thin. Buildings and streets are much easier to make.

Personally I've never been bothered much by the "look" of a game as I am the sense of gameplay. I like MoH and earlier CoD because tactics had to be used, you had to push ahead, suppress, flank. Strangely all these games have become more linear corridor shooters than their forefathers (except of course the inevitable "bunker" missions that must have made level designers breath a sigh of relief).

The lastest MoH Warfighter was panned but I can honestly say I enjoyed it. I love the Tier 1 stuff and the soldier's story is far more entertaining and believable than anything CoD has done since CoD4. And the multiplayer feels pared back to something that feels almost like Counter-Strike. No stupid cheap spawns, sensible cover and placement (camping) better than hopping around like a moron. Seriously, where is your realism when the "better" method of playing is jumping around a corner shooting. Then again we all have our limits. I don't want to play ARMA or some similar "realistic" shooter where you're shooting at people 500m away that you can barely see. Then spend 20 minutes "covering your sector" with nothing happening. So realism be damned, it's about finding your own subjective preference of how much realism you want.

the pacfic never really flew because it wasn't a "nice" war, the fighting was nasty and completely broke a lot of the soilders.

any story based there has a marine posted for 4 months on a rock, with no way out, no manaver against a suicidal enemy that can shoot straight, and at least initially was better trained and battle hardned.

 

[Squilookle]

I agree with just about everything this article said- ESPECIALLY the part about how ww2 games could be so much more diverse in location, climate, and people and races involved (though limiting it to just the Pacific when there is still yet so much other content from WW2 also untouched seems almost as bad as the ill-doing the article complains about), but this bit here...

Critics and veterans often praise Private Ryan for its accurate depiction of combat, but Private Ryan wasn't just a movie about the "reality" of WWII, it was also a reaction to the glamorized myth Hollywood had built around the War. This is especially clear during the Normandy scene, where the images of maimed American soldiers serve as a dual indictment of the horrors of warfare and the glossy film culture that glorifies it. The Americans in this scene aren't tough, gravely heroes like John Wayne, they're nineteen and twenty year-old kids being butchered en masse. What makes them heroic isn't a steely lack of fear, it's that despite their terror and anguish, they still push forward with blood on their boots and sand in their mouths. It's a masterful piece of filmmaking that simultaneously manages to be anti-war and pro-soldier.

Oh please. The first 20 minutes of SPR was realistic, but everything else in it ended up being just as much of a cartoon as any 70s technicolor war film. They even deliberately altered the tactics of the Germans in the last battle to make them incompetent enough to get taken down by the Americans. Add to that the fact that the tanks were painted up to represent a real life unit of German armour that attacked and defeated a British force on the exact day mentioned in the film, plus all that Monty bashing that came literally out of nowhere, and you have in Sving Private Ryan a film that is every bit as jingoistic and narrow minded as the war films of old. The only difference is that instead of laying the heroics and adventure on thick like the old films, they're going totally overboard on the 'war is hell' and nobody can have any fun ever' and 'war destroys all beauty in everything' angle. It's not really pro-soldier, and it isn't really anti-war either, considering how saturated with 'being noble' everything is in it- getting so caught up with the cause and everything that it leaves no doubt in the audience's mind that it weas a war that most definitely was worth fighting.

Settingwise, why not take the Korean War? There's like, what, 2 niche strategy games that take place there. It's a mountainous area, sufficiently different from European or Middle Eastern areas. And you're still using most of the weapons from the WW2 era, so you have to choose between short range SMGs or long range rifles, without the all-ranges assault rifles. Plus, narrative wise the war can be interesting for keeping the tension high. Just check how the frontline moved:

So we'd actually be fighting a narratively dangerous foe, instead of the terminator-vs-rockthrowers idea that Yahtzee ranted on about. Early in the war, allied tanks and AT weapons were vastly outclassed by the enemy's T34 for instance. Should make for tense gameplay.

The way the frontline moved is exactly why nobody makes a Korean wargame: nobody got anywhere- the Allies pushed well up north and were doing very well, before China got involved and pushed the border all the way back down again. Playing a game based on Korea would seem just like the war itself- entirely pointless.

 

[Robert Rath]

You actually can.
The really interesting thing about playing as the Gurkhas or Indians is playing as subjects of the British Raj with divided loyalties. One the one side, if they knew what the Nazis had been doing, they would want to fight them but on the other side they were conquered subjects of a foreign power and were fighting their war. Some even fought their own people due to the Free Indian Army's loyalty to Imperial Japan.
Then there was the political strife among themselves(if you are playing the Indians) as the Hindus and Muslims weren't on very good terms since the failed 1857 rebellion and in 1940 the Muslim League finally decided that the communities were too different to live together forever (the biggest example; Hindus worship cows, we eat cows, especially on Eid ul Adha) and announced their intentions for a separate country, Pakistan after years of campaigning only for equal job rights and separate electorates(as voting was usually based on ethnicity or religion and Muslim candidates, being part of the minority, had no chance of winning and so had no chance of getting their voice heard by the British rulers).

Add all this and you have a World War 2 that would still be very original and that most developers would find difficult to emulate like they did with Call of Duty.

See, I think that would be fascinating -- I'd love to play that game. One of the great advantages of videogames, and one that's almost never used, is that they literally put you into the shoes of another person. That can (and should) be a powerful tool for understanding other cultures, countries, and time periods, but we've yet to see anyone really take advantage of that. The game you're describing would be especially relevant in light of recent events between India and Pakistan and the strained U.S./Pakistan relationship.

I honestly think you could do something similar with the Sino-Japanese War, focusing on a Chinese Nationalist Army unit but sprinkling in the uneasy alliances and mistrust between the Nationalists and the Communist guerillas they often found themselves working with. Again, that's a fascinating and important part of history that most people don't really know about.

On a weird side note, one of my ancestors was a British Army doctor who served during the 1857 rebellion (and also in the Crimea). His son, my great-grandfather, was actually born in Hyderabad and served in the Indian revenue police and the British Army commissariat in the 1890s, in what's now Pakistan actually, before immigrating to the U.S.

Settingwise, why not take the Korean War? There's like, what, 2 niche strategy games that take place there. It's a mountainous area, sufficiently different from European or Middle Eastern areas. And you're still using most of the weapons from the WW2 era, so you have to choose between short range SMGs or long range rifles, without the all-ranges assault rifles. Plus, narrative wise the war can be interesting for keeping the tension high. Just check how the frontline moved:

So we'd actually be fighting a narratively dangerous foe, instead of the terminator-vs-rockthrowers idea that Yahtzee ranted on about. Early in the war, allied tanks and AT weapons were vastly outclassed by the enemy's T34 for instance. Should make for tense gameplay.

The Korean War is so widely and unjustly ignored in our history. I'd really like to see someone make something of the material so more people would become interested in it.

When my dad was in Vietnam a lot of his senior NCOs had been through Korea. He said they never talked about the fighting, they just talked about how cold it was.

 

[repeating integers]

The way the frontline moved is exactly why nobody makes a Korean wargame: nobody got anywhere- the Allies pushed well up north and were doing very well, before China got involved and pushed the border all the way back down again. Playing a game based on Korea would seem just like the war itself- entirely pointless.

That makes me want one even more.

 

[bificommander]

The way the frontline moved is exactly why nobody makes a Korean wargame: nobody got anywhere- the Allies pushed well up north and were doing very well, before China got involved and pushed the border all the way back down again. Playing a game based on Korea would seem just like the war itself- entirely pointless.

I would disagree that it would be pointless to play. I don't think every game needs to end with a ticker-tape parade, secure in the knowledge that all evil has been vanquished by the player, Huzah! The war wasn't an unmittigated success story, but that in and of itself makes it more interesting than stomping on Generic Middle Easternstan again. Tell the story of the blood and tears sacrificed for a stalemate, because it was about the best result that could be achieved. That's a far better way of making a gritty war game than putting a brown filter over the screen.

Besides, there's been a number of Vietnam-based games. And that war was considerably more pointless. The Korean war started when North Korea invaded the south, and whatever else may have gone wrong, South Korea was still there afterwards and has made decent progress in productivity and democracy since then. South Vietnam... didn't. And from a gameplay standpoint, the Vietnam war is far more pointless to play, since the open battles were mostly pretty lopsided and the real threat came from ambushes, traps and sneak attacks. And no one wants to play a game where you have to patrol for days only to be killed on the 6th day by a hidden sniper. A game that starts with a frantic retreat south, an amphibious landing to turn the tide, driving the enemy back, then being confronted by huge enemy reinforcements from China, followed by a new retreat untill the tide can be turned again to push the enemy back sounds far more interesting.

Actually, a game with a Vietcong protagonist side would be considerably more fun gameplay wise. Doubt any studio would dare release it in the US though.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I would be so happy if there were more shooters that were set in brightly lit, colorful environments.

As Yahtzee noted, I feel so sorry for the people that painstakingly design the models for NPCs, making sure their attire, down to the very spots on the jacket, are appropriate for the setting and for the character, and then they're stuck behind walls because that's the whole meat of the game. Some elaborate design would be amazing.

 

[Milanezi]

I for one, love the gritty graphics. In games, and comics, and movies. I love it. Don't get me wrong though, if you wanna go all colors of the rainbow by all means do, I simply can't forget how great that Prince of Persia game was (the one that seemed water-colored), but then again, that was a game that in my opinion had nothing to gain with gritty filters.
On the other hands I wouldn't enjoy Gears of War so much if it wasn't "brown" like that, nor Call of Duty, or even God of War. But those are all violent games, and the more depressing the mood, the more into context it gets.
Halo now, Halo would get very strange with "brown" filters, I feel they could put some more "realistic" DETAILS in it (like they did with Halo 4, it's subtle bullshit actually, like Master Chief's armor now seeming more tangible), but it has more of a "happy sci-fi" feel to it, like Star Wars, in which case, more COLOR will add to it.

It's a matter of context, I believe. And there's a lot of hate running towards games that are using it within the context...

 

[Darth_Payn]

So, it's another case of copycats mistaking surface for substance without thinking? Just like superhero comics in the '90's.

captcha: Get The Hopper Free
Yes! Free the Dish Hopper!

 

[MammothBlade]

there was some skepticism at DreamWorks Interactive about whether a historical setting and retro weapon options would appeal to a modern audience.

Oh, that's cute.

There are a few things that can be done about this: The first is to recognize that the idea is tired, outmoded, and not particularly necessary. The second is to realize that World War II was literally that - a World War, with interesting and heroic actions taking place all over the globe. Games have largely neglected The Pacific War, for example, and many of the major actions have gone almost completely unexplored. Saipan has never appeared in a game, and neither has the Burma Campaign or any theater of the Sino-Japanese War

Hello, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and CoD: World at War? Not so much the Sino-Japanese war but definitely Burma. Though it is true that they have been neglected in comparison to the West and East European theatres.

 

[Das Tentakel]

Good article, very informative regarding Spielberg?s influence.

Some additional remarks from my own:
The ?Brown Is Real? syndrome (and the related / overlapping ?the past lacks colour? syndrome) is not unique to military shooters. Spielberg may ultimately have been responsible for its popularity in military shooters, but something similar exists when it comes to historical movies that take place in different periods, as well as a large subset of ?historical? / ?medieval fantasy? games and comics. This wasn?t always the case, but since Terry Gilliam?s ?Jabberwocky? many ?medieval? historical movies ? and fantasy movies and games that are based on medieval Europe ? tend to be very?brown and grey.
There?s also some direct Spielbergian influence in ?historical? epics as well; Ridley Scott?s Gladiator starts with a Roman warfare scene that?s clearly influenced by Saving Private Ryan, including the colour scheme (which, given both Roman and barbarian love of colour and ?bling-bling?, is actually downright silly).

It?s actually gotten so bad that historians, archaeologists and historical reenactors are forced to educate the audience that ?No Sir, not everybody dressed in brown and grey? during presentations and historical re-enactment events.
I?ve actually noticed something I call ?colour shock? among parts of the larger public (and some educated people too) when they are confronted with state of the art historically accurate recreations of ancient and medieval arms, armour, clothing and painted (classical and medieval) statues and architecture. They are surprised, incredulous, sometimes question the accuracy of the recreation, or are annoyed and declare that they prefer the standard / Hollywood depiction. Though to be honest, the ?wow, amazing!? is also a common reaction.

 

[Alexnader]

You're preaching to the choir here.

A good article, very informative, but the message is old news here.

I think most of the value of this article comes from the context the author provides with regards to the origin of the "realistic" aesthetic.

The way the frontline moved is exactly why nobody makes a Korean wargame: nobody got anywhere- the Allies pushed well up north and were doing very well, before China got involved and pushed the border all the way back down again. Playing a game based on Korea would seem just like the war itself- entirely pointless.

I would disagree that it would be pointless to play. I don't think every game needs to end with a ticker-tape parade, secure in the knowledge that all evil has been vanquished by the player, Huzah! The war wasn't an unmittigated success story, but that in and of itself makes it more interesting than stomping on Generic Middle Easternstan again. Tell the story of the blood and tears sacrificed for a stalemate, because it was about the best result that could be achieved. That's a far better way of making a gritty war game than putting a brown filter over the screen.

Besides, there's been a number of Vietnam-based games. And that war was considerably more pointless. The Korean war started when North Korea invaded the south, and whatever else may have gone wrong, South Korea was still there afterwards and has made decent progress in productivity and democracy since then. South Vietnam... didn't. And from a gameplay standpoint, the Vietnam war is far more pointless to play, since the open battles were mostly pretty lopsided and the real threat came from ambushes, traps and sneak attacks. And no one wants to play a game where you have to patrol for days only to be killed on the 6th day by a hidden sniper. A game that starts with a frantic retreat south, an amphibious landing to turn the tide, driving the enemy back, then being confronted by huge enemy reinforcements from China, followed by a new retreat untill the tide can be turned again to push the enemy back sounds far more interesting.

Actually, a game with a Vietcong protagonist side would be considerably more fun gameplay wise. Doubt any studio would dare release it in the US though.

I agree completely. 'Spec Ops: The Line' seemed to do well enough and it was apparently one of the few modern shooters to actually incorporate some real ambiguity into its story. The idea that a war who's progression physically epitomises the futility of conflict wouldn't be "fun" to play may be true, however I have no doubt it would be an entertaining and interesting experience.