What about a World War One game?

[Tdc2182]

Old thread is old. And nobody really knows the reason the game has never been done before.

Really? because the reason is it would make for rather boring gameplay.

90% of that war took place in the trenches, just waiting for the whistle to blow so you charge at the enemy trench.

Depressing in real life, Depressingly boring in a game.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

You know why there has been so few World War One games? Beacuse people have too narrow of a perception how the war was like.

When talking about World War One, people will instantly think of the trench warfare that occured on the Western front, Galipoli and Isonzo. The image of thousands upon thousands throwing themselves into the grinding machine for small patches of land is so ingrained in their minds, that they never stop to think that the war might have been different elsewhere. For example, trench warfare was by no means a standard on the Eastern Front, the Middle East and in German African and Asian colonies. There, the war was very much about mobility.

Not that it really matters, though. Even if they did realise that the war was about more than just trench warfare, the fact that the US military had a limited role in the war is also a factor. Even with WWII games, the majority of battlefields tend to be ignored in favour of those where the Americans had a dominant presence....hence the countless renditions of the Normandy landings. If it weren't for the Call of Duty series, we very well might not have seen even the British perspective, let alone the Soviet one. Don't even get me started on the countless other perspectives (including the Axis one!) that the game industry has remained completely oblivious to. Considering that, what makes you think that anyone is going to make a game based off of the Battle of Tannenberg or the Battle of Gaza?

Lastly, there is also the fact that the weapons available to infantry forces were rather limited. Yes, automatic weapons outside of machine guns did appear, but that was towards the end of the war. For the most part, troops relied on bolt-action rifles...and those don't sit very well with the typical "spray-and-pray" FPS player.

Would a WWI game be nice? Yes. But outside of singleplayer mods, it is unlikely to be accepted as game material by the majority of developers.

 

[Blue_vision]

To everyone saying that you'd die too quickly: You seem to disregard the fact that basically every single WWII game has been able to work it's way around D-Day or the Evacuation of Dunkirk. WWI had it's heoric moments too.

EDIT: I like the idea. It's rare to see Canadians kicking ass.

 

[thejayk]

It wouldn't work to well since it was primarily trench warfare so it would be boring for the most part

 

[mrdude2010]

the problem with this is the game would be pure luck. keep your head down, sprint towards the enemy trench, and hope to god you don't get hit by an artillery shell or sniper in the meantime. the trenches are several hundred yards apart and the enemy will all be hiding in them waiting to kill people who survive the bombardment, so you have nothing to shoot at until you get to the trench, and not dying in the meantime is purely luck. Also, all of the levels would be identical. Also, the only true automatic weapons were incredibly not portable. Interesting idea, but it just wouldn't pan out properly

 

[Infinatex]

Because no-one wants to hold CTRL for 5 minutes, then release, click twice, then hold CTRL for another 5 minutes.

Put it on a console then! But yeah, it's not going to be the most engaging game out there.

 

[almostgold]

Oh boy. This ol' thread again. Time to repost one of my first posts as a member here:

WW1 is ripe for gameplay. For one, read up about the pilots during the war. Its facinating stuff. Originally, before they perfected machine guns that could shoot through the propellers, air to air combat was done- no joke- with the pilots holding pistols or rifles and trying to shoot other pilots. If you wanted to drop a bomb, you wingman had a bomb in his lap and literally just dropped it out the side of the plane. Later the interrupter gear was developed, allowing the planes to have forward firing machine guns. Of course, the main point of planes were reconnaissance. Pilots lived an almost nomad-like life, landing in the country side, hiding the plane, finding the nearest friendlies, and refuelling before returning to base.

Now tell me that wouldn't be an awesome game. Part Beyond Good and Evil (photography), part flight simulator, part first person shooter, part stealth (landing behind enemy lines and avoiding capture).

Additionally, there was some fighting done outside trenches obviuosly. Most soldiers participated in a raid at least once, but some commanders did nothing but raid the enemy trenches at night, which would be fun. To give you an idea of what that gameplay would be like, consider: if you party met an enemy party in no man's land, you couldnt use guns. The noise and flash would send every machine gunner on both sides of the line to light your area up. You had to kill the entire enemy party with you bare hands.

 

[Zhukov]

Imagine the intro, you, a freshfaced soldier getting ready for his first time up at the front. Your Sargeant ...[epic snip] ... and hope like hell the artillery lands on them and not you.

Yeah...

That sounds like prettymuch every war-based FPS ever.

It's gonna take a lot more then the subtraction of one "I" to make WWII FPSs interesting again.

 

[Big Bag Of Salt]

Would there a sock changing mini game to prevent trench foot?

 

[migo]

Bolt action guns get boring after a while, and revolvers, double barrels, and vickers won't change that either. (Trench warfare sounds strategically fun though)

You could do an MMO with Trench Warfare.

OT: Snoopy Flying Ace - not quite what you're thinking of but it is WW1.

 

[AWC Viper]

WW1 had no semi-automatic or even automatic weapons. That's why.

The BAR, Vickers MG, Colt M1911 Pistol (it was made in 1911 and is a Semi automatic weapon)

and many more

http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/machineguns.htm
http://www.richthofen.com/ww1sum/

WW1 was a fascinating war. Gas, snipers, lice, cold, trenches, suicidal 'over the top' rushes (see ANZAC's During WW1 in Galipolli).. It would make a fun FPS/RPG

 

[AWC Viper]

To everyone saying that you'd die too quickly: You seem to disregard the fact that basically every single WWII game has been able to work it's way around D-Day or the Evacuation of Dunkirk. WWI had it's heoric moments too.

EDIT: I like the idea. It's rare to see Canadians kicking ass.

If you Could play as the ANZAC forces at Gallipoli, then i would definitly buy it, that's a historic battle that took place on that tiny beach

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_Campaign

 

[Egobrain]

I know everyone is thinking 'oh hum gee, why would i want to sit in a trench all day.' Well lets take the idea of making an intro cutscene to every level mention the fact that its august 15th, 1917 4:25am. hey looky we are seconds away from attacking Hill 70. Good thing too cause sitting here was making my shoulders stiff.

Why any of you thought the game would be about 3 hours of sitting in a trench. Unimaginative naysaying naysayers.

Also. read Tim Cook's 'At the Sharp End' and 'Shocktroopers' and tell me you don't want to turn those pages into amazing amazing video game.

 

[Egobrain]

Would there a sock changing mini game to prevent trench foot?

HA-larius. sure. and another one called 'find the lice!'

 

[Jezzascmezza]

You'd basically be hiding in a trench for 5 to 10 minutes, then popping up and taking a couple of worthless pot shots at the enemy in their trench, before going back down into your trench for another 5 to 10 minutes and repeating.
I guess a "fun" mini-game could be scrape bits of your decaying foot off because of "trench foot."

 

[RandomWords]

Weapons= Bad
Bad Weapons= Bad Gameplay
Bad Gameplay= Bad Game

 

[Amphoteric]

You do know that WW1 was a war of attriction. It would just be waiting in trenches for most of the game.

 

[Egobrain]

Bolt action guns get boring after a while, and revolvers, double barrels, and vickers won't change that either. (Trench warfare sounds strategically fun though)

You could do an MMO with Trench Warfare.

OT: Snoopy Flying Ace - not quite what you're thinking of but it is WW1.

I was so caught up in picturing the majesty of the set battles and scenery of singleplayer running through my head, i didnt even consider the idea of multiplayer.

That would be cool. People running raids at night, snipers trying to find good hideyholes to snap at sentries, people operating the artilery in the back, waiting for signal flares from the guys at the front line to show enemy movement, or to follow history, just drop shit all over the place all the time and hope for kills.

Whole teams leading legitimate battle strategies incorporating the use of artillery, rushing bridgade and line of fire reserve platoons. Skill and luck getting you across no mans land, while skill and luck saves the poor chap in the trench as he fires his bolt action rifle into the wave of hostile charging metal.

As men respawn in the second line trenches, feirce counterattacks against sparse and ammoless attackers turned defenders. What a fantastic idea. Like mixing MAG with Battlefield 1943.

 

[gamer_parent]

To everyone saying that you'd die too quickly: You seem to disregard the fact that basically every single WWII game has been able to work it's way around D-Day or the Evacuation of Dunkirk. WWI had it's heoric moments too.

EDIT: I like the idea. It's rare to see Canadians kicking ass.

Duddly Dolittle? No? Brandon Fraser not doing it for anyone?

You know what I'd like to see? Games that uses the pulp genre, the same way that Spirits the Century did. For those of you not familiar with it, Spirits of the Century is a Tabletop RPG that uses the Fate system crossed with the 1930s pulp... and it's AWESOME.

 

[Egobrain]

You do know that WW1 was a war of attriction. It would just be waiting in trenches for most of the game.

Again. The game would focus on the set battles. I dont remember any of the games before focusing on the months spent between battles. But maybe I was just playing the poorer version, where they cut out all that extra crap. Wish I could have enjoyed the hours of travel in the backs of jeeps and all those sleepless nights where your character whipsers to himself while staring at the ceiling.