Aja on 12/9/2008 at 07:04
The thing is, if they really did go and make the ULTIMATE World War II (or I) game, it would be so horrifying that no-one would want to play it.
Thirith on 12/9/2008 at 08:03
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
I think we need more World War I games, frankly. There's a setting that hasn't been done to death.
Just imagine machine guns actually being a rare and terrifying presence on the battlefield; clouds of mustard gas rolling over No Man's Land like night mist, and scrambling to equip your gas mask while watching your comrades literally vomit out their own intestines; trying to decide if the risk to your own people is worth sending a pigeon to call for an artillery strike, and praying christ that the Hun doesn't shoot your last pigeon when it finally becomes an unavoidable necessity.
I almost want to pitch this game, now.
I can definitely see the atmosphere working, but if the game is even semi-accurate I don't see WW1 making for good gameplay. Let's face it, trench warfare during the Great War (hah...) was long spans of stasis interspersed with moments of sheer terror where you'd go over the top and run towards the other side across No Man's Land, hoping that you wouldn't be among the 50%-80% cut down by machine gun fire. Skill didn't really come into it so much as sheer luck. And that's pretty much the strategy handed down by the generals in their cosy offices.
mothra on 12/9/2008 at 11:42
the blog is not bad written, it's just sad you only seem to take the american (or your own) side into account, which comes across as a little limited.
"I think the fascination these days with World War II- a fascination which seemed to die out in the 70s and 80s, in part because of Vietnam- is due to Saving Private Ryan, which was the first WWII film to truly portray the sheer brutality of the war."
I would rephrase it to "first AMERICAN blockbuster WWII film trying to emulate movies showing the true brutality of the war" to put emphasis on it being an american phenomenon and heavily reliant of previous work which Spielberg never denied. there are so many european and asian movies about WWII going beyond anything shown in SPR (story, acting, brutality, scope), I usually get a little agitated when it's again mentioned as some milestone or reference when it's just such an "normal" and "mediocre" movie compared to others.
june gloom on 12/9/2008 at 19:02
Mediocre?!
Okay hotshot, come up with something European that did what SPR did before SPR came out. Here's your chance to prove me wrong.
Angel Dust on 12/9/2008 at 21:19
It depends on what you mean by brutality of the war, stuff like 'Come and See' and 'Kanal' certainly pull no punches. I haven't seen any film pre-dating SPR that recreates the brutality and sheer chaos of the combat in WW2 as well as it does but since I haven't delved too deeply into WW2 film there may be something somewhere.
Anyway I'm sure mothra is going to turn up with some film but he is definitely way off-base with his 'mediocre' comment. It is not without it's flaws and he may not like the film but he is letting his anti-Speilberg bias cloud the obvious merits of the film. The fact is whether he likes it or not SPR is a milestone film because a mainstream director made a mainstream film that pulled no punches in it's depiction of WW2 combat and it became a huge success, thereby changing the rules for subsequent films and creating a renewed interest in WW2 across many different mediums.
Edit: Wait a minute I thought dethtoll was on mothra's ignore list?
Thirith on 12/9/2008 at 22:06
Concerning Saving Private Ryan: I've rarely heard anything other than "First twenty minutes highly effective and groundbreaking (at least for a mainstream movie), rest pretty much run of the mill, though very well made run of the mill."
N'Al on 12/9/2008 at 22:16
Mediocre is harsh, very harsh.
SPR is a very good movie, particularly when it comes to portraying the brutality - reality, even? - of combat on a (WW2) battlefield. Then again, this is primarily due to the initial 30 mins of the movie; the D-Day landing scenes at Omaha beach. Which, frankly, are kinda disjointed from the rest of the movie. Whilst they provide some sort of background to the characters in Tom Hank's troop in the movie*, the story of SPR (i.e. finding and rescuing Private Ryan) could have worked just as well without this entire sequence.
As such, I'm kinda getting what mothra is, uh, getting at; whilst there's been no movie before SPR (and hardly any after) to display the brutality of war so viscerally, that's all that SPR does, really. Re: the brutality of war, the atmosphere and tone of SPR is almost in complete contrast to the images on display. Imo, the impact of the movie is severly limited by the "Hoo-rah America!" on display in the movie. Now, this is nowhere near the level of insulting jingoism that is in, say, Pearl Harbor, but it can grate at times (I'm specifically refering to scenes like "2 seconds of the French flag, and 5 seconds of the American one" or Ted Danson's "Montgomery is a fool"**).
That is why, to me, movies like Das Boot or - to use American examples - Platoon and Apocalypse Now are much better at portraying the brutality and futility of war than SPR (and before anyone interjects, I'm aware that Platoon and Apocalypse Now are Vietnam movies, not WW2). They are just much more consistent in their tone and atmosphere to give a proper sense of the brutality of war.
Incidentally, Black Hawk Down is similarly good at portraying war viscerally, but almost completely failing in the tone of the movie.
Having said all that, I enjoyed SPR (and Band of Brothers) immensely; they get a lot of things right. Subsequently, with that, I'm going to end my confused ramblings, but I can understand where mothra may be coming from.
___
*They've all been through this shit, and now they're being asked to find 1 man, wtf?!?
**Whilst there may be some 'truth' to these ideas/scenes, the question is: Are they really necessary?
Taffer36 on 13/9/2008 at 01:33
Quote:
WW2 games at least have an excuse in that they're based on a real world setting and therefore have their own restrictions.
I think you just answered why WWII games are overdone.
It's not that it's somehow less creative than a sci-fi setting, but it's simply that there's less that can be done with it because it has extremely finite boundaries in the form of reality. We all know what WWII was, and many of us know how it transpired. Half the fun in games is exploring a rich and interesting universe, and that is, simply put, not going to happen if we've been to said universe so many times.
Even if sci-fi settings borrow from eachother, the universes in which they are set are still different enough that it's still enjoyable to explore a new art direction or different story premises.
