Honestly cant think of any game that the first world war had some significance I know ubisoft are making a game about world war one but I cant think of any its all WW2 and Nazis surely WW1 would make a great setting for a game that shows the horror of the war and the life in the trenches maybe a FPS or a strategy game.
A WW1 Game?
- Thread starter Ryanrulez5
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I did play an FPS about an alternate timeline with Germany winning WW1. Long time ago.
Maybe lousy weapons could be part of the suspense. Operate a funny looking tank, try not to get gassed to death, have a dog fight in a bi-plane.
I think it would be more like failed civil war shooters. The weapons would really stink. And trench warfare is likely boring as hell.Zhukov said:
Maybe lousy weapons could be part of the suspense. Operate a funny looking tank, try not to get gassed to death, have a dog fight in a bi-plane.
Does it have to be a realistic WW1 game? If not, then I'd recommend NecrovisioN. It's WW1 with zombies . . . and vampires . . . and a dragon. Yeah, as you can probably guess, the plot is pretty stupid, but it's a fun kind of stupid. Running into a horde of zombies with a pistol in one hand a bayonet in the other is hard find dull.
I would appreciate a game in the style of Hearts of Iron III, a WW2 strategy game. I think it could work. The HoI series does go in depth, but it's not as hardcore as, say, War in the East. It's pretty accessible to the public (although it takes a while to learn all the game mechanisms), but isn't too watered down. However, there was never really an interest in the Great War.
WWI on the western front involved a lot of trench warfare, which could be fun. Spend some time plinking away at the enemy across No Man's Land, but then be given orders to chrage across, darting between the bomb craters to try and get close. Getting into face to face fights in the trenches, fighting for every corner.
The Eastern front was much much more mobile, making for modern FPS style action.
The Eastern front was much much more mobile, making for modern FPS style action.
Actually that's pretty accurate.Dogstile said:
I studied WW1 for English Literature and it was such a depressing time for most involved that a game about killing people would do horrid injustice to the actual war. Even the americans haven't tried to glorify it, it was that bad.
But if you want something a bit crazier play Black Ops 2's Zombie DLC map Origins. Not very WW1-ish but it's crazy fun, maybe the best map of the game.
There is a game in early release on Steam called Verdun, it's a fairly realistic squad-based first-person shooter. It's been getting lots of updates pretty quickly and seems pretty good. Certainly worth checking out.
The problem with WW1 games, especially ones in the trenches, is that it's very grim and depressing and doesn't make for a very entertaining experience.
Toy Soldiers is an excellent RTS/Tower Defence game set in WW1, but despite all of the pieces being toys and exploding into little plastic bit and cogs when destroyed, it's still terrible depressing and grim and is a stark reminder of the senseless waste of life that was the trench warfare and idiotic infantry tactics of WW1.
Perhaps that makes it a more powerful game, because where in normal Tower Defence games, channelling the enemy into a a narrow field of fire provides a sense of jubilation and victory, doing the same thing in Toy Soldiers, using barbed wire to channel the German infantry and cavalry into the overlapping fields of machine gun fire whilst gas and flame weapons mop up any survivors, the same type of decisive victory wasn't really entertaining at all.
Another old WW1 game I starkly remember was Wings by Cinemaware. At the heart of it, it was a dogfighting and aerial combat/shoot-em-up game, but a combination of the setting, music and detailed diary entries compiled by your character(s) meant that the horror of the situation and the horrible conditions on the front line were inescapable.
It's a difficult subject and setting for a piece of interactive entertainment to tackle. If you make your game realistic and treat it with the respect and reverence it deserves, then you run the risk of your game being too depressing and not entertaining.
On the other-hand, if you make your game too entertaining, or remove it from the setting enough to lose the emotional impact (either through narrative ignorance of the subject matter, or a fantastical alternate history), then you run the risk of making light of such a horrible period of history and also raises the question, why bother to set your game in WW1 if you're going to ignore everything that made it WW1?
It is entirely possible to make good games set during WW1 but not on the Western Front, perhaps from the perspective of a different branch of the armed forces or somewhere else in the world that was at war, and it is also possible to have a entertaining game that features trench warfare like WW1, but isn't (e.g. the opening trench levels of WH40K: Fire Warrior), but a game, especially a shooter, that is set in the trenches of WW1 and features the level of visceral realism and historical accuracy that we've come to expect from such a shooter, well that isn't really good setting for an entertaining game.
Toy Soldiers is an excellent RTS/Tower Defence game set in WW1, but despite all of the pieces being toys and exploding into little plastic bit and cogs when destroyed, it's still terrible depressing and grim and is a stark reminder of the senseless waste of life that was the trench warfare and idiotic infantry tactics of WW1.
Perhaps that makes it a more powerful game, because where in normal Tower Defence games, channelling the enemy into a a narrow field of fire provides a sense of jubilation and victory, doing the same thing in Toy Soldiers, using barbed wire to channel the German infantry and cavalry into the overlapping fields of machine gun fire whilst gas and flame weapons mop up any survivors, the same type of decisive victory wasn't really entertaining at all.
Another old WW1 game I starkly remember was Wings by Cinemaware. At the heart of it, it was a dogfighting and aerial combat/shoot-em-up game, but a combination of the setting, music and detailed diary entries compiled by your character(s) meant that the horror of the situation and the horrible conditions on the front line were inescapable.
It's a difficult subject and setting for a piece of interactive entertainment to tackle. If you make your game realistic and treat it with the respect and reverence it deserves, then you run the risk of your game being too depressing and not entertaining.
On the other-hand, if you make your game too entertaining, or remove it from the setting enough to lose the emotional impact (either through narrative ignorance of the subject matter, or a fantastical alternate history), then you run the risk of making light of such a horrible period of history and also raises the question, why bother to set your game in WW1 if you're going to ignore everything that made it WW1?
It is entirely possible to make good games set during WW1 but not on the Western Front, perhaps from the perspective of a different branch of the armed forces or somewhere else in the world that was at war, and it is also possible to have a entertaining game that features trench warfare like WW1, but isn't (e.g. the opening trench levels of WH40K: Fire Warrior), but a game, especially a shooter, that is set in the trenches of WW1 and features the level of visceral realism and historical accuracy that we've come to expect from such a shooter, well that isn't really good setting for an entertaining game.
Are you kidding? I spent a good deal of my childhood playing classic World War I flight sims like Red Baron and Knights of the Sky.
I can see where the OP is coming from, though. Really, the conflict could be adapted for any number of genres outside of sims if people got out of the inaccurate "it was all one big, static trench in France" mindset. You've got the aforementioned flight aspect, naval combat, the Eastern Front, the Dardanelles, Palestine, various colonies in Africa and Asia, etc. Even the Western Front could be given a great treatment as an FPS, perhaps as part of a combat engineer team trying to tunnel your way under enemy lines. Another idea is a survival game where you're caught alone in No Man's Land and have to make it back to your lines. Sort of like a more realistic version of Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
I can see where the OP is coming from, though. Really, the conflict could be adapted for any number of genres outside of sims if people got out of the inaccurate "it was all one big, static trench in France" mindset. You've got the aforementioned flight aspect, naval combat, the Eastern Front, the Dardanelles, Palestine, various colonies in Africa and Asia, etc. Even the Western Front could be given a great treatment as an FPS, perhaps as part of a combat engineer team trying to tunnel your way under enemy lines. Another idea is a survival game where you're caught alone in No Man's Land and have to make it back to your lines. Sort of like a more realistic version of Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
Well, most Americans didn't want to get involved at all, at least not at first. The United States still favored an isolationist policy and hadn't emerged as a world power yet. The conflict was seen as a European affair, a bloody legacy of the Old World that seemed to vindicate America's isolationism. It wasn't until the Zimmermann telegram, where Germany offered Mexico territory it lost in the Mexican-American War if it joined the Central Powers, that public opinion definitively changed.Tom_green_day said:
Actually if they added in a good hand to hand combat system it could work. Western games worked and there was more advanced technology in WW1 than there was in the mid 1800's.Zhukov said:
Capcha: Dust bunny. Maybe this is a rather old and bad idea after all.
We didn't want to get into World War 2 either. Only Pearl Harbor changed that. Did it stop us from glorifying the hell out of WW2, nope.Neverhoodian said:
I just don't think it would be all that great of a game and will leave it at that as to not repeat what literally everyone else said.
Reasons why there hasn't been a major FPS WW1 era shooter:
1)Geographical Issues: WW1 wasn't all about trench-warfare- there was the siege of Verdun, Gallipoli, mobile warfare on the Eastern Front and by the end of the war the Allies had broken the trench-warfare stalemate. The trouble is that to reflect this diversity you would have to play as soldiers from different nations. This isn't a problem if you want to make an FPS with multiple playable characters, but traditionally an FPS is made from the perspective of a single protagonist, and so the environmental constraints of WW1 present some story and narrative challenges if you want to make an interesting game.
2)Lack of weapon diversity- With the exception of fixed machine gun placements, all infantry primarily fought with a bolt action rifle, which restricts game play to the sort of gamers who like to snipe enemies from afar. Not much fun for the "spray-and-pray" types. You could introduce bayonet/hand to hand fighting as another major aspect of gameplay, but that in itself presents some big technical challenges.
3)Call me cynical, but I think the lack of American involvement in the war may put of dev's and publishers off the WW1 era. Most FPS's are made with an American audience in mind- with American protagonists fighting in wars relevant to America or set in environments that are likely to resonate with an American audience. Why hasn't there been any FPS's where you play as a French soldier in North Africa whilst there's been countless FPS's with American soldiers fighting wars in generic "middle eastern/post Soviet" countries? America's last minute role in WW1 I think also has something to do with why nobody has made a major WW1 shooter yet.
All three points however I think are not in insurmountable, and I think a talented enough development team can still make a great WW1 game.
1)Geographical Issues: WW1 wasn't all about trench-warfare- there was the siege of Verdun, Gallipoli, mobile warfare on the Eastern Front and by the end of the war the Allies had broken the trench-warfare stalemate. The trouble is that to reflect this diversity you would have to play as soldiers from different nations. This isn't a problem if you want to make an FPS with multiple playable characters, but traditionally an FPS is made from the perspective of a single protagonist, and so the environmental constraints of WW1 present some story and narrative challenges if you want to make an interesting game.
2)Lack of weapon diversity- With the exception of fixed machine gun placements, all infantry primarily fought with a bolt action rifle, which restricts game play to the sort of gamers who like to snipe enemies from afar. Not much fun for the "spray-and-pray" types. You could introduce bayonet/hand to hand fighting as another major aspect of gameplay, but that in itself presents some big technical challenges.
3)Call me cynical, but I think the lack of American involvement in the war may put of dev's and publishers off the WW1 era. Most FPS's are made with an American audience in mind- with American protagonists fighting in wars relevant to America or set in environments that are likely to resonate with an American audience. Why hasn't there been any FPS's where you play as a French soldier in North Africa whilst there's been countless FPS's with American soldiers fighting wars in generic "middle eastern/post Soviet" countries? America's last minute role in WW1 I think also has something to do with why nobody has made a major WW1 shooter yet.
All three points however I think are not in insurmountable, and I think a talented enough development team can still make a great WW1 game.
The fundamental problem with WW1 is that artillery was king. Even on the eastern front advances only took place because of massed artillery fire. Any movement beyond the range of friendly guns resulted in attacking heavy machine guns that were 2 miles away firing down fixed arcs across open ground. The defensive firepower of infantry outstriped the offensive firepower of infantry. The Eastern front moved very little between 1915 and the Russian collapse in 1917. The big movements made in 1918 one the western front were made possible because the all sides were running out of manpower after years of attrition warfare.