Battlefield V reveal- your thoughts?

[Johnny Novgorod]

I like how all the Battlefield V apologists are running around scrounging the same 4 or 5 Russian female snipers to prove a point that, sorry, just isn't true. Aside from that one Russian unit that mostly did photo ops there were no female soldiers deployed on the battlefront, nor did they engage in direct combat during WW2. Most Allied forces didn't even allow it.

Night witches don?t count? Also I guess we?re apologists for not grinding our teeth at one historically inaccurate thing in a series that isn?t historically accurate. While naysayers ignore far bigger historical fuck ups

Count them in, but Russia's stunts were wholly segregated, primarily propagandistic and more often than not the exception than the rule. There were no women fighting on the battlefront on the Western front for the French, British or American forces. And I think that to pretend that they did belittles their actual homefront/sideline service, which was just as valuable.

The French Resistance would like a word with you.

The French Resistance, like every other form of Resistance, was a collection of thinly-connected militia cells working on urban guerrilla warfare. They weren't part of the military, they weren't soldiers and they certainly did NOT fight in the battlefront nor engaged in direct military combat (guerrilla warfare and sabotage more like), which is the point I'm making: what little fighting women did in WW2 was confined to a few segregated operations on the Russian homefront, mostly designed as propaganda stunts. And on the subject of French Resistance:

Despite opposing the collaborationist regime, the French Resistance generally sympathised with its antifeminism and did not encourage the participation of women in war and politics, following, in the words of historian Henri Nogueres, "a notion of inequality between the sexes as old as our civilisation and as firmly implanted in the Resistance as it was elsewhere in France".Consequently, women in the Resistance were less numerous than men and averaged only 11% of the members in the formal networks and movements

As to the other blatant inaccuracies you point out: of course I expect a game to simplify history, what it shouldn't do in all seriousness is contradict it while pretending otherwise.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I like how all the Battlefield V apologists are running around scrounging the same 4 or 5 Russian female snipers to prove a point that, sorry, just isn't true. Aside from that one Russian unit that mostly did photo ops there were no female soldiers deployed on the battlefront, nor did they engage in direct combat during WW2. Most Allied forces didn't even allow it.

This is patently false. Like, it is so wrong it isn't even funny. Go read War Does Not Have a Woman's Face by Alexievich, just so that you get an idea just how diverse the military service of Soviet women during the Great Patriotic War was. She interviews women who were deployed in a wide range of roles ranging from nurses to combat medics to snipers to truck drivers to tank commanders to combat pilots (and a lot of other roles), in all theaters of the Soviet western front. There's an irony to the fact that you are perpetrating post-war Soviet propaganda that was meant to downplay women's contributions to the military war effort.

So yeah, women saw combat action in the Great Patriotic War. Marina Raskova, a famous Soviet flight pioneer, was killed when her Po-2 crashed during a forced landing in 1943. She crashed while leading the combat operations of the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, which was an all women regiment. Raskova was instrumental in setting up the 586th, 587th and 588th aviation regiments, all initially all women. So that "photo op" unit you are talking about is, to be polite about it, fucking hogwash.

 

[Erttheking]

I like how all the Battlefield V apologists are running around scrounging the same 4 or 5 Russian female snipers to prove a point that, sorry, just isn't true. Aside from that one Russian unit that mostly did photo ops there were no female soldiers deployed on the battlefront, nor did they engage in direct combat during WW2. Most Allied forces didn't even allow it.

Night witches don?t count? Also I guess we?re apologists for not grinding our teeth at one historically inaccurate thing in a series that isn?t historically accurate. While naysayers ignore far bigger historical fuck ups

Count them in, but Russia's stunts were wholly segregated, primarily propagandistic and more often than not the exception than the rule. There were no women fighting on the battlefront on the Western front for the French, British or American forces. And I think that to pretend that they did belittles their actual homefront/sideline service, which was just as valuable.

The French Resistance would like a word with you.

The French Resistance, like every other form of Resistance, was a collection of thinly-connected militia cells working on urban guerrilla warfare. They weren't part of the military, they weren't soldiers and they certainly did NOT fight in the battlefront nor engaged in direct military combat (guerrilla warfare and sabotage more like), which is the point I'm making: what little fighting women did in WW2 was confined to a few segregated operations on the Russian homefront, mostly designed as propaganda stunts. And on the subject of French Resistance:

Despite opposing the collaborationist regime, the French Resistance generally sympathised with its antifeminism and did not encourage the participation of women in war and politics, following, in the words of historian Henri Nogueres, "a notion of inequality between the sexes as old as our civilisation and as firmly implanted in the Resistance as it was elsewhere in France".Consequently, women in the Resistance were less numerous than men and averaged only 11% of the members in the formal networks and movements

As to the other blatant inaccuracies you point out: of course I expect a game to simplify history, what it shouldn't do in all seriousness is contradict it while pretending otherwise.

Well Geth seems like she wants to have some words with you on the Russian front, I never claimed the French Resistance to be uber feminist, and the inaccuracies aren't the simplifying of history, it's flat-out inaccurate. Kind of like when, in COD WW 2, on the D-day battle between Americans and Germans, you can find Russian sub-machine guns lying around. Or how in that trailer, there's a British tank that never actually saw combat. Ever. Or how in Battlefield 1 they had no interest in making it actually feel at all like the first world war, because otherwise they might have to change up how the game mechanics work and actually make the game feel like Verdun.

Also, you're the second person claiming that this game is attempting to portray history accurately. Where did you get that impression?

 

[Sassafrass]

The trailer made it look fucking ridiculous and this is why I'm intrigued by it.

I don't give a fuck it has women in it, nor that people are running around with prosthetic arms. I mean, the fact you can apparently catch a grenade out of the air, throw it back, have someone else shoot it out of the air and take out a plane with the resulting explosion signals to me they're going a bit OTT with it, and that's fine by me if they do go that way. I do eventually look forward to the open beta so I can see if it is actually like that.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I don't really have any thoughts on this since I don't do MMSs (modern military shooters), they just aren't my bag (baby). I just wanted to be involved in a thread where the word "clusterfuck" has been used quite frequently. It's one of my favourite words and I'm enjoying seeing it applied here. Just reading it makes me happy.

 

[Silvanus]

As to the other blatant inaccuracies you point out: of course I expect a game to simplify history, what it shouldn't do in all seriousness is contradict it while pretending otherwise.

Then, again, you shouldn't be playing Battlefield (or, in fact, pretty much any game based around WW2). The number of liberties they require is absolutely colossal, and unavoidable if they want to make a game that's an ounce of fun to play.

One requires utterly arbitrary and nonsensical historical blinkers in order to believe that a female combatant is "uncanny", but not to feel the same way about constant action and combat in the field of war.

 

[sXeth]

If that lady is the character model for a whole class in the game, then a) you have a way too distinct player model for a class that is going to picked by essentially a quarter of the server and b) every single player using that class is going to have a bionic arm, even if you are a fan of this aesthetic you can't say that won't look weird.

If it's just a customizable thing, then you're essentially turning someone's grave injury into a fucking cosmetic item, that doesn't sound right.

I now have a feeling this lady is just going to be in singleplayer or something.

DICE has said that all soldiers in multiplayer will be customizable, so she, just like the rest of the outrageous crew (seriously, no one has anything to say about the paratrooper with the Katana, the black guy in a weird mix of tanker, paratrooper and infantry gear and two pairs of goggles or the dude running around in a tank top and non-regulation beard?) is probably meant as a showcase of what kind of customization you can achieve in multiplayer.

Well yeah, its EA. There's a -0.00000001% chance this won't have some microtransaction stuff in it, and random cosmetics are the one that doesn't murder their franchise. And you run out of "Realistic" cosmetics pretty fast (besides the general market preferring to be obnoxious looking clowns and so on). I"m more surprised its a relatively grounded prosthetic arm and not some pre-order Winter soldier skin or something.

 

[Zombie Proof]

As to the other blatant inaccuracies you point out: of course I expect a game to simplify history, what it shouldn't do in all seriousness is contradict it while pretending otherwise.

Then, again, you shouldn't be playing Battlefield (or, in fact, pretty much any game based around WW2). The number of liberties they require is absolutely colossal, and unavoidable if they want to make a game that's an ounce of fun to play.

One requires utterly arbitrary and nonsensical historical blinkers in order to believe that a female combatant is "uncanny", but not to feel the same way about constant action and combat in the field of war.

^^This.

Seriously, if all the "bonafide" fetishists aren't actively and frantically playing Red Orchestra 2 or something like that they need to shut the hell up and let vidya be vidya lol

 

[Squilookle]

As to the other blatant inaccuracies you point out: of course I expect a game to simplify history, what it shouldn't do in all seriousness is contradict it while pretending otherwise.

Then, again, you shouldn't be playing Battlefield (or, in fact, pretty much any game based around WW2). The number of liberties they require is absolutely colossal, and unavoidable if they want to make a game that's an ounce of fun to play.

One requires utterly arbitrary and nonsensical historical blinkers in order to believe that a female combatant is "uncanny", but not to feel the same way about constant action and combat in the field of war.

And yet- the only inaccuracy claims that could be made against the original BF 1942 were composite weapons (like the Japanese using German rifles), the lack of certain uniforms (everyone's an infantry grunt), and the physics being a bit loose to allow everyone to master the vehicles. Fairly few liberties at all, yet that game was an ounce of fun to play. For over a decade. People even still play it today.

I'd say quite a few are more annoyed that DICE had done it before, and done it well, but is this time caving in to a customisation trend currently dominating shooters. Consider the tone of the BF:V trailer to that of the original:


Even with its 2002 graphics, BF1942 feels a lot more authentic (so far) than the promotional material we've seen for BF:V.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

And yet- the only inaccuracy claims that could be made against the original BF 1942 were composite weapons (like the Japanese using German rifles), the lack of certain uniforms (everyone's an infantry grunt), and the physics being a bit loose to allow everyone to master the vehicles. Fairly few liberties at all, yet that game was an ounce of fun to play. For over a decade. People even still play it today.

This is an absurd over-simplification. BF 1942 was a good game, one I played a lot back in the days, but it is nowhere near realistic or historically accurate. I could make this post absurdly long while pointing out all the unrealistic or inaccurate aspects (1/4th of all Axis soldiers using StG44s, T-34/85s and Tigers showing up in maps set in 1942, Tanks on Wake Island etc. etc.), but sufficient to say is that BF 1942 was an arcade team FPS first and foremost and it did that really well. No Battlefield or CoD game has been realistic or accurate and that is all fine and well, because a game, as Silvanus has pointed out, has to be hyper realistic to be any fun.

As someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, what both BF and CoD sells is the illusion of authenticity, the idea that you can be in the great battles of WW2 and make a difference. That should never be confused for actual authenticity.

 

[Silvanus]

And yet- the only inaccuracy claims that could be made against the original BF 1942 were composite weapons (like the Japanese using German rifles), the lack of certain uniforms (everyone's an infantry grunt), and the physics being a bit loose to allow everyone to master the vehicles. Fairly few liberties at all, yet that game was an ounce of fun to play. For over a decade. People even still play it today.

I'd say quite a few are more annoyed that DICE had done it before, and done it well, but is this time caving in to a customisation trend currently dominating shooters. Consider the tone of the BF:V trailer to that of the original:

Even with its 2002 graphics, BF1942 feels a lot more authentic (so far) than the promotional material we've seen for BF:V.

Sorry to tell you, but BF1942 is not an authentic depiction of the experience of war (and nor should it be). If it were, most players wouldn't be in constant active combat (especially the engineers, anti-tank guys and medics)-- and those that were in active combat would be having a grotesquely unfun time of it. If a game lets you run around shooting the other team and having a whale of a time, then it's not an authentic depiction of war.

To ask for true authenticity is to ask for a very grim, unenjoyable experience. A lot of people complaining aren't really complaining about a lack of authenticity; they're not historians, and other incongruities pass them by. They just don't like one particular characteristic (which is why so many comments on the trailer on Youtube are moaning about feminism and SJWs).

 

[Squilookle]

And yet- the only inaccuracy claims that could be made against the original BF 1942 were composite weapons (like the Japanese using German rifles), the lack of certain uniforms (everyone's an infantry grunt), and the physics being a bit loose to allow everyone to master the vehicles. Fairly few liberties at all, yet that game was an ounce of fun to play. For over a decade. People even still play it today.

This is an absurd over-simplification. BF 1942 was a good game, one I played a lot back in the days, but it is nowhere near realistic or historically accurate. I could make this post absurdly long while pointing out all the unrealistic or inaccurate aspects (1/4th of all Axis soldiers using StG44s, T-34/85s and Tigers showing up in maps set in 1942, Tanks on Wake Island etc. etc.), but sufficient to say is that BF 1942 was an arcade team FPS first and foremost and it did that really well. No Battlefield or CoD game has been realistic or accurate and that is all fine and well, because a game, as Silvanus has pointed out, has to be hyper realistic to be any fun.

As someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, what both BF and CoD sells is the illusion of authenticity, the idea that you can be in the great battles of WW2 and make a difference. That should never be confused for actual authenticity.

The key element here is that BF 1942 was filled to the brim with concessions to gameplay that players could see the need for. I'm not disputing the quasi-arcade nature of the game (flight controls were anything but arcade), just that -in general- it aimed to emulate the war as best it could using limited assets. This was followed through on in subsequent patches that replaced German weaponry like the StG44s for Type 99s. It kept things simple, but apart from a few glaring Americanisms (U.S. infantry at Arnhem, Brits flying a B-17 with U.S. markings etc) it was clear that it was making the effort and players generally appreciated it for that.

Just imagine, for instance, what the crowd reaction would have been if BF:V put out a trailer about WW2 like this one:

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The key element here is that BF 1942 was filled to the brim with concessions to gameplay that players could see the need for. I'm not disputing the quasi-arcade nature of the game (flight controls were anything but arcade), just that -in general- it aimed to emulate the war as best it could using limited assets. This was followed through on in subsequent patches that replaced German weaponry like the StG44s for Type 99s. It kept things simple, but apart from a few glaring Americanisms (U.S. infantry at Arnhem, Brits flying a B-17 with U.S. markings etc) it was clear that it was making the effort and players generally appreciated it for that.

But that means nothing. I can see the need for more diversity in multiplayer oriented games, so does that make the concession in BFV ok? It is an incredibly arbitrary line to draw, especially as BF 1942 is neither realistic nor authentic. BF 1942 made plenty of concessions to not portraying the war "as best as it could" in favor of making sure it was a better game, some of them I mentioned in brief, but the totally symmetric sides and balanced maps meant that BF 1942 was essentially a huge team arena shooter with a WW2 decor.

There's nothing wrong with that. BF and CoD are popular and good series because they've always put player satisfaction above realism or authenticity. The problem is that people are alright with totally inauthentic team balancing (Germany did not have Heavy Tanks in North Africa, the Brits did), unrealistic combat loadouts (a platoon in BF1942 would have about an order of magnitude more automatic weapons when compared to a real WW2 platoon), inauthentic battle simulation (1 in about 4,000 bullets hit during WW2, indirect fire caused 70% of all casualties and platoon sized engagements measured in hours, not minutes) and all around gameification (getting one life per player would really fucking suck), but the line is drawn when the in-authenticity is that there are more black people or women on the battlefield. That is a really arbitrary line to draw and it says more about the people drawing it then it does about DICE or EA, who have realized that their games aren't faithful 1:1 recreations of WW2.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

One requires utterly arbitrary and nonsensical historical blinkers in order to believe that a female combatant is "uncanny"

It is in a war that saw no female combatants. Not in that setting and not in that army. What can I tell you. But yeah, samurai swords and robotic arms. Who gives a shit if they throw in women as well.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I like how all the Battlefield V apologists are running around scrounging the same 4 or 5 Russian female snipers to prove a point that, sorry, just isn't true. Aside from that one Russian unit that mostly did photo ops there were no female soldiers deployed on the battlefront, nor did they engage in direct combat during WW2. Most Allied forces didn't even allow it.

This is patently false. Like, it is so wrong it isn't even funny. Go read War Does Not Have a Woman's Face by Alexievich, just so that you get an idea just how diverse the military service of Soviet women during the Great Patriotic War was. She interviews women who were deployed in a wide range of roles ranging from nurses to combat medics to snipers to truck drivers to tank commanders to combat pilots (and a lot of other roles), in all theaters of the Soviet western front. There's an irony to the fact that you are perpetrating post-war Soviet propaganda that was meant to downplay women's contributions to the military war effort.

So yeah, women saw combat action in the Great Patriotic War. Marina Raskova, a famous Soviet flight pioneer, was killed when her Po-2 crashed during a forced landing in 1943. She crashed while leading the combat operations of the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, which was an all women regiment. Raskova was instrumental in setting up the 586th, 587th and 588th aviation regiments, all initially all women. So that "photo op" unit you are talking about is, to be polite about it, fucking hogwash.

Yes, some women fought in a few, select, segregated military units for the USSR over the course of 3 years, constituting at most 1.5% of their military personnel (a generous estimate based around the 3% total given figure and the fact that "most of them", ie. over 50%, served as nurses). The fact is women in the military during WW2 was an extremely rare, extremely localized phenomenon and to pretend it was the norm rather than the exception is to retrospectively pretend history was way more progressive than it actually was. Maybe we'll get a Battlefield: Meanwhile in Russia game one day. In the meantime we have Battlefield: Samurais, Cyborgs and Women.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Apparently I am expected to believe that depicting women on the frontlines in WWII is "disrespectful to the men who died", but 12-year-olds bunnyhopping across Omaha Beach while screaming into their microphones is perfectly respectful.

 

[gameicreate upload]

BF5 trailer is nice. All characters are playing an interesting role.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Yes, some women fought in a few, select, segregated military units for the USSR over the course of 3 years, constituting at most 1.5% of their military personnel (a generous estimate based around the 3% total given figure and the fact that "most of them", ie. over 50%, served as nurses). The fact is women in the military during WW2 was an extremely rare, extremely localized phenomenon and to pretend it was the norm rather than the exception is to retrospectively pretend history was way more progressive than it actually was. Maybe we'll get a Battlefield: Meanwhile in Russia game one day. In the meantime we have Battlefield: Samurais, Cyborgs and Women.

See, no one is saying they were a common occurrence. What we are saying is that your initial claim that it was all propaganda and photo ops is spurious. And while 1,5-3% might seem like a low number, that has to be taken in the context of the fact that the Red Army mustered over 20 million people during the Great Patriotic War. Which means that 800,000 women fought for the Red Army or that almost as many women were in the Red Army during WW2 as there were people who served in the Waffen-SS (estimated number 900,000 with foreign volunteers and conscripts). No one would say that the Waffen-SS was a rare, extremely localized phenomenon and yet they only had marginally more members then the Red Army had women.

The main problem with your claim was that you claimed it was a propaganda ops, when it was a response to the massive manpower shortage the USSR felt in late-'41 and early-'42 when it was still recovering from the losses of Barbarossa. Most women signed up in the period of 1942-1943, because after that the manpower situation stabilized as the Red Army gained the strategic initiative. These were women who were sent out because the USSR needed every able body it could get under arms and considering how quick the USSR was to diminish and downplay these women's contribution to the war effort after WW2 it was something the USSR leadership wasn't very proud off.

 

[Ninjamedic]

The trailer made it look fucking ridiculous and this is why I'm intrigued by it.

I don't give a fuck it has women in it, nor that people are running around with prosthetic arms. I mean, the fact you can apparently catch a grenade out of the air, throw it back, have someone else shoot it out of the air and take out a plane with the resulting explosion signals to me they're going a bit OTT with it, and that's fine by me if they do go that way. I do eventually look forward to the open beta so I can see if it is actually like that.

I'm fully expecting this to be the exact same as every Battlefield since Bad Company 2 in regard to gameplay. That's what frustrates me the most about this.