German/Japanese WW2 game

[Jackpot524]

Another thought...

"Achievement Unlocked: Final Solution"

Who else just cringed?

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

It's an interesting thought. Plenty of games that are directed towards historical enthusiasts (as opposed to the masses who merely enjoy the glory of being on the winning side) do provide opportunities to play the Germans and Japanese. In fact, German armor is a favorite amongst those who play the Germans in strategy games, as is the Waffen SS and the Afrikakorps under Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel. Many of you might be too young to remember Lucasarts' Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, (by Larry Holland, a precursor to the X-Wing series and to his Totally Games development company) which celebrated the robust air forces of the Third Reich. In fact, as Jackpot524 notes, plenty of simulators have considered Axis protagonism without concern for censorship or user disinterest.

As for changing history to let the baddies win, that's only a single option of many. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault didn't play to the end of the war, and neither necessarily would a story told from a low-ranking German officer. In fact, there are more realistic opportunities for FPS style heroism among the Axis armies, where a tight few protagonists stood off against an overwhelming enemy. (The sleeping giant that is America is, if anything, well populated.) And while most soldiers under overwhelming odds perished, some prevailed, and those stories are astounding regardless of the colors they wore.

The point also shifts depending on the intent behind a game. One doesn't ponder the ideology behind Serious Sam or Duke Nukem (despite the fact, for example, that the later has some obvious misogynistic elements) so the nationality of your run-&-gun hero shouldn't matter, either, so long as he (or she) ultimately saves the world in the end (usually from monsters darker than Nazis anyway). On the other hand, in a game that is meant to create an experience reflective of the Hell that is war (parts of the Call of Duty series comes to mind), any soldier that dutifully gives his life to his country is a hero, again, no matter the stripes.

Regarding the evils of Axis ideology, it would behoove us to remember: 1) The Final Solution progressed out of course from anti-semitism that prevailed world-wide. Them Nazis weren't unique in their opinion of the Jews, or in considering their eradication. 2) Neither the Third Reich, the Axis Powers or WWII formed in a vaccuum, but as the consequences of WWI and the harsh reperations demanded by the Treaty of Versailles. Both Germany and Japan were, to a significant degree compelled by circumstances to go to war. 3) Not everyone in the Wehrmacht was an Arian, Jew-hating Nazi eager to march into Poland. In fact, a growing majority of Germany's fighting forces were not, disagreed with the Nuremburg laws and the need for expansionism, but still felt duty to Germany, not the Third Reich, and certainly not for the glory of the Führer (albeit, he was rather charismatic). 4) Not a country on Earth is a stranger to attrocity, to crimes against humanity, or to war crimes. The German Holocaust does not serve as an example of a singular evil, but the magnitude to which they can manifest, if left to fester, unchecked. Certainly, the United States does not have the priviledge of moral higher ground.

U.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Dammit, I wrote up a massive post on this focusing on the atrocities of both the allies and axis, with heavy emphasis on the Japanese as well saying why it could make a good game but I lost it.

So anyway, I'll just quote this.

So... How would it end? At least on the German side? Would you get shot defending Berlin? Captured by the Russians and exiled to a workcamp in Siberia? Or just be part of the mass-surrender in May of 1945... I don't see it being memorable or inspiring...

Does a game NEED to be inspiring?
And whats so great about feeling a fake sense of achievement in a game anyway?

As for it not being memorable, how would playing the part of a soldier forced to fight for his country and possibly parttake in some of the most horrible occurences of the most horrible war not be memorable?

As for how it ends?
Lets say the Russians steamroll through Germany killing everyone in their way, mirroring what your own countrymen did to their country earlier on, your character and whats left of your squad decide to surrender, only to lined up against a wall, shot, and thrown in a mass grave.

If you think this would be a 'bad' ending, why do you think tragedies in films, books and the like are so popular?
Focusing in games, think of other games where the protagonist is killed.
Off the top of my head I can think of Bioshock 2 and Reach, both of which were all the more memorable from their endings.

In short a game from the Axis point of view would be great, if done right.
They've been done before, but not in FPS aside from multiplayer games.
Someone needs to change that.

 

[Ritter315]

Most people think of the German army in WWII or the Japanese army and think that the Holocaust or the Nanjing massacure respectively is all the armies of those countries ever did. Most people dont realize that they fought just as hard for the same reasons that the Americans and British fought for in the same war. Also, why does losing the campaign mean loss of fun or experience? If its a copy-pasted FPS THAN its a bad idea but make it about SOMETHING and you've got at least some sales pitch.
But if you really are sure that losing would not be fun for some reasons here's a clever solution: Make the game based around a squad of Fallschirmjager or old Reichwehr infantry, these two groups in the German army were suprisingly anti-nazi and could make for interesting framing devices for say either opposition to the Nazi's orders, or basically anything that sends the message "Not all the Germans in the army at the time were Nazis."

 

[IBlackKiteI]

snip

And while most soldiers under overwhelming odds perished, some prevailed, and those stories are astounding regardless of the colors they wore.

snip

I agree entirely with your post, however regarding this line those men who stood against overwhelming odds killed people.

I recently heard about a German machine gunner on Normandy who was though to have killed over 100 Americans.
I find that horrible, but astounding. Why would he do that? He would've just been following orders he was forced to follow.

Rather than a full game what if there was a small segment similar to this, where you play as a 'bad guy' against the 'goodies'.
What if instead of the Nazi Zombie mode kicking in at the end of Call of Duty 5 there was a mission where you play as one of those gunners, with no goal but to stay alive as long as possible, by mowing down endless numbers of enemies.

Something like this would get a lot of notice, and if done properly players would go 'Huh, that was interesting.' and may be more willing to play games from the Axis PoV in the long run.

...anything that sends the message "Not all the Germans in the army at the time were Nazis."

Thats sort of what I mean about having that kind of small segment from the point of view of an enemy.
An Axis perspective FPS that full on deals with genocide, death camps, death marches, executions, invasions, massacres etc may be too controversial at this point, while a single level which focuses solely on staying alive rather than the Nazi's in general may not.

 

[ReverendJ]

German military: Nazi controlled, holocaust, etc. Not exactly tasteful.

Japan: Pretty much anything done in China. The Rape of Nanking ring any bells?

Sorry, I'm all down for handling edgy material and whatnot, but basing an entire game from that perspective is in bad taste. Maybe some historically based levels for an existing WWII FPS...?

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Off-topic a little: The dropping of nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was not needed to stop the war quickly. The German's surrendered which meant the redeployment of American and Biritsh Soliders to the Eastern Front. AS well, Russia had launch massive attacks on Japanese-help territory in the East, removing their last hope of victory through Moscow's mediation. All these things combined with the already ferice conventional bomb and sea blockade would have ended the war just as quickly and without the unesscesary loss of life.

I take it you haven't read much about Operation: Downfall, the projected plan to invade Japan without taking an Atomic Bomb into consideration. I'll like you to it:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/operation_downfall.htm

Projected casualties were massive, with American casualties being between 1.5 and 4 million, and Japanese as high as 10 million. And this was taking into consideration everything you mentioned: Full Naval blockade, air support, you name it. The brutal fighting encountered on the islands in the Pacific were a perfect indicator of how an invasion of mainland Japan would be. Long, slow, and extremely costly. The Japanese had already demonstrated their fanaticism time and time again, along with a complete unwillingness to surrender.

If anything, the A-bombs were a prudent first measure, as we would have been unable to ignore strong population centers like Hiroshima and Nagasaki anyway, and a land assault would have been even more costly for both sides in both. The 200,000 killed by the A-bombs in no way compare to the millions that would have died.

 

[archvile93]

But look what the amarican goverment did. WE DROPPED A FRIGGAN NUKE! We caused generations of radiation poisoning and went at theyer gene pool with a power drill! We probably caused the deaths of just as many over the course of the years since the bomb was dropped!

In all fairness the nuke was probably the best solution available. The only alternative was a full scale invasion which would almost certainly result in a far greater loss of life, and that's not considering the inevitably apalling American casualties. You know it's going to be violent when your enemy is arming their highschool students with knives and telling them to perform suicide runs, and we had seen on Okinawa that they were so brainwashed that they were throwing their children off cliffs so they wouldn't be captured by Americans. There was also the issue with the Russians who had started their war against Japan. We already gave them half of Germany, Korea, and Vietnam, we really didn't want to give them half of Japan too.

OT: I would play it, preferably as the Germans. Perhaps the final mission could be to attempt to break through the Russian perimeter around Berlin and reach the Elbe river to surrender to the western allies instead of the Soviets (an actual historical event by the way).

 

[IBlackKiteI]

But look what the amarican goverment did. WE DROPPED A FRIGGAN NUKE! We caused generations of radiation poisoning and went at theyer gene pool with a power drill! We probably caused the deaths of just as many over the course of the years since the bomb was dropped!

In all fairness the nuke was probably the best solution available. The only alternative was a full scale invasion which would almost certainly result in a far greater loss of life, and that's not considering the inevitably apalling American casualties. You know it's going to be violent when your enemy is arming their highschool students with knives and telling them to perform suicide runs, and we had seen on Okinawa that they were so brainwashed that they were throwing their children off cliffs so they wouldn't be captured by Americans. There was also the issue with the Russians who had started their war against Japan. We already gave them half of Germany, Korea, and Vietnam, we really didn't want to give them half of Japan too.

OT: I would play it, preferably as the Germans. Perhaps the final mission could be to attempt to break through the Russian perimeter around Berlin and reach the Elbe river to surrender to the western allies instead of the Soviets (an actual historical event by the way).

Agreed, as much as it sucks to say the nukes were indeed the right call, compared to the alternative.

Also, as you just said German soldiers did indeed flee from the Russians to surrender to the Americans, although it wasn't just the soldiers, in some cases almost entire towns of people fled from the Soviets, while those that stayed were effectively given the same treatment the German army gave to Russia during its invasion.
I find that bizarre, fleeing to the lesser of two evils in a time like taht.

 

[baddude1337]

Theres always those mods for CoD 1, United Offensive and CoD 2 that turn you into the Germans.

http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/Voolmas_SP_German_Mod;66137

 

[SwagLordYoloson]

So... How would it end? At least on the German side? Would you get shot defending Berlin? Captured by the Russians and exiled to a workcamp in Siberia? Or just be part of the mass-surrender in May of 1945... I don't see it being memorable or inspiring...

As either the Japanese or the Germans, you would do what some of my relatives did and escape to south America, i have family who were SS who are now living in Brazil. They fled, refused to surrender....

 

[MrNickster]

I think that concept would be refreshing, if controversial. I'm wondering-how would you handle the dialogue in a game like that? For an English release, would all the Germans and japanese soldiers speak English, their native languages with English subtitles or just straight up German and Japanese with no translation whatsoever? Cause all of those options would detract fro the game.

I can see a few problems if I played a game like that and my German officer told me to 'Sie, nimmt den Ihren Zug entlang des links stehend und flankiert den Feind!' (Apologies if that isn't gramatically correct or whatever). I would have no idea what to do.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Keep in mind that this is an eight or six year long war we are talking about (For the Japanese and Germany) and not even most traditional FPS-games set in WW2 covers the entire war. You could well make a game just about the German invasion of France and follow a few soldiers as they break through the Ardennes and flank the Magino Line or some men in the 10. Panzer Division as they dash towards Cherbourg. You could set the campaign at the outset of Barbarossa and have it go on for 1,5 years until the Battle of Stalingrad. You could have a campaign go from 1943 and the Battle of Kursk to the Seelow Heights in 1945. Japanese campaigns could be against the chinese, their invasion of the philliphines, the capture of Singapore and the battles in Burma. My point is, there are countless options for engaging and awesome settings and set pieces.

And how would you go about making this compelling? Just imagine a campaign starting with Barbarossa and the player as an infantry soldier in a panzer battalion. The first several missions have you participate in armoured spearheads and everyone being confident on victory. As the game progresses you lose friends, there are less and less tanks and you are forced up against higher and higher odds. In the end, you are caught up in the Battle of Berlin and have to fight to the end. It would be a campaign about how War is Hell, especially so since you know that in the end you'll lose. Top it off with an heroic last stand and an ending narrative about how "Protagonist died in a POW camp in Siberia, he never got to see his family again" and there you have it.

To me, the stories of the individual Axis soldier is ultimately a very tragic one. With the right developers, I am pretty certain an FPS can capture that feeling perfectly.

 

[binvjoh]

It'd be a lot more interesting seeing a Japanese studio making a realistic WW2 game.

 

[Kiefer13]

You mean play a Campaign that you are eventually destined to lose? I don't see any sense of accomplishment being gained there...

EDIT: I've gone through a couple posts and revised some of my initial ideas.

For the game to end realistically, they would need to stir the player with guilt and shame more than anything for it to really represent what the end was like for the Axis... I just don't know how they would accomplish this though... You'd have to be forced into doing some sort of atrocity, whether it's killing civilians or torturing a POW. It would be a complete 'War Games' scenario: The only way to win, is to never play at all.

Also, it's not quite like Reach... because in Reach you die, but at least salvage some victory.

There was a German campaign in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, where you commanded Panzer Elite forces. That didn't feel like it lacked a sense of achievement just because your side ended up losing the war, because you still won the battles, and the battles were tough. Nor do I remember being forced to commit any kind of atrocities. It may have been an RTS rather than a first person game, but the German characters were still treated pretty much sympathetically. I don't see why a game played from the German perspective couldn't work just as well if it was done in an FPS.

 

[warm slurm]

I take it you haven't read much about Operation: Downfall, the projected plan to invade Japan without taking an Atomic Bomb into consideration. I'll like you to it:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/operation_downfall.htm

Projected casualties were massive, with American casualties being between 1.5 and 4 million, and Japanese as high as 10 million. And this was taking into consideration everything you mentioned: Full Naval blockade, air support, you name it. The brutal fighting encountered on the islands in the Pacific were a perfect indicator of how an invasion of mainland Japan would be. Long, slow, and extremely costly. The Japanese had already demonstrated their fanaticism time and time again, along with a complete unwillingness to surrender.

If anything, the A-bombs were a prudent first measure, as we would have been unable to ignore strong population centers like Hiroshima and Nagasaki anyway, and a land assault would have been even more costly for both sides in both. The 200,000 killed by the A-bombs in no way compare to the millions that would have died.

True, but there was no need to bomb Nagasaki. The Japanese would've surrendered after Hiroshima if they'd been given more than a couple of days.

 

[falcon1985]

There are games that let you play as the axis. One of the best is IL2 Sturmovik (and Pacific Fighters). However since this is a Flightsim game, i usually get shot down around this point by the "Flightsims arn't games" crowd.

EDIT:

I just thought of the Silent Hunter series. They let you play as a German U-boat commander (US sub commander in SH4). Again this is a sim, so yeah...

 

[nestormakhno]

http://www.heroesofstalingrad.com

http://www.risingstormgame.com

Just my 4 cents

 

[Nunny]

You can create a WW2 game from any side without referencing the Holocaust or other mass Warcrimes that occured, dont see how playing an Axis Soldier would suddenly require it.

 

[MrJKapowey]

Wouldnt it be interesting for you to be the one mowing down the Americans durring Dday instead of the other way around?

why not mow down us British. We're less likely to complain