Let's revive the WWII genre

[deathninja]

Why not a Dynasty Warrior-style WWII game? (Not as in, you run around killing the shit out of everything, but you have units roaming around and occasionally you'll be told to do something like, "Plant the C4 on the Western bridge to delay enemy reinforcements!" and running around to save other units by flanking the enemy and such.

Even better, use the Bladestorm squad mechanics. I would buy the shit out of it.

 

[matt87_50]

I would like to give some feedback to the Escapist:

I read the shorter (sometimes apparently 'low content' posts) WAY more than I read the longer ones.

so who's really wasting space?

 

[Galdrack]

Several reasons.
There were far too many WW2 shooters over a time period of about 8 years polluting the gaming market.

Virtually EVERY WW2 game that came out starred an American. I know american's are the major market for these games but I'd like them to suck it up for once because american's weren't the only ones fighting the war.
(To be fair the previous reason is why I liked the first COD since you played as several different character's from different nationalities.)

WW2 games are inherently more boring as you know how it ends.


I'd like some WW1 games, yes not all of it was in trenches.

 

[Galdrack]

I wish there was a WW2 naval warfare simulator. Closest thing I have at the moment is the naval combat in Hearts of Iron II.

The Silent Hunter series where your the captain of a German U-Boat.

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

 

[Sonicron]

Dear Lord, no. I've had enough of those games to last me a lifetime. I'm not even a big fan of the Modern Warfare-y games out there, but they are a vast improvement over all the World War shlock of the dark before-times.

 

[Killclaw Kilrathi]

Just don't make me storm the beaches of Normandy again. They invaded South France too at around the same time. I know it's not as cinematic, but let's try that one.

You could even make an entire game based around the Eastern Front. Or China. I can't recall a single WW2 shooter where you play the Chinese or British in East and South-East Asia.

That's a very good point, we need more WWII shooters that don't focus on the US. You don't even have to leave the Allies, how about a focus on the ANZACs fighting the Japanese along the Kokoda Track? It could have strategy elements with managing supplies and sickness and the like. Also it would be good to see a military shooter where the protagonists aren't carrying fifty kilos of equipment and the kitchen sink on their backs for once.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoda_Track_campaign - For the uneducated.

 

[TheIronRuler]

Lets cut the mini maps.
Lets cut the ammunition count.
lets cut the crosshairs.
Lets cut the motherfucking HUD screen.
Now you have a realistic game that demands you pay attention to yourself, your mmates, the orders you recieve - and the way you will follow them, and your god-damned weapons. No, you don't pick up ammunition from downed guns on your way. You have three clips with you Thompson Machine Gun, either twenty bullets stick magazine or the larger drum magazine containing fiftty bullets.
You want to be a rifleman? Fine. Use a Karabiner 98 Kurz as a german, a bolt action rifle with five bullet per magazine. Pay attention, since you might run out of ammunition and need to quickly draw you secondary personal handgun to save your life! Wait you don't have one? That's too bad, because it TAKES TIME to RELOAD.
Why no use a Lee Enfild as a british soldier? It is a decent wifle that have the capavilities to load five bullet magazines into them or load each one seperately.... be beware of the recoil!

 

[Evil Tim]

Lets cut the mini maps.
Lets cut the ammunition count.
lets cut the crosshairs.
Lets cut the motherfucking HUD screen.
Now you have a realistic game that demands you pay attention to yourself, your mmates, the orders you recieve - and the way you will follow them, and your god-damned weapons.

Yay, I can have the realistic experience of playing as a soldier with no sense of direction, memory, idea how his weapon handles or clue what's in his own pockets.

The purpose of the HUD is to give you easy access to information you should know as a soldier. Demanding the player remember all this himself even though he isn't a soldier and doesn't have access to all the information they would have as one is stupid. It breaks immersion more than fostering it; how could I not tell, just from the weight of my pouches and pockets, how many magazines and grenades I had on my person? That's what that counter on the screen is standing in for, my sense of the weight of my own uniform. Haven't I been trained to recognise landmarks and briefed extensively on the mission location? That's what the minimap is, the picture soldier-you would have in his head of the area.

It's like I've never liked it when dialog is left untranslated even if it's a language my character should be able to speak; why do I have to understand it when my guy in the game should understand it himself? Why don't I have access to the information he should?

No, you don't pick up ammunition from downed guns on your way.

Because this is somehow impossible? Yes, you'd have to check the weapon to make sure it wasn't booby-trapped and hadn't been discarded after jamming / malfing, but that's not the same as forbidding a soldier with no ammo for his issue weapon grabbing anything at hand to stay in the fight.

You have three clips with you Thompson Machine Gun, either twenty bullets stick magazine or the larger drum magazine containing fiftty bullets.

Firstly, the Thompson is a submachine gun, not a machine gun, and those are magazines, not clips. Secondly, the drums were widely disliked for rattling, jamming and being difficult to load, and the M1 version that was more common during the war couldn't even use them. Thirdly, there was also a thirty-round stick mag. Fourth, soldiers were issued fourteen magazines with a total of 270 rounds (13 with 20 and one with 10), not three.

Methinks you don't know as much about this subject as you think you do.

You want to be a rifleman? Fine. Use a Karabiner 98 Kurz as a german, a bolt action rifle with five bullet per magazine. Pay attention, since you might run out of ammunition and need to quickly draw you secondary personal handgun to save your life!

Why would you have to pay attention? What kind of soldier are you if you can't even count to five?

Wait you don't have one? That's too bad, because it TAKES TIME to RELOAD.

Thank you for this amazing observation, I thought WW2 soldiers had personal teleporters to get ammo into their weapons.

Why no use a Lee Enfild as a british soldier? It is a decent wifle that have the capavilities to load five bullet magazines into them or load each one seperately.... be beware of the recoil!

Um, the Lee-Enfield had a ten-round integral magazine loaded with two stripper clips, and the .303 is hardly the most fearsome rifle round in the world.

 

[GGZeta]

Revive them? What the heck are you talking about? The FPS genre is infested with WWII shooters. How many times can developers rehash the same battles and themes over and over again? I really don't feel like we need to encourage them to make more, if they ever feel the need to replenish the money bin they'll just spit one out for you.

 

[TheIronRuler]

Lets cut the mini maps.
Lets cut the ammunition count.
lets cut the crosshairs.
Lets cut the motherfucking HUD screen.
Now you have a realistic game that demands you pay attention to yourself, your mmates, the orders you recieve - and the way you will follow them, and your god-damned weapons.

Yay, I can have the realistic experience of playing as a soldier with no sense of direction, memory, idea how his weapon handles or clue what's in his own pockets.

The purpose of the HUD is to give you easy access to information you should know as a soldier. Demanding the player remember all this himself even though he isn't a soldier and doesn't have access to all the information they would have as one is stupid. It breaks immersion more than fostering it; how could I not tell, just from the weight of my pouches and pockets, how many magazines and grenades I had on my person? That's what that counter on the screen is standing in for, my sense of the weight of my own uniform. Haven't I been trained to recognise landmarks and briefed extensively on the mission location? That's what the minimap is, the picture soldier-you would have in his head of the area.

It's like I've never liked it when dialog is left untranslated even if it's a language my character should be able to speak; why do I have to understand it when my guy in the game should understand it himself? Why don't I have access to the information he should?

No, you don't pick up ammunition from downed guns on your way.

Because this is somehow impossible? Yes, you'd have to check the weapon to make sure it wasn't booby-trapped and hadn't been discarded after jamming / malfing, but that's not the same as forbidding a soldier with no ammo for his issue weapon grabbing anything at hand to stay in the fight.

You have three clips with you Thompson Machine Gun, either twenty bullets stick magazine or the larger drum magazine containing fiftty bullets.

Firstly, the Thompson is a submachine gun, not a machine gun, and those are magazines, not clips. Secondly, the drums were widely disliked for rattling, jamming and being difficult to load, and the M1 version that was more common during the war couldn't even use them. Thirdly, there was also a thirty-round stick mag. Fourth, soldiers were issued fourteen magazines with a total of 270 rounds (13 with 20 and one with 10), not three.

Methinks you don't know as much about this subject as you think you do.

You want to be a rifleman? Fine. Use a Karabiner 98 Kurz as a german, a bolt action rifle with five bullet per magazine. Pay attention, since you might run out of ammunition and need to quickly draw you secondary personal handgun to save your life!

Why would you have to pay attention? What kind of soldier are you if you can't even count to five?

Wait you don't have one? That's too bad, because it TAKES TIME to RELOAD.

Thank you for this amazing observation, I thought WW2 soldiers had personal teleporters to get ammo into their weapons.

Why no use a Lee Enfild as a british soldier? It is a decent wifle that have the capavilities to load five bullet magazines into them or load each one seperately.... be beware of the recoil!

Um, the Lee-Enfield had a ten-round integral magazine loaded with two stripper clips, and the .303 is hardly the most fearsome rifle round in the world.

Mate, I'm not saying that you should bow down to the might of my knowledge because I just used these examples off the top of my head. You debunked them, fantastic! Would you like a cookie?
Did you address the matter at hand, the HUD screen? You're not flying a plane, you don't have all of these panels and data around you, you are a soldier. You can't go on a rampage and kill a whole squad because if they shoot you you die, and if a sharpnel from an exploding grenade hits you you lose an arm, or even die from blood lose.
So wither you go that direction or you CHANGE the genre in other ways.
You see? I want CHANGE of any kind, no matter the CHANGE so that I could feel interesting in the CHANGING genre of WWII games.

 

[Evil Tim]

Mate, I'm not saying that you should bow down to the might of my knowledge because I just used these examples off the top of my head. You debunked them, fantastic! Would you like a cookie?

Yes, you were wrong about more or less everything you bought up and this is something you can blame me for, that makes a box of sense.

Did you address the matter at hand, the HUD screen? You're not flying a plane, you don't have all of these panels and data around you, you are a soldier.

No, I'm a player sitting in a chair. The game has to convince me I'm a soldier, and it does this by presenting me with more insight into my surroundings than I have as just a player because it can't give me all the information I'd reasonably have; as with the example I gave, the ammo counter is there because I have no way to feel the weight of my weapon or my uniform, so it passes that data to me as a number instead.

You can't go on a rampage and kill a whole squad because if they shoot you you die, and if a sharpnel from an exploding grenade hits you you lose an arm, or even die from blood lose.
So wither you go that direction or you CHANGE the genre in other ways.

Are you seriously suggesting it's impossible for one man to kill a large number of opposing soldiers? I'm fairly sure history would disagree with you on that one.

Absolute realism is unworkable because the game can't give you a realistic field of view without everyone buying their own personal IMAX theatre and can't give you things like your sense of touch or smell. Absolute realism would mean cranking up the volume of your TV until gunshots caused you physical pain (130 decibels or so).

More to the point, games have to be fair, whereas life doesn't. In real life you can die instantly from a single shot (equally, you can also, as some have, survive being shot in the head repeatedly; the human body is a wonderful thing) but in a game there has to be some logic to why you die; you have to have a chance to react, or it's just bad design.

You see? I want CHANGE of any kind, no matter the CHANGE so that I could feel interesting in the CHANGING genre of WWII games.

Change for the sake of change is a terrible argument; it gives us games like Mirror's Edge which just ignore sensible, workable solutions like a third-person camera and try to use an obviously inferior one purely because it's different.

 

[Soviet Steve]

The Silent Hunter series where your the captain of a German U-Boat.

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

Yeah but part of the fun is the spectacle and in your face nature of commanding a vast fleet, submarines don't speak much to me unfortunately. :c

 

[Galdrack]

Yeah but part of the fun is the spectacle and in your face nature of commanding a vast fleet, submarines don't speak much to me unfortunately. :c

Ha fair enough. There will be no WW2 fleet battle simulator's of the kind your looking for I'm afraid.
Despite what many people may think most naval conflicts in WW2 were tiny skirmishes often a case of a German Battle-cruiser or some such attacking an allied convoy and the allied Navy coming to the rescue and chasing it off. Or a series of chases between one battleship and another battleship. Large fleet's and naval battles were rather uncommon as navy's were primarily used to support ground assaults.

The few big ones were mostly held in the Pacific front and even then there's like 2.

 

[Kaytastrophe]

I want a Battlefield 1944 next, DICE.

Just make it a HD, destructable remake of all the maps on 1942 and we're good, 'kay? None of that 'Three maps, all Pacific' shit.

I'd love another Brothers in Arms, but that's not gonna happen, due to tragic circumstances.
It's even more disheartening when Hells Highway ended with 'To be continued'.

I am reluctant to ask but what tragic circumstance are you speaking of that prevents another Brother's in Arms game from coming? I love the series and have been hoping to see another installment.

 

[Soviet Steve]

Yeah but part of the fun is the spectacle and in your face nature of commanding a vast fleet, submarines don't speak much to me unfortunately. :c

Ha fair enough. There will be no WW2 fleet battle simulator's of the kind your looking for I'm afraid.
Despite what many people may think most naval conflicts in WW2 were tiny skirmishes often a case of a German Battle-cruiser or some such attacking an allied convoy and the allied Navy coming to the rescue and chasing it off. Or a series of chases between one battleship and another battleship. Large fleet's and naval battles were rather uncommon as navy's were primarily used to support ground assaults.

The few big ones were mostly held in the Pacific front and even then there's like 2.

I'm quite well aware, but there was still space for it, all it needs is slightly tweaked history or just battles you could set up yourself and it would be quite interesting. With all the sexy explosions It seems natural that America would jump at the chance to make it.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

Huh, I find this thread oddly hilarious. I get a warning notice complaining about my low content "Let's not" post, but it turns out about 6 other people quoted it and complained that that's exactly what they were going to say.

So what, it's against the rules now to say exactly what everyone's thinking in the most succinct way possible? Really?

 

[Galdrack]

I'm quite well aware, but there was still space for it, all it needs is slightly tweaked history or just battles you could set up yourself and it would be quite interesting. With all the sexy explosions It seems natural that America would jump at the chance to make it.

Sorry didn't mean to imply you were uninformed in the area just got caught up in my rabble.

If you looking for an rts it would be hard to make a convincing story I'd imagine considering many of the battles you'd be having would be made up, or at least the ships would.

It'd be fun I'd say but rts' aren't exactly the best selling genre, and naval battles are all the harder to make interesting as you can't really mess with the terrain much and the battlefield is rather plain.

Personally I think a WW1 naval game would make more sense, going with the large naval confrontation aspect. Though it would be nice to have a large fleet lead by the Duke of York or the Yamamoto

 

[WhatIsThisIDontEven]

Mainly it's just been done so many times that people don't want it anymore.

Call of Duty 2 was the best in the series. If they did a Call Of Duty 2 Part 2 or something that would be awesome.

Also, not many people know that MoH:AA had bits inspired by Saving Private Ryan. The Omaha Beach part to be specific.

 

[ImprovizoR]

Have you heard of Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad? It's a PC exclusive. Not released yet but it's going to be awesome. Check it out.

 

[Evil Tim]

Also, not many people know that MoH:AA had bits inspired by Saving Private Ryan. The Omaha Beach part to be specific.

1). Who didn't know that and

2). It was created by Steven Spielberg, it's rather hard to inspire yourself.