The French Create Realistic Trench Warfare Sim

[Exocet]

I'm not sure if you re-read over your bit here, chum, but you appear to give a very 'clean and tidy' impression of what trench-fighting involves - nice, neat bullet wounds and all that.

As Karloff mentions in the article, 130,000 unidentified bodies in one burial site alone (God only know how much was left of them to 'identify'). Lengthy barrages churning the ground into mud, leaving German concrete fortifications largely unscathed, men drowning in the mud, wounded men screaming and sobbing through the night out in no-man's land, men shooting comrades by accident..sometimes not by accident, the 'souvenir hunting' that went on. Heck, the video on The Trenches own site [//www.thetrench1916.com/] doesn't pull its punches.

You're forgetting that these battles raged on for months at a time, and a lot of bodies were left in the middle of no man's land, or even just dumped in mass graves. Either way, after a couple months of battle, then after the time it took to actually look for dead bodies to bury properly, well, the bodies just rotted away. And with no accurate dental records at the time, if you didn't find some sort of identifying feature, like a wallet with a name inside, a picture, or anything of the likes, it was considered unidentifiable.

I always thought if a WWI FPS game was ever made, it would be a story driven game with as much emphasis on atmosphere as possible, all while shocking the player with ingame depictions of real life WWI wounds. The type of game that breaks from the more recent CoDs and battlefields line of thinking that war is clean, and pretty fun with lots of cool toys.

 

[Reynaert]

Has anyone ever really wondered why trench warfare is often ignored... it was boring as hell in terms of war related stuff. Two sides shooting at each other hiding in the ground until one said built up enough balls or got drunk enough to run into No Man's Land and rush the other side. That is all there was too it (until Germany started using chemicals). Might be an interesting game though.

Maybe someone should try making an adventure game about it. You know: "Go find the valve so we can open the sluice gates."

 

[ElPatron]

But seriously I would say it would even itself out if your enemies also have slow firing rifles, you will all spend a longer time being exposed reloading, and in that situation different tactics are needed than the 'twitch shooting' CoD style.
Positioning yourself is key, finding useful cover, waiting for the right moment to make your shots, making every shot count, and of course when it all goes belly up there's always that delicious tactic of circle strafing your opponent, trying to keep out of his crosshairs while keeping him in your crosshairs, as you bash his face in with your rifle butt. CoD's insta-knife-kill be damned, those frantic close quarter balls ups were some of the funnest moments of any multiplayer FPS.

World War I is not really something I have read a ton about, but "twitch" shooting is what people do when they panic.

it's that they didn't shoot fast because they were rookies.

It only takes a few hours to learn how to work the bolt fast, and I have never been deployed to any war nor received any kind of military training.

I'd be more inclined to believe rookies were under stress rather than assuming that 18 year old males have more motor skills today than back in 1916.

]Suppressive fire was handled by the machine guns, that was the entire point of having the weapon.

If any war was furthest away from being textbook, it was WWI. Besides, using individual riflemen as a form of suppression is perfectly legit.

 

[dnazeri]

Hooray a game about the most boring war in history, CANT WAIT TO SIT IN PLACE FOR 12 HOURS AND THEN RUN INTO ARTILLERY FIRE.

 

[Spaghetti]

Well this has piqued my interest, I will be watching with interest.

Though I hope the main character isn't a French Officer otherwise we might suffer from horrendous uprisings from the bottom...

 

[saintdane05]

I'm still waiting for Civil War FPS. Let's all die of poorly amputated limbs!

 

[dnazeri]

Hooray a game about the most boring war in history, CANT WAIT TO SIT IN PLACE FOR 12 HOURS AND THEN RUN INTO ARTILLERY FIRE.

Hooray! Another poster with zero imagination, knowledge of history, & a misunderstanding of what the game is doing.

Your right I forgot to mention the part where you have to put on a gas mask cause of mustard gas.

edit: The point I was trying to make is that our current age marriage to realism in games has a habit of producing unfun shooters with no spirit. This trailer is literally of a guy shooting at someone way off in the distance from a trench. If your trailer looks boring, then you have a serious problem.

 

[Meight08]

Hooray a game about the most boring war in history, CANT WAIT TO SIT IN PLACE FOR 12 HOURS AND THEN RUN INTO ARTILLERY FIRE.

Hooray! Another poster with zero imagination, knowledge of history, & a misunderstanding of what the game is doing.

Your right I forgot to mention the part where you have to put on a gas mask cause of mustard gas.

edit: The point I was trying to make is that our current age marriage to realism in games has a habit of producing unfun shooters with no spirit. This trailer is literally of a guy shooting at someone way off in the distance from a trench. If your trailer looks boring, then you have a serious problem.

Uhm no it's a weapon's demonstration with the guy firing at some enemy helmets in a makeshift shooting range

 

[ElPatron]

Your right I forgot to mention the part where you have to put on a gas mask cause of mustard gas.

edit: The point I was trying to make is that our current age marriage to realism in games has a habit of producing unfun shooters with no spirit. This trailer is literally of a guy shooting at someone way off in the distance from a trench. If your trailer looks boring, then you have a serious problem.

It's more of a tech demo that anything else. And by definition tech demos do not make great games, let alone trailers.

If you think realism is boring, then you've already said it. The game won't be fun for you if you didn't like ARMA/Operation Flashpoint/Red Orchestra. Don't play it, this game will have so low impact on the way AAA games are made you won't be hurt in any way by it's release.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

It is a shame that it's not about Canada in WWI, we pretty much reinvented war, and steamrolled german outposts left right and center, starting with vimy ridge, if you don't believe me watch this documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHj88WeLohk

Yeah, Canada was fucking awesome in WWI, and in WWII, I really wish some game developer would focus on some of our action, cuz we kick ass.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

But seriously I would say it would even itself out if your enemies also have slow firing rifles, you will all spend a longer time being exposed reloading, and in that situation different tactics are needed than the 'twitch shooting' CoD style.
Positioning yourself is key, finding useful cover, waiting for the right moment to make your shots, making every shot count, and of course when it all goes belly up there's always that delicious tactic of circle strafing your opponent, trying to keep out of his crosshairs while keeping him in your crosshairs, as you bash his face in with your rifle butt. CoD's insta-knife-kill be damned, those frantic close quarter balls ups were some of the funnest moments of any multiplayer FPS.

World War I is not really something I have read a ton about, but "twitch" shooting is what people do when they panic.

To be honest, I don't have a clue either about the exact reload times for bolt actions, so I can't really add to the discussion about that, but I do know FPSs, and when I said 'twitch shooting' what I was referring to was the incredibly fast speed of games like COD and Battlefield, where the guns can kill in 2-3 hits, and fire fully automatic, with 30 or so rounds in the magazines, so gunfights are reduced to simply who sees who first: it becomes a purely reflex action. While this is some way realistic, the removal of any penalties for death in a multiplayer match has led to a situation where the most successful players are the ones that use the intensely difficult tactic of "run in circle around map shoot anything that moves until death". The most brazen, purely offensive player will always win.

Having a bolt action will mean slowing the pace of the game, no more 1 man Rambos, hopefully positioning and distance should become a lot more important, and most of all teamwork, because a single guy can no longer take out several enemies purely by virtue of coming at them from a flank.

Of course this is all speculation on my part, the game likely won't even have a multiplayer, but I think it's about time developers started tinkering more with the accepted foundations of FPS multiplayer, let's have something different.

 

[orangeban]

]Suppressive fire was handled by the machine guns, that was the entire point of having the weapon.

If any war was furthest away from being textbook, it was WWI. Besides, using individual riflemen as a form of suppression is perfectly legit.

Ah, yes, but you're assuming WW1 generals had any idea what the Hell they were doing. Remember, they were used to wars were soldiers marched rank & file and it was cavalry that saved the day. Rifle suppression may have been a legit tactic, but it's a matter of whether generals would have thought of using rifles for something other than their traditional use.

This is especially true for the British, who really couldn't be bothered with defensive tactics and just loved offence.

 

[Petromir]

]Suppressive fire was handled by the machine guns, that was the entire point of having the weapon.

If any war was furthest away from being textbook, it was WWI. Besides, using individual riflemen as a form of suppression is perfectly legit.

Ah, yes, but you're assuming WW1 generals had any idea what the Hell they were doing. Remember, they were used to wars were soldiers marched rank & file and it was cavalry that saved the day. Rifle suppression may have been a legit tactic, but it's a matter of whether generals would have thought of using rifles for something other than their traditional use.

This is especially true for the British, who really couldn't be bothered with defensive tactics and just loved offence.

Rifle Suppression was MOST of what the British high command knew. At the beginning of the war Machine guns were rare in the British army, battalion level mostly company at best, but the rate of fire of the early war British and commonwealth troops was such German reports apparently reported machine guns where there weren't any. Using personal weapons to suppress the enemies is as old as bows and arrows.

People thinking that the war was all walking or running straight from Trench to Trench, need to know Modern Military Infantry doctrine mostly stems from WW1, in particular a German Infantry Officer called Erwin Rommel. His accounts of his battles from WW1 became the military manual that dominated the inter-war period and WW2 infantry wise and still remains on the Sandhurst reading list.

Wars before and since have had extensive trench and fortification works, WW1 was the most dominated by this,due to the relitively close match of the two sides for much of the war. The extent was a symptom of this not the cause.

 

[ElPatron]

Rifle suppression may have been a legit tactic, but it's a matter of whether generals would have thought of using rifles for something other than their traditional use.

I don't know much about WWI, but I am pretty sure Generals are not in charge of squad level tactics when the Shit Hits The Fan.

Having a bolt action will mean slowing the pace of the game, no more 1 man Rambos,

A bolt action will operate at the speed you want it to. The Mauser action is widely known as smooth and the Enfield is considered by many to have the smoothest action in WWI. In comparison, a Mosin Nagant will not be as smooth and it's trigger pull is quite heavy.

Call of Duty 2 was pretty fast paced, and most people preferred bolt actions to semi-autos.

And I think WWI was one of the few wars where 1 man Rambos actually existed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An%C3%ADbal_Milhais

Milhais was in charge of one of their Lewis guns on 9 April 1918. During "Operation Georgette", when the German Army attacked his division, Milhais stood up with his Lewis machine gun and defeated, almost single handedly, two German assaults by laying down intense fire. He managed to cover the retreat of Portuguese and Scots alike despite coming under heavy attack himself.[1] He fired in all directions and stayed at his post until he ran out of ammunition. His bravery under severe circumstances managed to convince the Germans that they were up against a fortified unit rather than just a single Portuguese soldier with a machine gun.[1] Finally, the Germans decided to go around and Milhais found himself alone in the rear of the enemy lines where he stayed for three days almost without eating or drinking.[1]

On the third day, Milhais, still carrying his Lewis, rescued a Scottish major from a swamp and the two reached Allied lines.

 

[rayen020]

I'm interested. I've wanted to see a real (not a mod of flash) WWI game. I could see this styled as a TF2 L4D style respawn deal if we're charging no-mans land or a sanctum style game where you prep the defences and then fight FPS style, taking turns between offense/defense... Not sure if that's what they're gonna do or if just gonna be CoD WWI, whatever they do, looking forward to it.

 

[rayen020]

Hooray a game about the most boring war in history, CANT WAIT TO SIT IN PLACE FOR 12 HOURS AND THEN RUN INTO ARTILLERY FIRE.

Actually you wait for 12 hours in artillery fire and then run into machine gun fire.

 

[lacktheknack]

Greeaaaaaaaat just what we need: Another brown, cover based, first person shooter.

Pffffpfffpffff! I snickered.

OT: Interesting, but I'll pass. I'm still not a military shooter person, although the idea of trench warfare is quite interesting.

 

[SciFi Maniac]

I'm not going to glory in the misrepresention of the slaughter of almost an entire generation for the sake of feeling like a hero in a video game for a few hours.

I know that over in Europe WW1 is a bit more of a hot button issue,but doesn't what you say apply to pretty much every war game on the market? They make shooters about WW2 and Vietnam, RTSs on the Napoleonic Wars and Crusades,and movies about all of the above; Shouldn't it only be natural progression the do somthing on the not-so "Great War"?
Hell, if they do it right, the game might make for a proper representation of a bloody meaningless affair. That may be a near impossible endeavor, but you might as well give them a chance.