Would you play CoD if the roles were reversed?

[KiloFox]

There have been a few games which try to break the mold by reversing the traditional role of the player, casting us instead as the villain. "Overlord" has the player controlling an evil army to enslave or put the torch to humanity. "Dungeons" similarly has you creating deadly traps to bring on the demise of dungeon-crawling, loot-seeking heroes. Destroy All Humans put us in the shoes of the harbinger of an alien invasion.

So, the military shooter then? America, f**k yeah. Every game is the same. The player is an American soldier/marine/SEAL and you have to kill lots of Russians/Chinese/N. Koreans/Arabs. Would you play it if the roles were reversed? Would you buy CoD if, instead of being an American shooting Russians, you were a Russian Spetznaz or Chinese Special Forces, shooting and "interrogating [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=y3dsly7Aqes#t=12s]" American soldiers? Would you buy CoD if you were a soldier of the Taliban, tasked with wiping out a US Army base? Or if instead of defending the US as in Crysis 2, you were tasked with destroying it?

Would you be upset if a major developer developed such a game? Is the very idea offensive? Does it make no difference to you whatsoever (freedom of the arts for example)? Well?

i would prolly be as psyched about it as i am for normal CoD games... I.E. not very.

now lemme make myself clear here, i DO think almost ALL games could benefit from an "Evil Mode" (as LoTR The Third Age called it) where you play as the antagonists rather than the protagonists. now sure that'd be difficult in some games to figure out EXACTLY how to do, but you COULD, and it'd add a lot more depth of gameplay into your game. like in Assassin's Creed you could have a few missions you can select where you play as a Templar tasked with *preventing* the assassination of some poor sap. or playing from the Russians side in some CoD game...
gameplay aside it also lends the opportunity to provide different viewpoints. the US soldier blazing his path through a city with machinegun fire mowing down baddies by the dozen sounds heroic, but what viewpoint do the "baddies" have of it? do they honestly see him as the hero they're tasked to stop at all costs? likely not. they're a bunch of people trying to protect THEIR homeland against this hostile foreign invader. "Good" and "Evil" are all relative. and i think many games could benefit their STORY by adding a viewpoint from the "opposing side" (ESPECIALLY CoD. but knowing them, they'd prolly pull a MASSIVE "Did not do the research" and cast them as completely evil no matter how you look at it.) i'm a writer myself and i LOVE swapping my viewpoint to tell the SAME EXACT SCENE from a different viewpoint. now i don't do it every scene of course, that'd be blatant padding, but done right it can add a lot of depth in both the experience, and the story

that being said, i DO enjoy me a game where you flat-out get to play the villian/anti-hero. i guess that's one reason i like Disgaea so damn much

 

[runic knight]

And where the fuck is Canada in all this?

Don't know , really care , but whatever you do, do not create a thread about it ಠ_ಠ . It never ends well X_X .

Really? Why doesn't it end well? Seems to be a valid question to me .

The arguments go like this: (mind you these were all real arguments I had in the past on the Escapist)

If a Canadian was the main character why not every other country in A game. - If a Canadian company is making the game then why can they not make the main character Canadian? Ditto for any other country.

The Canadian military is not powerful enough to warrant being shown. - Many assume I am strictly talking about military shooters or that Canada would not face off against a nation of similar military strength if it was indeed a shooter.

The fuck you talking about?! You have actors like Michael Ironside who are Canadian! - Painfully obvious the person read neither the title nor the OP. 0_0 Still my favourite counter argument

I do not care what country I play as. - Harmless enough however there is usually a significant amount of supporting text betraying that the person is passively biased towards not caring who they play as, as long as it is a frequently featured nation like the States, Britain, Russia, etc.

I do not care what country I play as. - Some thankfully will just say that.

It would hurt sales because Americans do not want to play any other nation - Disproven by the above statement

Doesn't matter to me, shouldn't matter to you. - I do not even know how to respond to that.

It would rightfully hurt sales. - WUT?

I do not play games with real nations/any nations. - Fair enough.

Pride in any nation is bad, indisputable. - Completely disagree. -_-

Get out of here with your jingoistic bullshit. - Still no idea how to respond.

Why? Canada is indistinguishable from the States. -_-

Canada does not have a unique culture -_-

Pride in any culture is bad, indisputable. - Oh you again, fuck off!

This is bullshit, what country the main character is from does not matter, at all. - Then... it would not matter nor hurt anything if the main character was Canadian?

You have too much investment in this thus I side against you/disagree - ...HUH?!

I am rather intrigued by the fact I remember most of these. There are a couple more but I cannot quite remember how they go. Most of these happened when I expressed strong disappointment at Bioware for Canada getting shafted in Mass Effect and the following conversations I had in various threads with people questioning me further. Most of these people were pretty respectful but there would also be a couple who to my complete bafflement went out of their way to deconstruct my explanations to cherry pick perceived hypocrisy or an incomplete list of examples and then use that solely to invalidate anything I said.

I wonder if that will happen again with this comment.

Well that is why it never ends well... at least for me.

hmmm... well, you saved me a lot of reading of an upcoming thread right there. kudos for that.

 

[RobDaBank]

Alot of people on CoD stick to multiplayer anyway so it wouldn't make much difference. If anything you're more likely to be a spetsnaz fighting a seal online than in a campaign, the main difference being there's no story and therefore no context to challenge the players morality.

I for one wouldn't mind, as long as the story wasn't too silly, otherwise I'd either stick to multiplayer or turn it off

 

[Gone Rampant]

A little thing called "The Media," would like to stomp that idea to the ground.

Any game that promoted killing US soldiers would be banned faster than Manhunt 2. In short, while I'd LIKE to play it, I really doubt any company wants this kind of black mark.

 

[YazBar]

Hmm... speaking as an Arab with quite a few Russian friends, I tend to avoid such games out of principle (especially those where you hop in with cutting edge weaponry to fight against guys armed only with AKs and a strong belief); but if the roles were reversed in a game like CoD then I might play it. Personally I think that rather than reverse the roles, it's more important to show both sides to be equally bad (or equally sympathetic), because you could just make a game where you play as Russians/Chinese/Arabs/*insert country here that isn't USA* and still make them look like the villains/terrorists/league of evil, which is just as bad as making you fight them. In war there are no goodies and baddies, I'm sure both sides of any conflict would perceive themselves as good and their opponent as bad (unless they're cartoon characters).

 

[goose4291]

(i) Go download World War II online

(ii) Play as the Axis.

(iii) Marvel at the fact your team mates aren't all mongs, unlike the 12 year olds trying to run across a bridge at your fixed position.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

No, and its not the 'Fuck Yeah' attitude, as Smash pointed out, that's keeping me from caring about the games.

its a first person shooter, that's my problem with it. So in order to get me to play CoD, you have to do more then just change the nationality of the PC

yes i'm aware of the Irony seeing as my Avatar is a pony dressed like a Spartan from Halo

Pfft, Halo's a Shooter. COD's a Spunkgargleweewee. There is no hypocrisy here.

OT: Possibly, though as someone above me said,

America isn't the problem, it's the fuck yeah attitude that's keeping the genre down.

This is pretty much why I haven't purchased a COD game with my own money, though I may be tempted to scrape the cash together for Black Ops II.

CAPATCHA: Which does a vegetarian eat? Clearly it's not Kittens or Puppies, Capatcha.

 

[00slash00]

sure...if the single player campaign was much longer. id play cod now if the single player wasnt so short

 

[Smeggs]

I don't think COD campaigns would be made any more interesting by going down the "Russia, fuck yeah" route, or the "China, fuck yeah" one.

America isn't the problem, it's the fuck yeah attitude that's keeping the genre down.

Considering that the Russian missions in WaW were probably the most enjoyable, I'm not so sure about that. My county's history has been driven into my skull since elementary school, and there is almost nothing more boring than my own country's history now. I always find I have more fun in other locale.

 

[Platypus540]

While there definitely is an attitude of "America... Fuck yeah" in shooters, it's not as prevalent as people say it is. Take CoD, for example, one of the series people complain about the most for doing this. In the older, WW2 CoDs as well as WaW, you constantly switch around between different countries,and the tone (at least in in WaW, I don't really remember for the others)was pretty cynical about war. In CoD 4, MW2, and MW3 the main characters are all British (there are American player characters, but they drop like flies), and the main bad guy in MW2 is American. In fact, there are levels in MW2 where you're fighting the American troops that he's commanding.

Blops is the only one that was really FUCK YEAH about everything, but that campaign was so much of a badly-paced, Michael Bay clusterfuck that it doesn't really matter.

 

[NearLifeExperience]

I'd play it!

An invasion of America would be interesting. The patriotic bullshit with which the CoD series presents itself with is one of the reasons I never got on the whole CoD bandwagon. Let those American warmongers feel what it's like to be invaded!

 

[Coppernerves]

In COD WaW , I loved playing the Japanese in Multiplayer, it was so funny to hear them shout SHIT GRENADE! or GET IT OFF ME GET IT OFF ME ! or HE'S NOT GOING DOWN ! Right after they've been calling themselves "Fucking badass" or "A One Man Army"

But that was more because its' fun to shoot obnoxious frat boys than because it's fun to play "the bad guy"

 

[carpathic]

I don't think COD campaigns would be made any more interesting by going down the "Russia, fuck yeah" route, or the "China, fuck yeah" one.

America isn't the problem, it's the fuck yeah attitude that's keeping the genre down.

Well stated. Honestly though I am not sure I know anyone who plays Shooters for the story. In Halo it was fun to see the set pieces and perhaps the story worked for some people.

Modern shooters though seem to be more concerned with the action than the story, which definitely compromises the quality of the game.

 

[dogenzakaminion]

How bout we drop america all together . How about a fictional war between australia and Great britain ? We could have naval battles , air battles , and kangeroo boxing . I'm tired of the U.S periode . And where the fuck is Canada in all this?

That sounds awesome. And thank you for noticing Canada. That was my biggest problem with Homefront (4 hour SP campaign not withstanding...), that Canada and Mexico would just let North Korea waltz in and take over the States. Please.

 

[Squilookle]

How bout we drop america all together . How about a fictional war between australia and Great britain ? We could have naval battles , air battles , and kangeroo boxing . I'm tired of the U.S periode . And where the fuck is Canada in all this?

Why go all the way to Great Britain when the Aussies are right next door to New Zealand? Just have the war start over a rugby disagreement and the utter diplomatic failure of our leaders, and from there it's a fun romp all over the two nations and a struggle for control over all the beer breweries. All the troops on both sides know what a crock the whole thing is, but fight on if only for the promise of a new national holiday.


Best of all- both nations have the same second-hand US equipment, so the odds are perfectly balanced!