WW2 Games from a Nazi Perspective...

[Mournful Crow]

So I've been going down memory lane, playing some of my older Medal of Honor games when a question popped up in my mind. Of all the WW2 games that have been churned out in the gaming market, why isn't there a WW2 Game from specifically a Nazi (or other Axis) standpoint?

Because FPS's aren't the only genre in gaming. Ever hear of Panzer General? You get to play as Germany, Italy or Japan in a boatload of strategy and simulation games. You can fly all the StuKa bombers and drive all the Tiger tanks you want.

And if you only DO play Battleduty, why would you even WANT to play as a nazi? Not to mention the fact that such a game would probably get banned in Germany, costing the publishers a large market.

Yamato, SS and Storm Troopers...Would be sooo cool.

There is literally NOTHING "cool" about the SS. Brainwashed, fanatic, murderous war criminals are a lot of things, but "cool" isn't among them.

First off, what the Hell is Battleduty? And I'd like to just play as one to see the game from a different perspective, instead of some Nazi-shootout bloodfest, like the last few hundred. And I guess I should clarify, I'm talking about first-person shooters that have a Nazi-centered campaign. You know, one that isn't so biased against Them. One that doesn't glamorize them, but at least acknowledges that these were human beings.

 

[Mournful Crow]

snip

During the end german civilians tried to defend their homes in a milita called "The Volkssturm" we pretty much murdered them to a man, and anyonethat was run into for fear of being a sympathizer, they were dumped into mass graves. The Hitler Youth, we killed them, kids as young as six who never took the field were being executed by GIs simply for Nazi affiliation.

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


"It was set up, not by the traditional German Army, but by the Nazi Party on the orders of Adolf Hitler on October 18, 1944. It conscripted males between the ages of 16 to 60 years who were not already serving in some military unit as part of a German Home Guard."

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

"By 1945, the Volkssturm was commonly drafting 12-year-old Hitler Youth members into its ranks. During the Battle of Berlin, Axmann's Hitler Youth formed a major part of the last line of German defense, and were reportedly among the fiercest fighters. Although the city commander, General Helmuth Weidling, ordered Axmann to disband the Hitler Youth combat formations; in the confusion, this order was never carried out. The remnants of the youth brigade were "mowed down" by the advancing Russian forces; only two survivors remained."

Or maybe...Google this: Eisenhower's death camps

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

...Holocast...

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

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

The French resisance being largely a myth, based on small groups of french patriots and hardliners backed by Russian intelligence. France gets insulted as being "surrender monkeys" because basically what happened is they surrendered to Hitler in part because fighting him was relatively unpopular, they then backed him as they saw him as the winning side, but when the tide turned France realized it was in the way and even if it turned around for Hitler it would be smashed by the allies. The whole "surrender monkey" thing is the allegation that they surrendered twice in the same war, once to each side, and the acceptance of German occupation and French resistance is kind of a political fiction that everyone would agree to when things finished.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese-eating_surrender_monkeys

The awkward moment when I learn more about WW2 in an internet post, than in a history book....

I'd stick to the books if I were you.

Aye, but it's fun to hear different things every now and then...

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Well, one of my favorite poets was a medical officer in the Kaiser WWI army. He was drafted into service, and suffered so much emotional trauma from what he saw and from being forced to fight in a war he could care less about that he later committed suicide. His name was Georg Trakl, and he does prove the point that not everyone who fought on the side of Fascism in WWI and WWII was an evil person.

That being said, maybe instead of a shooter, you could make an adventure game where you have to navigate through enemy traps and lines to rescue comrades, all while the main character spirals down a path of madness as he constantly questions whether or not what he is doing is the "right" thing to do. At least it would be a departure from the all-too-common military shooter.

 

[Zenn3k]

Oh boy, concentration camp quick time events!

Tap A to release poison gas into the showers!

Yeah, I don't see it happening, but it could be interesting. Just gotta make the main character you play as someone who is generally "following orders" but doesn't agree with them completely...creates a moral dilemma within the character you're playing.

I think it could make for a very interesting game, however, trying to sell the idea of playing as basically the most hated group of people in last 60 years is a tough sell, I could see protests over a game like that.

 

[Pharsalus]

I've always though it could make a tight personal narrative for an FPS or platoon level tactical game. Getting to know a squad of german joes and care about them, looking on from the sideleines at the actions of einsatzgruppen and such. Trying desperately to save the lives of your friends as your whole country is overwhelmed by a superior foe. I can even see the QTE driven CoD style ending scene where your character gets killed trying to surrender his men at the end of a desperate action. There's alot of drama, alot of good stories to tell on the grey side of the line.

It wasn't just nazi's and concentration camps, most of them were just soldiers. The evil aspects of German military conquest should be addressed, but don't the actions of their men who suffered and died on the frontlines deserve something more than eternal "shoot at me, Im'a baddie" status?

 

[Therumancer]

snip

You've probably been told already, but the Silent Hunter u-boat simulator games are mostly from a Nazi perspective. No actual nazi propaganda or politics come up though - you're essentially torpedoing ships with Allied ensigns, and not ranting about Jews or the master race.

I agree it would be interesting to play from the perspective of a losing side with an attached reprehensible ideology. I don't know if you could get away with making the protagonist a nazi, but some kind of stand in culture in a fantastical setting could do the same job without causing offense. That's probably already been done - assuming the devs give the player enough credit to get the point.

As I said in my rant (which I re-read, sloppy due to fatigue, but still accurate) that's the Hollywood version, like most coverage of contreversial things on Wikipedia. People just aren't ready for the truth here, there are crazy numbers of holes in pretty much everything on wikipedia that contridicted what I said.

All of which comes down to the central point that people just aren't ready for a World War II game featuring Nazi protaganists like the game suggested.

Among other things you'll notice we blame the Russians for the one big Volkssturm massacre you mention. God forbid the US/UK did anything that horrible, that would contridict the Hollywood version, but on the other hand, well The Russians were the big bad guys after the Germans so we can point fingers at them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually not bashing the US, actually knowing a lot of the truth about WW II (when I was younger some of my older teachers had been there, and insisited on telling very differant versions from a lot of the "textbook" stuff to make sure the right lessons were learned), has influanced my overall attitudes about how wars are fought, and are a big part of why I call "BS" so often on "The War On Terror" and attempts to run an antiseptic war, when there is no such thing. "The biggest bastard wins, and then writes the history books" is pretty much the truth, so when I hear all the QQing about collateral damage, war crimes, and "not wanting to become the enemy by using evil tactics" I tend to roll my eyes and grumble about the idiots saying that crap for being why we haven't accomplished much. It's especially painful when you have some liberal who probably grew up in the 60s protesting 'Nam ranting about "good wars" and referaincing World War II like it was a comic book because of how we got to write the history books afterwards.

The US/Allies were the good guys, and did what had to be done, but it wasn't antiseptic, and not entirely black and white on any front. In theory you could do a game from the Nazi perspective pretty easily and make the Allies the bad guys in a limited scope campaign because we did worse than most of what we accused them of, which is how we won. The simple truth, in the sad world we live in a hero and a complete bastard are one in the same because you can't be one without being the other.

 

[Tsaba]

there's silent hunter, a sub game if you're into that

Silent hunter 3 is the best one, nothing like destroying allied convoys and getting away unnoticed.

 

[Zeren]

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad has one that is pretty good.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Battlefield1942
Had Allies and Axis sides

Anything else? Maybe some WW2 strategy games?

I can't believe in three pages this is the only mention of Battlefield 1942. Granted, it doesn't exactly tell a personal story (although that's intentional; you're supposed to feel like a faceless grunt on a gigantic battlefield), but you definitely get to play as the Nazis and the Japanese in it. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a map in there somewhere where you can play as the Italians.

Edit: And speaking of WW2 strategy games, there's always the aptly named Axis and Allies, which is a board game that has at least one videogame implementation. I think Making History: The Calm and the Storm lets you play as pretty much any country involved in the war, although I could be wrong, since I've only played the tutorial.

 

[chuckman1]

For one, as it was mentioned way up top was the Silent Hunter series in which it's not about how fast you win, but how slowly you lose.

Best case scenario for the fabled popular Nazi WWII shooter? Probably something along the lines of being a front line German trooper, pushed to go fight for his country by the harrowing depictions of German soldiers to fight for their country and the good of the world. As you progress you find war not as pretty as depicted but you still fight as best you can. Eventually you do something and become a German hero and are promoted into the SS. Your character quickly realizes that Hitler isn't this grand hero but a monster and everyone in Germany is being fooled. Knowing that slander against their great leader would be suicide, your character decides to flee to the Allied front and risk giving himself up to fight for the Allies. Along the way, you have a espionage-esque chase over several missions where you collect secrets and free rebels from the various freedom fighters and P.O.W.s (preferably not just Americans, if any) and gain support for not locking you away for the rest of your life and making it known that you're not a bad guy.

The one thing I know that wouldn't get by, but should, would be a No Russian style mission of your character's first day on the job with the SS. There should be a moment where your character is faced with a line of innocent Jewish people and you're forced to kill them, preferably through something extremely unnecessary like a flamethrower. You refuse? Your squad leader threatens immediate execution. Still refuse? Game over, because he just shot you. It would be his very poignant turning point and hopefully push that message of "not all German soldiers were terrible, they were told to do terrible things" deal, but also give insight as to how horrible some of the higher-ups in the Nazi army really were. As much as people want to gripe about something like this being a Jew-killing simulator and such, it needs to be said, lest we forget and history repeats itself.

The biggest problem? Gamers aren't mature enough for this game. Not yet. =(

This game sounds amazing.
I want to make this as an rpg (I'm in a "I want to make rpgs" phase)
This sounds like it could be game changing for videogames

 

[Prime_Hunter_H01]

The best way to incorporate a German and even Japanese campaign in a WWII shooter would be to go historical art house game. The campaign would jump between every, and I mean EVERY major battle from the war playing as the eventual winner. This would mean that in the early stages of the game Axis levels would include the Invasion of Poland and the first push into the Soviet Union for the Germans, some early Italian victories, and the Invasions of Manchuria and the Philippines for the Japanese campaign. The way to lessen controversy would be to explicitly sate that the game is a chronological tour through WWII, which would mean by the end You would take on the Classic roles such as the D-Day landing, Iwo Jima, and the Invasion of Berlin.

There may be hope for it since there wasn't a lot of notable flare up for Spec Ops The Line having American soldiers as enemies and that it treated each side as morally grey.

 

[WanderingFool]

If there ever is a WWII game with Nazi missions, then there needs to be this conversation appearing in a cutscene at least once.

<youtube=aLJUocaDYw0>

Anyways, I could imagine it's possible, I suppose if you play as a soldier in Rommel's Afrika Corps. They committed nearly no war crimes out of any of the Nazi soldiers, Rommel was an honorable man (and one HELL of a magnificent bastard), and the soldiers frequently kept up semi-courteous/gentlemanly relations with their "enemies".

You would frequently need to humanize your squad though. Get a few shots of Rommel every now and then, and maybe show the difference between him and the rest of the Nazi high-command by having an "evil" SS officer come to investigate all the war crimes Rommel hadn't been committing when ordered to.

The mission could end with Rommel speaking with you, his loyal and honorable soldier, and informing you of a little thing known as "operation Valkryie"...

I imagine afterwards there could be a DLC campaign where you successfully kill Hitler, Rommel gains enough of the Army's support to throw off the rest of the Nazi high command in a coup. He negotiates with all the allies (minus the Soviets, who continue to assault Germany) and convinces them to accept a peace treaty. The campaign would end with a badly battered and nearly broken Germany forcing back the Soviets in one huge "last stand" involving trench warfare and waves upon waves of soviet soldiers.

If you survive to the end, and manage to halt the Soviet advance, it could end with an alternate history epilogue in which the reds expansion stopped on the border of Poland. Rommel slowly began to rebuild a (badly fragmented) Germany, made what reparations he could to the Jews and other people targeted in the Holocaust, and so on...

Thats beautiful... If someone was to make a WWII game like that, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Captcha:

Best Captcha yet...

 

[BathorysGraveland]

I'm interested in a similar thing actually, but for a less video game-covered war. Vietnam.

Playing a game like the first Vietcong (the best FPS I've ever played) from the perspective of a VC guerrilla or even an NVA regular would be fucking brilliant. But like the WWII-German thing, you have the moral problems with it. Shooting Americans and American-allies wouldn't go over well with most people, it probably wouldn't sell well and then unfortunately it wouldn't be made. You're also playing as what childish people consider "bad guys" and that's generally a no-no as well (though you can play as Soviet soldiers in WWII in some games - figure that one out). Which is too bad, because there is certainly some creative potential here as far as more personal FPS games go.

I think modifications is truly the only possibility for something like this to happen on a mature scale. Of course there are strategy games, but they lack the personality of taking control of an individual and fighting alongside other individuals with specific goals, missions and superior officers etc.

 

[Stepan_RUS']

I seem to have a very different opinion about the war to the people i meet on-line.

You're a neo-Nazi, right? You even have a swastika in your avatar (kolovrat?).

I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on the final solution and how would you deal with that and related topics in a video game. Do you think it was positive? Would it sell in your country compared to western Europe and the states where there would no doubt be a public outcry?

i do not belive 'final solution' as you say, occoured exactly as history tells it. Regardless, i do not know who would want to play a video-game that is just for killing people, they would have to have the sick head, no?
I think it is because most of the video-game is made in America, Etc. That they are mostly about the American soliders, of course.

I do not know America very well, but i have a feeling there would be less upset people here than in USA, because there are more of the communist sympathiser over there. (Irony, no?)
I know where i grew up in Lviv, and where i live now (Russia) all the people i know feel the same way i do.

The government likely make a fuss however, about this video-game like it is now about November 4. (Russian march) because it is under control from various left-wing groups.


Edited: it seems my avatar has changed to the portrait of some young man, why is this?

 

[mjcabooseblu]

if you took offense, don't.

This. I would make it my signature if such a thing existed on this site.

Anyway, it's an interesting thought. Though I predict outrage if such a thing were made.

Well of course, what do you expect? We still think we're the good guys for invading the wrong country after 9/11...

This is the country that still loses its shit over a terrorist attack over ten years ago with relatively minor casualties. I doubt we'll ever lose the butthurt over WW2. Not that WW2 was, like, a good thing, but come on guys. Let's at least ACKNOWLEDGE the enemy.

 

[Slayer_2]

Red Orchestra 2 has an Axis campaign, and all the previous games/mods have allowed players to play as the nazi's in MP.

 

[BathorysGraveland]

from the vietcong perspective is of course vietcong 2 which offered a campaign
also check out 7554 its one of the first games from vietnam and is entirely from the perspective of the vietnamese on the other side fighting the frenchthen the americans. from the reviews on gamersgate people apparently liked it alot

Well, let's be honest here. Vietcong 2 sucked, hard. The Vietnamese campaign was a total of 3 or 4 VERY short missions. It was no where near the depth of the original Vietcong campaign and felt completely tacked on.

As for that other game, it could be pretty decent. I'll check it out, thanks.

 

[Stepan_RUS']

I seem to have a very different opinion about the war to the people i meet on-line.

You're a neo-Nazi, right? You even have a swastika in your avatar (kolovrat?).

I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on the final solution and how would you deal with that and related topics in a video game. Do you think it was positive? Would it sell in your country compared to western Europe and the states where there would no doubt be a public outcry?

i do not belive 'final solution' as you say, occoured exactly as history tells it. Regardless, i do not know who would want to play a video-game that is just for killing people, they would have to have the sick head, no?
I think it is because most of the video-game is made in America, Etc. That they are mostly about the American soliders, of course.

I do not know America very well, but i have a feeling there would be less upset people here than in USA, because there are more of the communist sympathiser over there. (Irony, no?)
I know where i grew up in Lviv, and where i live now (Russia) all the people i know feel the same way i do.

The government likely make a fuss however, about this video-game like it is now about November 4. (Russian march) because it is under control from various left-wing groups.


Edited: it seems my avatar has changed to the portrait of some young man, why is this?

First off, if you're going to deny the holocaust, we're going to have a serious problem. Second, people kill enemies in video games all the time, that doesn't make them unwell. Video games are escapism after all. Thirdly, and this has been stated earlier, while the German army may have helped your people in WW2, you can't deny what they did. I know that there are no good guys in war, but do you? Finally, you're avatar is now Justin Beiber, a Canadian pop star. It changed because you pressed the red button, but it only lasts for a day.

You forign men sure are 'touchy' about this subject, i do not understand why.

I am not denying the 'holocaust' like you say, just questioning histories' version of it. "History is written by victor" as they say. this is why people think Nazi is evil, instead of just army of another country doing what they thought was right.
Of course many people are killed, many soliders and many civilans. in a state of total war, civilians will be targeted. Fact of such a large-scale conflict.
What is conveniently forgotten however, (because the opressors won the war) are the dreadful things the allies, both soviet and american did to 'enemy' civilians. Have you heard of the fire-bombing of Dresden, (The americans wanted to see if they could create a 'fire storm' in a city using bombs, and used the city of Dresden to test, killing over 100,000 civilians) or the Eisenhower death camps on the Rhine (where 1,7 million German prisioners were tortured, starved and killed at the end of the war)? There is evidence of a great many (deliberate, i might add) killings of Axis prisoners and axis civilians.

How do you justify this? Is it okay because you were "at war"? if this is okay to do, it brings up an interesting moral question: if the Nazis had "declared war" on the jew before killing, would that have made it alright?

I dont see any moral distinction between the Axis or Allies. both killed a great deal of soilders and civilians. such is the way of war.

 

[predatorpulse7]

While I am tired of WW2 games, I would buy a game that tells a Nazi perspective just for the freshness of it. I am no Nazi sympathizer(and it's funny to me when I see neonazis today even with the Nazi party having disappeared ages ago) but I get tired of Nazis being depicted not just as villains, but as the spawn of Satan. Nazies tried to put Europe under their boot. Guess what, so did Napoleon and countless others over the years. Had Hitler won, we would've heard tales about those evil allies that tried to bring down the third reich but failed due to their wicked ways. This s**t is all relative anyway, let's not forget the atrocities the Allies commited on the counter-offensive against the Axis and the fact that they allied themselves with a bigger monster than Hitler, Stalin, to bring the german to his knees. I'm sure Central and Eastern Europe really appreciated the gift of communism when the Allies put that whole area on Stalin's plate as thanks for helping them in WW2.

There is no black and white in war no matter how we cut it and a Nazi campaign wouldn't be bad. For those sensitive types, I have to re-iterate, it's a F**KING VIDEOGAME.

 

[TheIronRuler]

They're already out there. You might be addressing the problem that there aren't that many WW2 video-games recently.