To be honest I'm not impressed with what I hear about the story, with all the QQing about shooters, the violence, and of course the increasing rise of anti-americanism, it's not surprising we'd see something like this appearing about now.
Frankly I think the problem right now is that war games, and media in general, come in two basic flavors. One of course is the cartoony "GI Joe" set up with clear white hats and black hats drawn by military affiliation, and duelling soldiers, and the other are games that try and cram in an anti-war message even if it's hippocritical, really what we're seeing here is simply an extension of what "Modern Warfare" did with it's anti-nuke message, or the whole no-russian mission, albiet extended throughout the entire game.
I've been of the opinion for a while that what we really need is something of a middle ground between the two extremes. That is to say a very clear definition of right and wrong, but one that exists in a "big picture" sense as opposed to a personal one. The thing is that with wartime atrocities and crimes people are taught that wars can be fought without those things, and typically with the context removed except "it's bad" or someone going insane/over the top as a motivating factor, rather than being shown that this is simply what war is, but sometimes it's a nessicary evil. We'll know you have the definitive war experience game, when you can exterminate an entire village of civilians and have it portrayed as a good thing and have the situation lead into properly so that the player begins to see how things are and that war is both hell, and sometimes a nessecity.
An example of what I'm talking about would be the World War II hero "Bomber" Harris. The guy bombed the crap out of the Axis during WWII, hitting both military and civilian targets for purposes of crippling infrastructure and morale. The guy was known to the Germans and their allies as "Butcher" Harris. The guy was not only totally sane, but also awarded pretty much every medal that could be thrown his way, including awards from the US (he was a Brit). He's known for quotes like "Right now I value the remaining population of every german city less than the life of a single British Grenadier" (or something very close to that). The guy is a war hero because we arguably won because of men like him, and arguably given his decorations and his adventures we might very well have lost without him since he was big time. The guy had kahunas of steel. AFTER the fact while we're all sitting down nice and safe behind our computers, WW II has been over for decades, and the only actual "wars" we've really known have actually been police actions (if long ones at times) against third world countries, without martial law being declared it's very easy to be critical and say what guys like this did were not appropriate or that we could have won without them, etc.
Basically when they finally make the game where you have normal combat interspaced with a message about the lack of differance between civilians supporting a nation/millitary and the actual military, the truth of a "if your not with us, your against us" mentality in these situations, and where you take down "soft" targets with the same predjudice as "hard" ones as part of the storyline without any kind of degenerative, monsterous "heart of darkness" type message, we'll have finally gotten to the point where it's being done right. A game that can convey (on the ground or otherwise) why a guy like "Bomber Harris" was nessicary and why he was awarded so many medals and honors, will capture the message I think we need to see. The basic truth being that one side's war heroes, are the other side's war criminals, it's just that the winners get to write the history books, and ultimatly what we want is to make sure that it's the good guys (or closest to it from your perspective, which generally means your side) in the big picture (as opposed to the smaller, on the ground picture) that do the writing when the smoke clears. Small scale morality, and ethical engagement doctrine are irrelevent, in a real war it's all about winning, since nobody cares about your moral position when your dead, the guys who killed you are going to present you as the devil anyway, and three generations down the road people are going to take it as gospel. Nobody remembers if you sacrificed a strategic target to spare a village/town of people who hated you because they weren't military, or how you didn't demoralize the enemey by targeting civilian factories/food production/etc... to put pressure on the enemey to surrender and cut overall supplies (there is massive strain when you have food riots by civilians while the military is trying to fight, or people swarming for protection when the military simply can't protect the populance in general due to the numbers, which crushes morale and ties up enemy resources keeping their civilians in line when they are running from you), nobody is going to care after the fact, the winner is not going to say "well, we're the bad guys", if nessicary they will just lie and say you murdered everyone anyway, and put it down in history that way. Even electronic records can be changed over a period of generations, and the winners might not believe in freedom electronically like we see now (censorship even on the internet is a big deal because like it or not, goverments CAN censor the internet if they aren't prevented from doing so through civil liberties and a guaranteed freeedom of speech, what can be done over a period of a few decades is shocking).
At any rate, I'm rambling, I know many people disagree with me. The point here is that having the "Apocolypse Now"/"Heart Of Darkness" of video games isn't surprising given the recent rambling about the state of war games over the last few years. I suppose that's pretty compelling if you have an overall attitude like Yahtzee's (where he goes off about pro-US war/shooter games, almost every time one comes up), but overall it's just par for the course. Time will tell if we ever see the media cover the reality of war properly. As much as people here might disagree with me, done properly I think a game or even a movie could frame what I'm saying in a way that makes it a lot more thought provoking, and the point I'm aiming at better, than one guy on the internet can do.
Frankly I think the problem right now is that war games, and media in general, come in two basic flavors. One of course is the cartoony "GI Joe" set up with clear white hats and black hats drawn by military affiliation, and duelling soldiers, and the other are games that try and cram in an anti-war message even if it's hippocritical, really what we're seeing here is simply an extension of what "Modern Warfare" did with it's anti-nuke message, or the whole no-russian mission, albiet extended throughout the entire game.
I've been of the opinion for a while that what we really need is something of a middle ground between the two extremes. That is to say a very clear definition of right and wrong, but one that exists in a "big picture" sense as opposed to a personal one. The thing is that with wartime atrocities and crimes people are taught that wars can be fought without those things, and typically with the context removed except "it's bad" or someone going insane/over the top as a motivating factor, rather than being shown that this is simply what war is, but sometimes it's a nessicary evil. We'll know you have the definitive war experience game, when you can exterminate an entire village of civilians and have it portrayed as a good thing and have the situation lead into properly so that the player begins to see how things are and that war is both hell, and sometimes a nessecity.
An example of what I'm talking about would be the World War II hero "Bomber" Harris. The guy bombed the crap out of the Axis during WWII, hitting both military and civilian targets for purposes of crippling infrastructure and morale. The guy was known to the Germans and their allies as "Butcher" Harris. The guy was not only totally sane, but also awarded pretty much every medal that could be thrown his way, including awards from the US (he was a Brit). He's known for quotes like "Right now I value the remaining population of every german city less than the life of a single British Grenadier" (or something very close to that). The guy is a war hero because we arguably won because of men like him, and arguably given his decorations and his adventures we might very well have lost without him since he was big time. The guy had kahunas of steel. AFTER the fact while we're all sitting down nice and safe behind our computers, WW II has been over for decades, and the only actual "wars" we've really known have actually been police actions (if long ones at times) against third world countries, without martial law being declared it's very easy to be critical and say what guys like this did were not appropriate or that we could have won without them, etc.
Basically when they finally make the game where you have normal combat interspaced with a message about the lack of differance between civilians supporting a nation/millitary and the actual military, the truth of a "if your not with us, your against us" mentality in these situations, and where you take down "soft" targets with the same predjudice as "hard" ones as part of the storyline without any kind of degenerative, monsterous "heart of darkness" type message, we'll have finally gotten to the point where it's being done right. A game that can convey (on the ground or otherwise) why a guy like "Bomber Harris" was nessicary and why he was awarded so many medals and honors, will capture the message I think we need to see. The basic truth being that one side's war heroes, are the other side's war criminals, it's just that the winners get to write the history books, and ultimatly what we want is to make sure that it's the good guys (or closest to it from your perspective, which generally means your side) in the big picture (as opposed to the smaller, on the ground picture) that do the writing when the smoke clears. Small scale morality, and ethical engagement doctrine are irrelevent, in a real war it's all about winning, since nobody cares about your moral position when your dead, the guys who killed you are going to present you as the devil anyway, and three generations down the road people are going to take it as gospel. Nobody remembers if you sacrificed a strategic target to spare a village/town of people who hated you because they weren't military, or how you didn't demoralize the enemey by targeting civilian factories/food production/etc... to put pressure on the enemey to surrender and cut overall supplies (there is massive strain when you have food riots by civilians while the military is trying to fight, or people swarming for protection when the military simply can't protect the populance in general due to the numbers, which crushes morale and ties up enemy resources keeping their civilians in line when they are running from you), nobody is going to care after the fact, the winner is not going to say "well, we're the bad guys", if nessicary they will just lie and say you murdered everyone anyway, and put it down in history that way. Even electronic records can be changed over a period of generations, and the winners might not believe in freedom electronically like we see now (censorship even on the internet is a big deal because like it or not, goverments CAN censor the internet if they aren't prevented from doing so through civil liberties and a guaranteed freeedom of speech, what can be done over a period of a few decades is shocking).
At any rate, I'm rambling, I know many people disagree with me. The point here is that having the "Apocolypse Now"/"Heart Of Darkness" of video games isn't surprising given the recent rambling about the state of war games over the last few years. I suppose that's pretty compelling if you have an overall attitude like Yahtzee's (where he goes off about pro-US war/shooter games, almost every time one comes up), but overall it's just par for the course. Time will tell if we ever see the media cover the reality of war properly. As much as people here might disagree with me, done properly I think a game or even a movie could frame what I'm saying in a way that makes it a lot more thought provoking, and the point I'm aiming at better, than one guy on the internet can do.