biosynth8
Well-known member
War is probably the main topic of video games in general. I'd like to see statistics on that, but I'm sure it surpasses any other topic by far. Yet, war is usually portrayed very badly, from the practical to the political aspects. Of course there are exceptions, mainly specialist games like Hearts of Iron. But how many games really show the fuitility of war? I recenlty played two of those and I think they show why it's not done more often.
The first one is The Great War: Western Front. It's not a well recieved game and I'm pretty sure that trying to depict the futility of war is one of the reasons. But being badly made in many areas doesn't help either.
In the game, you have classical wargame hex map of the western front where you can't do much more than move units around and spend ressources. The actual battles are fought in real time, with one of the main gimmicks being that trenches built once remain in the game for later use in another battle on the same map. So the more the war goes one, the more elaborate the network of defenses gets.
And that is the main point: You do fight over the same hex fields over and over again. Because the front doesn't move. Conquering a single tile of the map needs several decisive victories stringed together. That means you have to pile up a huge amount of ressouces and pray the enemy does not a) use that moment to counter-attack one of your weak points or b) pull just enough forces together that you don't win by a large enough margin.
So you don't conquer. The front doesn't move. Both you and the AI dig their heels in, build their defense infrastructure, research new weapons and sometimes attack.
Attack? What for when you can't gain any ground? Well, you have a big counter on top of the hex map showing the fighting spirit of your and your enemy's nation. Defeats always lower it - but only decent victories raise it. Lose too much men and it goes down anyway, just less than your enemy's.
And this is the core gameplay. You fight the same battles on the same maps over and over again. It’s tedious and boring. The gameplay of the real-time battles that seem to have overthrown everything we have learned about RTS gaming since the late 90s make you feel this even more: it’s prosaic. The mechanics make sure you can’t win without sacrificing hundreds of men, just to gain no visible advantage. Human wave saturation attacks are the most viable tactic, just like it was back then – and still seems to be. Until nobody wants to be sacrificed anymore.
I can’t think of a better depiction of WWI. It’s almost perfect and almost unplayable.
The other game is Hell is Us. It’s an third person action/puzzle game set in an isolated European country torn by civil war between two denominations of the same religion.
As tasteless as it sounds, one of the major selling points of the game is not to gloss over the atrocities commited in a war. And boy do they deliver. You not only hear about mass executions, weaponized rape and ethnic cleansing, the developers make absolutely sure that you see enough mass graves, lynced families and burned schools.
Often, the atrocites are stringed together so the player can no longer say who started it at all. Everyone is equally victim and guilty, from the civilians, to the soldiers and finally the politicians responsible for everything.
But here lies the first problem: Everyone is guilty of the same crimes. It would be hard to depict it in any other way. Saying one faction is more guilty than the other would make a political statement beyond „people make their own hell“. Since the two sides are compared to catholics and protestants even by characters in the game, that would make it even more difficult.
And this results in the second problem: In a game like this, who are you fighting for? You cannot take sides, if the hero is supposed to stay somewhat sympathetic. So you have to play an outsider and the developers were bound to add a third element, a supernatural force that you can oppose. They went even further by making the protagonist a sociopath who really takes no interest in the war.
The further you get to the end, the more the message seems get watered down. Major spoiler: In the end you even discover that there was a grand conspiracy and no side is actually responsible for starting the war. The war was just an a method to call the supernatural forces as it had been done for centuries before. At least you don’t get to save the world in the end.
In the end, I think the game kind of succeeds in showing how horrible war can be and how everyone becomes guilty at some point, but it does not really commit to it. You, yourself don’t become guilty. This couldn’t be done, since they would have had to tone down the severity of the atrocities otherwise. The developers had to compromise and it kind of worked, but it still feels a bit empty.
So all in all it comes down to a simple fact: Video games aren’t a very good way to depict war in a realistic way. You can try to show aspects of it, but you will always fail for gameplay reasons - otherwise, your game will fail.
The first one is The Great War: Western Front. It's not a well recieved game and I'm pretty sure that trying to depict the futility of war is one of the reasons. But being badly made in many areas doesn't help either.
In the game, you have classical wargame hex map of the western front where you can't do much more than move units around and spend ressources. The actual battles are fought in real time, with one of the main gimmicks being that trenches built once remain in the game for later use in another battle on the same map. So the more the war goes one, the more elaborate the network of defenses gets.
And that is the main point: You do fight over the same hex fields over and over again. Because the front doesn't move. Conquering a single tile of the map needs several decisive victories stringed together. That means you have to pile up a huge amount of ressouces and pray the enemy does not a) use that moment to counter-attack one of your weak points or b) pull just enough forces together that you don't win by a large enough margin.
So you don't conquer. The front doesn't move. Both you and the AI dig their heels in, build their defense infrastructure, research new weapons and sometimes attack.
Attack? What for when you can't gain any ground? Well, you have a big counter on top of the hex map showing the fighting spirit of your and your enemy's nation. Defeats always lower it - but only decent victories raise it. Lose too much men and it goes down anyway, just less than your enemy's.
And this is the core gameplay. You fight the same battles on the same maps over and over again. It’s tedious and boring. The gameplay of the real-time battles that seem to have overthrown everything we have learned about RTS gaming since the late 90s make you feel this even more: it’s prosaic. The mechanics make sure you can’t win without sacrificing hundreds of men, just to gain no visible advantage. Human wave saturation attacks are the most viable tactic, just like it was back then – and still seems to be. Until nobody wants to be sacrificed anymore.
I can’t think of a better depiction of WWI. It’s almost perfect and almost unplayable.
The other game is Hell is Us. It’s an third person action/puzzle game set in an isolated European country torn by civil war between two denominations of the same religion.
As tasteless as it sounds, one of the major selling points of the game is not to gloss over the atrocities commited in a war. And boy do they deliver. You not only hear about mass executions, weaponized rape and ethnic cleansing, the developers make absolutely sure that you see enough mass graves, lynced families and burned schools.
Often, the atrocites are stringed together so the player can no longer say who started it at all. Everyone is equally victim and guilty, from the civilians, to the soldiers and finally the politicians responsible for everything.
But here lies the first problem: Everyone is guilty of the same crimes. It would be hard to depict it in any other way. Saying one faction is more guilty than the other would make a political statement beyond „people make their own hell“. Since the two sides are compared to catholics and protestants even by characters in the game, that would make it even more difficult.
And this results in the second problem: In a game like this, who are you fighting for? You cannot take sides, if the hero is supposed to stay somewhat sympathetic. So you have to play an outsider and the developers were bound to add a third element, a supernatural force that you can oppose. They went even further by making the protagonist a sociopath who really takes no interest in the war.
The further you get to the end, the more the message seems get watered down. Major spoiler: In the end you even discover that there was a grand conspiracy and no side is actually responsible for starting the war. The war was just an a method to call the supernatural forces as it had been done for centuries before. At least you don’t get to save the world in the end.
In the end, I think the game kind of succeeds in showing how horrible war can be and how everyone becomes guilty at some point, but it does not really commit to it. You, yourself don’t become guilty. This couldn’t be done, since they would have had to tone down the severity of the atrocities otherwise. The developers had to compromise and it kind of worked, but it still feels a bit empty.
So all in all it comes down to a simple fact: Video games aren’t a very good way to depict war in a realistic way. You can try to show aspects of it, but you will always fail for gameplay reasons - otherwise, your game will fail.
