The History Thread!

Thanks. Of course in that period it was actually the US that was stealing British trade secrets. As I recall we got access to British textile mill technology because one of the engineers emigrated and just drew up the plans from memory.

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

Call of Duty WW2 devs feel it's important to make distinctions between the Heer and the SS.

We're still doing this shit?

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

No need for such distinction, we shot and killed both the same.

Inter arma enim silent leges

Angelus: It is about playing as the Germans.

Who watches the watchmen?

Oh.

That ship has sailed a long time ago.

Even in War Thunder you see wanna be Nazis playing nothing but Germany and wishing they had won WWII.

Clean Wehrmacht my pale Jewish ass.

edited 29th Apr '17 5:22:18 PM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges

Wehraboos flood every WW-2 related game from Call of Duty to War Thunder to Red Orchestra. There's no real point in getting worked up or attempting to stem them.

edited 29th Apr '17 5:02:31 PM by MonsieurThenardier

"It is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just."

I mean it makes sense to distinguish the two for logical reasons. Thing is the whole clean Wehrmacht myth.

A smarter game could play up the inter-service rivalry between the Heer and the SS between the more aristocratic officers sneering towards the populist-bent SS but then, over the course of the campaign, more or less show they both have blood on their hands and all the Heer's attempts to take the high ground are more or less bullshit.

Call of Duty is not a smarter game.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

I'm mostly pissed less because we're returning to late-war Europe (c'mon, an early-war game anyone?), but because we're going to be following the same old White Male Protagonist that dominates most if not all WWII shooters.

I mean, say what you will about EA's business practices, but at least Battlefield 1 prominently featured African-American and female Arab protagonists.

We're now stuck with the cliched band of white brothers in the 1st Infantry Division, with the player character being a good old boy from Texas who must learn to rise above being a New Meat and becoming a heroic Grizzled Veteran. Nice story, but it's been done way too many times to be entertaining by this point in time.

Could anyone imagine the plot and character development that could have gone with a campaign centered around Japanese-Americans in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team? Hell, they'd actually be even better candidates for a Call of Duty game because of how damningly Reality Is Unrealistic their unit history was - the 442nd was called the "Purple Heart Battalion" for good reason you know.

Imagine playing as young men who were forced from their homes and lost everything in their civilian lives as they were sent to concentration (yes, let's call them what they were) camps. Yet they ultimately came to fight bravely for a country that openly discriminated against them and saw them as second-class citizens for their race.

That would be the WWII game campaign of the year.

@Heer vs SS. From my understanding it's not so much the Wehrmacht was clean, but that the SS was so dirty. As for the new game, I'm conflicted, on the one hand I'm pissed at all the lost opportunities, I've always wanted too see a game about the Fall of France for some reason. And setting it during the last two years?!! Come on that leave so much shit out. It makes even less sense if your talking about the first infantry division, which saw action in both North Africa and Sicily. It's obvious they just wanted to do band of Brothers but with the Normandy Beach scene from Saving Private Ryan. On the other hand my Grandfather was part of the First Infantry division, so I kind of feel obligated to support this game, though he was part of the artillery, which is hardly ever never featured in media about the war.

Edit: Or how about the Gurkhas? Military geeks love them, and yet we've never seen a single game about them. Or how about the Poles, so we have a portrayal of the Eastern Front without giving Russia a positive portrayal post 2016 interference.

Edit 2: Apparently the game will also feature British Tommy's and French resistance fighters.

edited 29th Apr '17 6:12:30 PM by JackOLantern1337

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

Which was bullshit. Should've had a French protagonist and made the Americans DLC, and probably removed the Bedouin campaign for a glance at the Eastern Front. You already had an Ottoman-centric campaign in the form of the Gallipoli missions.

Please no. We've had enough of that meme. Can we have a campaign for one of the actually relevant resistance movements instead? Like the partisans in Yugoslavia, that campaign was insane.

edited 29th Apr '17 7:00:12 PM by MonsieurThenardier

"It is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just."

The reality is that if you're playing as a member of the Axis you're going to be playing as a member of an army with a long, long list of war crimes. The Wehrmacth and IJA are both littered with genocidal assholery, and the Italians only look good comparatively; what they did in Ethiopia and against the Libyan rebels was still atrocious and not just by the modern standard. The developers should just say "you're playing as a terrible human being". Seriously, embrace it. Don't try to pretend it away.

The reality is that those campaigns don't sell. France isn't a large market and most Americans would think any portrayal of the French that does not show them as cowardly collaborators was PC appeasement. And after 2016 I really don't want Russia to get any more positive coverage. An Ottoman Campaign where you kill Anzacs will get your game banned in Australia, but then just about everything is.

Edit: Most Americans, who these games are meant for, don't remember Yugoslavia exists, and the ones who do remember it as a genocidal hellhole locked in constant civl war.

Maybe make them a dark mirror to the typical Cod player. I picture a scene around a camp fire where a bunch of Nazi's are laughing and telling the cruelest sort of jokes, maybe something like the scene in the A Song of Ice and Fire series where Gregor's men are telling a "funny" story about how he raped a 13 year old. The only problem would be that some people wouldn't get the joke. Actually these characters would probably be icons for the alt riech (see what I did their). Better to just slaughter Nazi's. I'm pretty sure Richard Spencer counts that as a microagression at least.

edited 29th Apr '17 11:00:51 PM by JackOLantern1337

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

Were there any situations where the Heer was forced to retreat due to the SS' incompetence?

From ShitWehraboosSay: How to depict the IJA WWII experience in the Pacific.

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot

You plan a clever infiltration assault, which works out great until everyone else screams "BANZAI!".

You: AHO OMAE!?

Honestly, it would be interesting to see the world through the eyes of a fanatic Tennoist.

edited 30th Apr '17 4:08:04 AM by TerminusEst

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

I think you could make a great gut-punch moment out of a sequence in which your silent protagonist witnesses the wisecracking squadmates you've spent most of the game with shooting partisans or rounding up prisoners on a train labeled 'Dachau.'

Just to drive home that, yes, the Wehrmacht was in this shit along with the SS.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Night attacks and light infantry infiltration tactics were key parts of IJA doctrine and not something that any soldier would be likely to screw up. Honestly the image of them as barely-sapient barbarians with spears and no tactic other than Zerg Rush and suicide bombing is pretty overblown.

"It is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just."

Didn't think anybody would actually buy into it, let alone have an image like that.

edited 30th Apr '17 12:49:28 PM by TerminusEst

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

The problem with this kind of tactics is how easily FUBAR they get once someone notices that something is wrong and once that happens you have not much of a choice but to charge while you still have the surprise element.

Same thing in Korea, those Chinese infantry charges were supposed to be mass light infantry infiltration tactics, well that is until someone kept seeing something move in the dark and asked an illumination shell be fired from a mortar or an air patrol just happened to pass by.

Inter arma enim silent leges

Doesn't that apply to any tactic/operation/strategy though?
(Like the impression I got from Soviet Storm was that Bagration had at least half a dozen things waiting to go wrong—or rather that went ridiculously right in order to work).

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

As the old saying goes, 'the winner of a war is the side that makes the fewest mistakes.'

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

I ran into a genuinely surprising piece of information, these are the ancient occult texts that Dan Brown is paying to digitize and make free for all

Should be ready soon.

edited 9th May '17 9:35:02 AM by TerminusEst

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

World's last living Nazi war crimes prosecutor passes on chilling message about conflict.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Terminus: Hot damn.

Yeah that Nazi hunter article was just depressing.

Who watches the watchmen?

A War College podcast on the strange days when the CIA, Pentagon and others worked on psychics.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2MOAj1Dmfc

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.