Xeonidus said: Ugh, I guess if EA did make it sympathetic to Nazis, it wouldn't count as being political to him? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

I suppose the point they're trying to make -- albeit in a super eye rolling way -- is that they'd rather see a straight portrayal of German soldiers fighting for what they believe in, and let that story speak for itself. EA have a nasty history of not having the spine to let people play as "bad guys" and carry that through to the end. In Syndicate 2012, you betray the evil Eurocorp because reasons. In Battlefront II, you betray the Empire because... reasons.The basic problem with EA's approach to these kind of topics is that they always seem to operate on the assumption that every single story where you're placed in the boots of "the bad guys" must have an emotional heel-turn midway through. With no variations.For instance, you're not gonna see a WWII game from EA where American soldiers have a "Are we really the good guys in this situation?" moment. These mass market WWII stories are ultimately unable to break free of their black and white "forces of good triumphing over the great darkness that threatens free people everywhere" vibe. At best they'll play the "Not all Germans were bad people card" as CoD: WWII did in one of the main cutscenes. The card they've very uncomfortable about even holding up the light is the "All the good guys were involved in horrific atrocities at one point or another," card. That's the one people don't want to hear at all. War games have always had this problem of glossing over the horror of war. It creates a skewed moral underpinning. The glossing over has become so invisible that people don't notice it. It only really comes up when you are playing as "the bad guys". If you make a game where you play German soldiers and you don't commit any atrocities, people will say, "You're trying to paint Nazis in a sympathetic light." But if you play a WWII game where you play Americans, nobody notices if you leave out all the raping and pillaging and massacres and all that stuff. In fact, if you showed WWII as it truly was, people on the internet would be screaming about how you've produced propaganda that dishonors the fallen and such.We have a very twisted relationship with the history of war where we believe we were the forces of light banishing the forces of darkness. And that's a theme war games in love to play upon. These brave, morally pure American soldiers fighting the forces of who just want darkness and tyranny for everyone. When was the last time you saw American soldiers massacring civilians or raping people in a mass market war game? I can't remember a single incident. That's reflective of how sanitized videogame portrayals of war are compared to film. Even videogames set in Vietnam don't show the widespread massacre of civilians by the "good guys". Films have unflinchingly portrayed this over the decades. Videogames need to grow up a bit. A decade or so ago, it seemed like war games were gonna grow up and start really delving into the bitter shitshow of war. But Call of Duty became super, super popular with casual console audiences around 2007, so after Call of Duty: World at War in 2008 where you played Russians and slaughtered unarmed people and such, the series very quickly regressed towards something very US-centric, and very flattering in its potrayal of USA! USA! USA! Call of Duty: WWII is obscenely glib in its saccharine portrayal of the morality and fundamental substance of war. Everyone's morally pure to a fault on the good guy's side, and everyone is comically evil on the bad guy's side.Battlefield, to its credit, has been more nuanced in modern conflicts -- Battlefield 4 has a very sensitive portrayal of China and the Chinese army that paints them as brave soldiers fighting American forces they believe were responsible for the death of a beloved politician. Although one can point out that publishers being sensitive towards China is one half nuanced writing and one half not wanting to piss off China.Ultimately, these games should seek to be truthful. Truthful to the characters, their motivations, and the twisted nature of war and what it does to people. The darkness in every human heart. Still, it remains to be seen how this mission is actually executed. After all, we're basing these assumptions on a PR blurb. But WWII games in particular have a problem with being honest about war because there's so much desperate "We were the good guys, honest!" self-assuring baggage attached to that miserable conflict.Just look at how defensive people get over Churchill. Man was a terrible racist who wanted to mass murder the people of India. But because he kept the evils of Nazism at bay, there's this, "But he was a good guy!" mentality.