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Kotaku bitching about CoD Vanguard - it's too woke, apparently, to the point it defies history ... *SPOILERS*

Cyberpunkd

Cyberpunkd

Member
OneShotThrill said:
Kotaku is fucking clown shoes. Im not a fan of Vanguard myself and I think the ww2 alternate history schtick is cheesy but Kotaku literally bitches about everything for clicks. Theyre the reason we get nonsense like Vanguard
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Create a controversy, then exploit it. You win no matter what.

Sigourney Weaver Movie GIF
 
Catphish

Catphish

Member
I agree with the basis of the article in that WWII was an event that deserves more respect than what Vanguard gives it. The full spectrum of humanity was on display in that war, from legendary heroism to unthinkable cruelty, often by each side, and the resulting suffering is, in my opinion, never something to be forgotten in the name of profit.

As much as I’m enjoying the multiplayer gameplay of Vanguard, I do believe it has no respect whatsoever for the source event. It’s taken the greatest tragedy of human history and turned it into a modern-day, socially-catered theme park.

Watch some historical footage of Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, the Rape of Nanking, the London Blitz, the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden, the obliteration of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, or the purging and massacre of the Jews, and then play some Vanguard. Then tell me with a straight face that this game deserves to exist.

Kotaku is still a fucking joke, however. They’re as much to blame for this bullshit as anyone else, and are complete laughable hypocrites to complain about this now.
 
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Dr. Claus

Dr. Claus

Banned
EDMIX said:
lol true, but funny enough some of the same people attacking their point now, argued a lot of those same dumb points against BFV, as to why anyone even brought that game up. They argued this whole "historically accurate" shit and its from a fucking video game that has never argued the point of it was to actually be some history lesson. People kept bitching about it and making it sound like some real "outrage" and their feelings are hurt over the "rewriting of history" in a video game lol

Kotaku makes an article like this and suddenly NeoGaf remembers videos games are fake? They are works of fiction? The fuck? I even cited Call Of Duty years ago when people kept trying to make that whole fake outrage thing over BFV, they'd bring up the Call Of Duty WWII game as if that was some history lesson, we needed to remind them it has fucking zombies and clearly they did not happen in real life.

So I think what Kotaku is saying is fucking stupid... but I thought that of some of the same in this very forum when they kept making it sound like BFV was suppose to be a replacement for a fucking history lesson even with no history of the series ever doing this or suggesting this or something.



lol that goes to show you just how easily people will fall for shit if you pander to them. Even Kotaku, if the just say anything that favors some side, even the most hardcore people against them will be like "well they make a good point bro, all is forgiven, Kotaku is life" lol

My stance since BFV has remind.

This is a fucking fake video game, its not a history lesson. They got shit like robot dogs, zombies and shit lol
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It was already explained to you back then, but you seem to love keeping your head in the sand, EDMIX.

The issue with BFV wasn’t that it decided to put a spin on history, but they claimed they were going to give real untold stories the time to shine. Stories that actually happened and treat the war with respect. Which they didn’t do. They genderbent real people, dismissed the actions of brave men and women, and outright lied about stories that occured to push their personal political beliefs. Then they attacked the community when they fought back against the blatant fake advertising.

In Vanguard, they outright stated that it isn’t following history, but an alternative spin. The vast majority of people are fine with this as they didn’t outright lie to the consumers about what the product would be.

I get that you don’t give a shit and just want to play games, which I can understand and even respect - but what I don’t respect is the blatant mischaracterization of the arguments that were pushed.
 
EDMIX

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
Claus Grimhildyr said:
It was already explained to you back then, but you seem to love keeping your head in the sand, EDMIX.

The issue with BFV wasn’t that it decided to put a spin on history, but they claimed they were going to give real untold stories the time to shine. Stories that actually happened and treat the war with respect. Which they didn’t do. They genderbent real people, dismissed the actions of brave men and women, and outright lied about stories that occured to push their personal political beliefs. Then they attacked the community when they fought back against the blatant fake advertising.

In Vanguard, they outright stated that it isn’t following history, but an alternative spin. The vast majority of people are fine with this as they didn’t outright lie to the consumers about what the product would be.

I get that you don’t give a shit and just want to play games, which I can understand and even respect - but what I don’t respect is the blatant mischaracterization of the arguments that were pushed.
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1. They are both video games, not history books. No one should have expected anything odd like any of that shit in such games lol

and BFV stated something about "inspired" by real places and events, they never made any claims about the stories themselves being "real untold stories" etc, nothing like that even remotely, most of theses games don't do that, in fact it would be pretty hard to find even a few that literally tell you verbatim some real exact biopick or something lol

I think people took the whole "inspired" by comment and deeply exaggerated it.

This is a video game with people jumping out of planes with C4 landing on tanks and shit lol So I don't recall them ever making it sound like it was some 1.1 retelling of a 100% real thing. A real place, a real event....sure, but I don't believe they ever made it sound like some biography or something odd like that as legally they are not going to say some shit like that. In fact, they even state themselves "real places and events" and "using fictional situations".

www.ea.com

The War Stories of Battlefield V

Witness human drama set against global conflict.
www.ea.com www.ea.com

Even the people that liked it, state its fictional..

kotaku.com

Battlefield V's Singleplayer Is A Nice Surprise

Given the game’s bizarre debut trailer, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I sat down with Battlefield V’s singleplayer game mode.
kotaku.com kotaku.com

"These off-the-beaten-path tales, of lesser-known theatres of the greatest war in human history, acknowledge their fictional nature up-front. None of these stories are meant as a literal re-telling"

People who hated it state its fictional.

www.polygon.com

Battlefield 5’s single-player story left me feeling disappointed

Big ambitions fail to deliver a fresh experience
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com

"No matter how carefully these fictional characters are rendered and written, sooner or later they are likely to start charging through barracks or an air base or a gun emplacement, slaying dozens of enemies with a righteous blaze of high-caliber weapons."

I mean dear god, they even fucking tell you as clearly as can be told they put "fun over Authentic". For fuck sakes, you telling me they are trying to make something seem real, yet tell you its fucking fictional, tell you they put fun over "Authentic" etc, they seem to be doing a shit job at telling you its a real 1.1 retelling bud. You seem to be arguing for that more then DICE and EA themselves at this point

https://wccftech.com/dice-well-always-put-fun-over-authentic/

Should have never been some assumption on this shit when even the people making the game are telling you this. You want that to be the narrative to argue about sir, but you can't really state EA or DICE wanted that to be the case when their comments say the very opposite.

So its up to you to prove that DICE, EA etc were trying to tell you this was 100% a biography of sorts, 1.1 or something like that. I think it was understood by many that it was about a real event, in a real place...about something competely fictional lol That is what MOST of theses games are and I don't recall reading anything about DICE wishing to do an exact retelling verbatim, 1.1 or anything odd like that, I'd surprised if you can find anyone from that company making such claims. You going to fucking tell me the jetpacks in 1942 was put in there cause DICE wanted you to believe that really happened then or maybe this is just a video game? lol I think many of you created this narrative more then even DICE and more then even the others that hated the single player.

I even hate the single players enough to never really play them, but I never stated it had to do with some history thing as I'm pretty sure its been known that they are works of fiction, so I don't know how you can "lie" to someone and yet openly they are saying up front in English sir they put "fun over authentic". That was stated BEFORE the game came out, so how can they claim its this real exact thing and day liiiiieeeed yet tell you they put fun over authentic? Sounds like you want it to be the case, I see no evidence that it is, like zero. So when you state something like "In Vanguard, they outright stated that it isn’t following history", DICE out right states its not authentic, they put fun over that, its fictional, inspired by etc, keep that same energy, why the fuck did you ignore all of that by DICE? I recall an outrage that they didn't want to be authentic, now you fucking telling me an outrage that they are lie about being authentic even when them saying otherwise themselves? The massive lolz.


edit. shit they BOTH tell you they are "inspired by"

www.nme.com

‘Call of Duty: Vanguard’ release date, beta, cheating and everything we know so far

Here’s everything you need to know about ‘Call of Duty: Vanguard’, when you can play it, how to get into the betas, and more.
www.nme.com www.nme.com

You simply choose to pretend 1 told you something the other didn't when both actually state lots of the same things...
 
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EDMIX

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
celsowmbr said:
I wondering if someday they will create a CoD: American Civil War.
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I hope the same for Battlefield.

1 day.....soon lol

These muthafuckas running out of wars lol

I need a mode where they duel. Like in any regular MP match, if someone is able to slap you like a bitch, you need to 1v1 them after the match is done and you have 24 hours to respond or you lose your respect and or honor points.

turn_duel.png



They going to be out here with fucking Wig DLCs and shit lol

So I feel a civil war and American Revolutionary war COD and BF is inevitable at this point.

Halo is Back Halo is Back Well I disagree. Artistic liberties sir. They can disregard many things to make it actually fun and I'd have no issue with it what so ever as they don't need to make it 1.1 to make it exist, COD has fucking zombies for god sakes, they can have a weapons look, yet make it feel different to keep it fun.

I think it can work and I expect them to do one in the future.
 
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Halo is Back

Halo is Back

Member
EDMIX said:
I hope the same for Battlefield.

1 day.....soon lol

These muthafuckas running out of wars lol

I need a mode where they duel. Like in any regular MP match, if someone is able to slap you like a bitch, you need to 1v1 them after the match is done and you have 24 hours to respond or you lose your respect and or honor points.

turn_duel.png



They going to be out here with fucking Wig DLCs and shit lol

So I feel a civil war and American Revolutionary war COD and BF is inevitable at this point.
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I would be down for another BF Vietnam. Might be cool to see COD centered on Vietnam too.
 
EDMIX

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
Halo is Dead said:
I would be down for another BF Vietnam. Might be cool to see COD centered on Vietnam too.
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I like how we both thought of that lol

I was literally going to post that they'll likely do Vietnam before they do this. Soon. I feel its more likely on the way then a Civil War or American Revolution war etc
 
Men_in_Boxes

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
The good news is that the word "woke" seems to be spoiling in the wider culture. More and more radical leftists don't want to be associated with that word.
 
R

Rival

Gold Member
I read about four paragraphs of that nonsense before my brain started to hurt. Kotaku isn’t much more than a big wet smelly turd of a website and I’m honestly surprised anyone would read any of their articles. They’ve been the worst for a long time.
 
CGiRanger

CGiRanger

Banned
I feel like this is more of Kotaku taking a dump on the unpopular Activision instead of being at all genuinely being upset at "too much woke". And from what I'm reading, it's because it isn't the "right kind of woke" for them.
 
AV

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
zeorhymer said:
Funny how it was the leftists weirdos that coined the term.
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They didn't coin it, it's been around since the early 20th century. It was hijacked and bastardised and now it's a pejorative.
 
Drizzlehell

Drizzlehell

Banned
I recently watched some random video on YT when researching this game and was taken aback when some dude started moaning about historical revisionism or whatever.

And I guess you could make an argument that the game telling a story about a motley crew of diverse characters does smell a little bit of tokenism and pandering but I think a lot of comments like that are made under the misguided belief that characters like those portrayed in the game didn't exist at all. Which is incorrect. They absolutely existed. Maybe you could argue that them banding together like in the game is far fetched, but individually it's a historical fact that women snipers were a pretty common thing in the Soviet army, and that there were black soldiers fighting in WWII.

So I'd say that the writers just took a bit of creative freedom to tell a fictional story set in a historical setting but they didn't really pull stuff out of their arse to tell it. If you really wanna get upset over realism, then let's talk about those stupid gun modifications and skins...
 
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lefty1117

lefty1117

Gold Member
Aw who gives a shit, come on it's just a fictional game in a historical backdrop, just enjoy it for what it is - an action packed fictional story. People need to relax, this grievance culture thing has gotten way out of hand.
 
ToTTenTranz

ToTTenTranz

Banned
I don't get the hate this article is getting.
Sure, Kotaku has been terrible for the past ~8 years. But can we really complain about Kotaku being complicit to woke cancel culture in gaming and then complain again about what seems to be a relatively sane PoV?

I'll look at this as steering the ship the right direction, even if Kotaku is partly to blame for Activision/Sledgehammer going this way.
Should they have written this exact same opinion piece on Battlefield V? Of course they should, but IMO a wrong doesn't nullify a right.
 
TGO

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Well it definitely likes it's cutscenes
I think there's more cutscenes then gameplay
Oh and Nazis are racist apparently
Who would have thought 🤔
 
Sinthor

Sinthor

Gold Member
Nickolaidas said:

A misguided attempt to rewrite history for the better demeans those involved​


The original Call Of Duty, released 18 years ago, was a game that gave a shit about the Second World War. To play it today (and you should, it remains excellent) is to experience fear, disorganization, confusion, and horror. A bunch of barely-trained teenagers are thrown into a situation beyond their comprehension, trying not to be killed by another bunch of barely-trained teeangers. It, and its first sequel, remain extraordinary depictions of the horror of war, based on the anecdotes of those who survived it.
Call Of Duty: Vanguard’s campaign, released last week, is a game that couldn’t give a shit about the Second World War. To play it today (and you shouldn’t, it’s dreadful) is to see the conflict used as a backdrop for a woefully inept attempt at exploiting the valuable notion of a diverse, modern-minded game. A clandestine group of the world’s most elite soldiers attempt to infiltrate the Gestapo, before uncovering conspiratorial gibberish akin to the plot of a Wolfenstein game. And it is very little fun to play.
As the franchise returns to its WWII origins, it’s absolutely fascinating—and deeply demoralizing—to see just how much its sensibilities have so radically changed. While the worst excesses of the COD campaigns were firmly established many years ago, they are far more starkly and grimly revealed when more easily comparable with the series’ own heritage. But the extremes to which it goes to fail to be progressive in any meaningful sense are even more spectacular.

Activision’s series is, without question, extraordinarily successful. A multi-billion dollar franchise, dominating mainstream sales every year, primarily bought for its multiplayer, and depicted with world-leading graphics. That it even bothers with its campaigns any more is surprising, let alone that it spends hundreds of millions of dollars, hires A-list Hollywood actors, and crafts dozens of photorealistic cutscenes. All for six hours of following some impossibly elite NPCs through increasingly tight, generic corridors.

Vanguard continues the trend, focused on a secret group of best-of-the-best soldiers, via a combination of shallow, dreary target ranges and astonishing tech. The cutscenes are a phenomenon of art. I have never, ever seen graphics like these, locations that look photorealistic, characters so meticulously, perfectly created that despite occasionally looking as if they were filmed, somehow avoid the uncanny valley. They are, visually, a masterpiece. And they are all for absolutely nothing.

There’s not a moment of intrigue, pathos, wit, surprise, even rudimentary drama. The story of “Task Force One” is made of empty, tedious sequences, where moustache-twirling Nazis sneer vindictively at stoic, unbreakable Allied soldiers, one where people look momentarily a bit sad at the deaths of their loved ones, before gritting their teeth and carrying on. It all looks a bit like war movies you’ve enjoyed, whether that’s Saving Private Ryan or Downfall, and Activision so clearly believes that this was all that was needed. Remind players of something bombastic or dramatic, and then assume the work is done.
What was once a series about the brutal, tragic reality for the war’s infantry has become a bizarro-world power fantasy about its greatest imaginary heroes. And with this, ironically, it has lost all its power, all its ability to say anything of worth. This latest entry’s narrative is only about how desperately it wants to ride the zeitgeist of progressive representation, without ever giving a moment’s thought to just how poorly it rewrites the reality of marginalized people involved in the war.

Call Of Duty: Vanguard is all about a time-travelling group of six elite soldiers, sent back to the 1940s to save the war effort. Now, I should say this is not explicitly stated, but there’s no other workable explanation for this wokest group of sensitivity-trained, progressive millennials to exist in the time period. They’re there to thwart the Nazis in the very tail-end of the war, to infiltrate Gestapo HQ and secure some secret files on conspiratorial nonsense Project Phoenix, and spread their message of tolerance.
Let me attempt to dissuade the notion that I’m some sort of alt-right whingebag, and unequivocally state that I am delighted to see a multi-billion dollar franchise centering a Black man as its lead character. There was a time when major publishers truly believed that featuring a person of color most prominently on their box art would be a sales disaster, and while he’s teeny-tiny on Vanguard’s plastic case, he is the one nearest the front. That’s important. Meanwhile, the role of people of color, of women, of basically not-white-men in the Second World War has been grossly underrepresented across all media, and kudos to Activision for attempting to step up. Except, well...
Rather than attempt to actually confront any of the relevant issues that would have been faced by anyone at the time, the game instead takes the most pusillanimous route possible. You’ll never believe this, but, right, the Nazis were pretty racist. I know! The game’s cartoon villains snarl their bigotry, while our heroes are all dreadfully offended on behalf of each other. We know the Germans are the baddies, because they’re the naughty racist ones. The very notion would never cross the indefectible minds of any of the Allied characters.
Things venture more daringly when it comes to sexism, because of course they do. The female character, a Russian sniper, gets to say, “Because I’m a WOMAN?!” most of the times she gets a line, and here the game is so brave as to put some of the misogyny into the mouths of her teammates. Sorry, not mouths, mouth. The Australian one. Because we all know they’re a bit like that, eh? Them and their Sheilas. Bunch of drongos.

In its desperate attempts to avoid controversy, the game grabs at armfuls of it, and then defies reality in response. Having a Black British soldier take the lead demands so much interesting commentary, of which there is absolutely none. At the time of WWII, there were no more than 10,000 Black people living in Britain, in a population of 46 million. And while Britain was a relatively more tolerant country at the start of the war, initially very welcoming to the 150,000 Black American soldiers arriving in the U.K., in 1942 the British government directed that “it was desirable that the people of this country should avoid becoming too friendly with coloured troops.”
The British, sometimes reluctantly, started to integrate the segregation America brought with it when 1.5 million U.S. troops arrived in the country. Formerly integrated businesses introduced segregation in order to maintain white American soldiers’ custom. America imported its own brand of racism to Britain during the time this game so flagrantly pretends none of it was an issue.
Meanwhile, Britain itself was spectacularly awful. Some 600,000 Black troops were recruited from Africa and the West Indies, brought to fight for the country, and then immediately sent back once the war was over, with one-third of the bonus paid to white soldiers. And while Britain was surprisingly lacking in racism during the war years (although institutionally, more often as a matter of convenience), it quickly stepped up once the effort was over, with tidal waves of discrimination arriving.
Black British soldiers like Vanguard’s Arthur Kingsley have been grossly underrepresented by history books and war movies. There was Johnny Smythe (on whom I suspect Kingsley is partially based), Ulric Cross (who is likely also a source), Sidney Cornell (from whom Activision says they drew inspiration), and Billy Strachan, but that we know them by name is perhaps indicative of how unusual it was to see Black soldiers in prominent positions. That Vanguard acknowledges this, makes an amalgamation of these real people into its lead character, is wonderful. But it does it with so much fear, such clear terror of criticism, that it ends up just feeling uninterested.
Private Sidney Cornell was a runner, his primary role in the war to parachute in and deliver messages. He was an astonishingly brave man, and an incredible war hero, wounded in action four times, regularly injured while running through machine gun fire to ensure vital messages reached their destination. For this he was given the Distinguished Conduct Medal, and promoted to Sergeant, with an extraordinary citation. He went on to face a great deal more combat, until he was killed aged 29, in 1945, when a couple of 15-year-old German soldiers blew up a bridge. His is a story that deserves telling. (It almost was, but sadly a film about him seems to have vanished during the pandemic.)
Kingsley is…I have genuinely no idea. His flashback mission sees him assume authority in the middle of a battle, to no objection from anyone, based on nothing at all. He seems like a very nice guy, and is extremely well voiced by Chiké Okonkwo, but there’s never any clue what path he took to being in charge, how he became recognized as one of the most elite, and certainly not a single glimpse of any racism, let alone even hesitation, he might have faced at any time in his army career. That’s all left to those boo-hiss Nazis. Which is a lovely idea, but not the reality of any soldier of color. Vanguard is so deeply in denial that its idealistic fantasy just feels disingenuous, dishonest.

Elsewhere the game attempts to have its cake and shoot at it, with its incredibly clumsy inclusion of America’s 93rd Division. Rather than saying anything meaningful about racism, about the abysmal treatment of Black American soldiers for instance, it glosses over the entire matter. Its effort to portray Black Americans’ role in the war, with the 93rd Division fighting in Japan, exists only to teach the bolshy white American player character (Wade Jackson) a valuable life lesson. I cannot stress enough how woefully this is done: It’s not all daredevil stunts in the sky, Wade, but about getting muddy on the ground too. As if that was what made the experience unique to Black infantry divisions. “Down there,” we’re narrated, “he learned the only way to win was to have each others’ backs.” And if that weren’t already the most patronizing, end-of-He-Man lesson from the wizard, in doing so it reduces the role of this division to being there to teach the white man the error of his ways. These simple folk, fighting in the mud, have so much to teach us. It leans about as far into the Noble Savage trope as you could imagine.
The whole game reeks of “even though”ism. “Even though she’s a woman…” “Even though he’s a Black man…” Rather than saying anything honest, its painful attempts to be right-on, to do everything short of punching a fist in the air and shouting “BLACK LIVES MATTER!” or “GIRL POWER!”, make it all far more offensive. There’s no truth here, but instead an attempt to wokewash history, make it feel palatable and progressive, thereby denying the reality of those it so grimly patronizes.

Activision has made much of how the characters in the game are “based on” real-life soldiers. Russian sniper, Lieutenant Polina Petrova, is based on several different Russian women, for instance, “whose confirmed kill count was in the hundreds.” But this only makes where the game ends up going even worse. Because—and if you can call anything that occurs in this half-assed drivel a spoiler then be warned—by the end things enter such a realm of stupid fantasy that it demeans anyone by whom they were inspired.
Because the “twist” at the end of this campaign reveals that after Hitler’s death, the game’s fictional baddy, SS officer Hermann Wenzel Freisinger, steps up to be the new Führer. He always thought Hitler was too weak, and now he can finally instigate his secret plan, the Fourth Reich. I’m not fucking kidding. He plans to take over the world with all his secret projects, including psychic super-soldiers, but fortunately our heroes all step up to boss-fight this previously unknown Ultro Hitler to death. It is genuinely surprising he doesn’t don a giant robot suit.

Even without this weird-ass progressive rewriting of history, it would still be an atrociously written game. Dialogue is the most hackneyed rubbish from start to finish, with lines as clichéd as, “But if you fly too close to the sun, eventually your wings will get burnt,” delivered as if they’re groundbreaking insight. It’s incessant. There’s a scene where someone is injured on the field, and attended by a fellow soldier. “Your bedside manner sucks,” says the wounded man, oh-so humorously. His buddy replies, “I don’t want you bleeding out and missing all the fun.” Where do they get these ideas from?!
Moments later a character being tortured utters, “You tried to break me, but you failed.” Just how did a room of writers get to that line and say, “Yup, we’re there!”
My focus here is so heavily on the narrative, because what you actually do is almost a parody of the descent of this franchise. Where 2003’s Call Of Duty has you free to explore its open areas, even allowing you to run and hide to escape the terrifying combat, Vanguard’s very first mission immediately flashed up a warning on screen that I’d ventured three paces too far to the left, and should I not return to the prescribed route I would be killed. I was chasing an enemy soldier.
So often during the game your actions—following the enemy, hiding behind the path a tank is taking, going over to a building to look for enemies—result in your being angrily told to get back to your mark. And that’s only in the very rare areas that aren’t literally walled corridors, not even giving the illusion that you might be able to go left or right if you wanted to.
As ever, the NPCs want to play the game instead of you, unless it’s about killing the enemy. Constantly shoving to the front, and when they can’t, literally teleporting ahead, your place is always at the back. They have to get there first so they can…not do anything. They all stand next to the German soldiers like old friends, oblivious to how these opponents are shooting only at you with psychic precision.
Get in the route of a teammate’s scripted pathway and they’ll genuinely push you out of their way. I was shoved out of windows, pushed into the path of tanks, pinned against doors while being shot at. It’s just embarrassingly bad. For the majority of the game, between shooting through the pop-up rifle ranges, you’re just following NPC’s bottoms.

Again, go back to that first COD and your mind will be blown. No matter how its graphics have aged (and honestly, they’re still great), the experience is so much more frightening, moving, horrifying, because the NPCs around you are constantly dying. The enemy fires at them as much as you, and should you sneak cowardly behind a building and wait it out, your company will shoot the enemy too. You’re not the star. You’re another grunt, another nameless uniform, just trying to stay alive. The impact of this, combined with its simple diary entries, tells a story orders of magnitude more powerful than Vanguard’s woeful mess.
In the first game, in the level based on the Normandy beach landings, you play an American soldier tasked with clearing out German bases that could respond to the landing soldiers. You are doing essential behind-the-scenes work that will hopefully ensure a smoother passage for Operation Overlord, in the background, unknown, modest. I cannot imagine a modern COD having a fraction of the confidence to depict such a thing.
When Call Of Duty 2 was in development, I spoke to Activision writers who had spent months interviewing surviving soldiers from around the world. This was 2004, soon before that generation all but died out, and they solemnly recorded the untold stories of veterans, with a promise to retell them in their game.
It makes me so sad that what was once a heartfelt attempt (alongside a desire to blow shit up and make loads of money) to honor those who fought against tyranny, often themselves subjected to it, has become...this. A loud, stupid, ahistorical exercise in bombast, that neither represents the truth of the war, nor meaningfully explores the realities of those whose lives they so clumsily loot. And, perhaps rather importantly, is dull and tiresome to play.

Both Call Of Duty and Call Of Duty 2 are available to buy and play via Steam. There’s a quick hack to get them running in widescreen, and no need to add so much as a texture pack. Almost immediately, on replaying to ensure I wasn’t remembering with rose-tinted hindsight, I was consumed by the frenzy, panic, and madness of its depiction of the conflicts, and especially at its peculiar modesty in doing so. You weren’t Earth’s greatest elite hero. It didn’t need that.
Call Of Duty: Vanguard is probably the most visually astonishing game I’ve ever played. It’s also one of the ugliest. It’s a tragic depiction of the descent of a franchise, a game which simultaneously hides from the true horror of WWII and yet for which that horror is not nefarious enough, replaced with childish action heroes and humiliating worse-than-Hitler cartoon villains. It takes real people’s lives and experiences, and reduces them to simplistic stereotypes, delivering moth-eaten cliché, with the sophistication of a flannel, and absolute cowardice in the face of saying anything of worth.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I am sorry, Kotaku ... but when you literally take offence at EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING, this is inevitable. A rewriting of history, the Mary-Sueism of every female character to virtual perfection, the pandering to people of color ... every token in the book in order for you people to not be offended. This is the pop culture you've wanted. This circus. This parody.

Or am I wrong?

Maybe you don't want to be satisfied with what you read, watch and play. Maybe all you want is to bitch about stuff not being woke enough, or being too woke. Because how else can you scream and yell at clouds in order to make people notice you? Being satisfied? No, that won't do. That won't do at all.

This starts to remind me of that scene in 'The Wrestler' with Mickey Rourke at the Deli Counter and the old lady who was 'a little less ... a little more'.
Click to expand...
Good point. This is the natural end point of all the complaining and woke advocacy and predictably.....no one likes it. Honestly, I almost think that this may be a cycle. What was going to stop the video game market from continuing to grow at an exponential rate? THIS. Maybe it's a natural "great filter" that's tied in to cultural cycles of rise and fall. I don't know. I do know that things like this are making me play less games that I normally would as I simply can't stand all the bullshit. Until game companies stop letting the purple-haired people eaters make and influence the making of their games, we can expect this to continue and THEY can continue to expect me to vote with my wallet. Elsewhere.
 
RexAnglo

RexAnglo

Banned
As much as I despise the activist journalist trash that fills sites like Kotaku, I have to say I kind of agree.

There are genuinely interesting stories that could be told, featuring those soldiers from India, Africa etc...and Vanguard doesn't really do anyone justice.

I've had Vanguard since Christmas and haven't even considered playing the campaign, not for a second.

But, then again, I don't play CoD for the single player part anymore.

The last one I played was the original Black Ops campaign.

That said, I do enjoy the multiplayer in Vanguard.
 
Rest

Rest

All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
Fiction is fiction who could even give a shit?
 
O

OZ9000

Banned
Kotaku complaining about Wokism?

This can't be real lmao.

The woke brigade have certainly infested video games however.
 
J

Jibran#one

Member
Fuck Kotaku and their bullshit ,problem with vanguard is it's terrible zombies mode and subpar multiplayer and campaign
Mw 2019 set the bar really high for cod and it's downhill after that hope mw2 changes that
 
Chronicle

Chronicle

Member
Resistance Fall of Man.

Now there's a historically accurate portrayal of WWII history. Don't see this site crying about that!

Edit: spelling
 
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