actually maybe I'm being too harsh and maybe it really was an intelligent and morally ambiguous look at the military action in Fallujah

or maybe it was just another dumb game about mowing down faceless arabs with maybe a tacked on cutscene or two about how WAR... WAR IS HELL (for marines, obviously) except this time there is SUDDEN LOUD MUSIC when terrorists jump in through a window and other spooky things

taking all bets

i think it looks like they're trying to make an effort with it, with every decision being to make it more authentic

i think it looks like they're trying to make an effort with it, with every decision being to make it more authentic

That's not really what I meant, though. It kinda ties into what I was saying earlier about a disconnect between message and the actual game. I haven't been following this particular game so for all I know this really is an attempt to give a nuanced look at Iraq or whatever buuuuuut the gameplay is about killing arabs. You are a marine. You are being attacked by arabs. You have to kill them to stay alive and to clear the level. The game is rewarding you for shooting arabs. This is problematic. So is the fact that these games are entertaining to play. Like SURVIVAL HORROR is a good first step I think but it still kinda feeds into what I was saying earlier, where the players just mow down baddies for an hour or two then get a little textscreen about "oh yeah there was some chemical warfare too ;) WAR IS BAD". I still remember playing some stupid Vietnam third-person-shooter which occasionally attampted to get across some shit about the horrors of war but the problem was that most of the game was about machinegunning GOOKS while dropping acid and listening to Hendrix (really!). You're told that war is hell but the experience is that war is pretty bitchin'. There is an acknowledged problem with war movies in this respect too, since while Apocalypse Now or whatever is antiwar it is still kind of a fun movie. You're told about the moral horrors of it all but that's inbetween bits about helicopters destroying villages to Wagner and I LUVE THE SMELL OF NAPALM IN THE MORNIN XD which are intellectually BAD but still P COOL on an immediate, visceral level. With videogames this problem is amplified tenfold because you're actually shooting them, and you generally HAVE TO shoot them to progress, and whats more shooting them is pretty fun. This is why I said survival horror was on the right track but there's still the fact that in a very real, direct sense, the game is encouraging you to kill as many people as you can in what was basically a hideous, despicable act of colonialism.

There's an additional problem in actually controlling marines and playing a game mostly based around the experiences of marines. it's not that these experiences are not legitimate or that they don't deserve to be shown but it still kinda reinforces the distinction between US and THEM, between the humanised soldiers with names and the deadly foreigners who pop up from the shadows to kill you. This ties into the fact that it's played from the marine's perspective and there's nothing inherently wrong with that buuuut even though most of the films etc dealing with Iraq have attempted to deal with it on a more complex moral level than YEEEEHAW CAP THEM DARKIES they have still been extremely one-sided! Actually attempting to show war as a bad thing is a praiseworthy goal I guess but when all of the attempts are about american marines versus faceless insurgents then I think it still kinda hammers home the idea of war as A BAD THING HAPPENING TO WHITE PEOPLE IN SOME DIRTHOLE FOREIGN PLACE. It's like when dumb comics or whatever use murdered/raped women to give some an angsty backstory to some fucking superhero, or when the (history- and personality-free) BLACK GUY of the movie dies to inspire the white protagonist to move on or something. They're still portraying rape/murder/death as bad things but only to the extent they make the main character feel bad. And similarly even if it attempted to be morally complex, Six Days In Fallujah is being told from the perspective of american marines and so all the moral complexity is about how those marines deal with things. There was a mention in the video about KILLING CIVILIANS okay fine but what does the player care about some anonymous, nameless NPC who happens to die?As opposed to those dasterdly terrorists killing JOHNNY your marine pal who was with you from the beginning and who loaned you a medpack that one time~

I kind of agree and disagree. I agree for sure on the how the views on the battle are not at all neutral (it really is a case of feeling for the marines and not giving a shit about those brown coloured guys)

buuut for a start, i don't think there would be a cutscene just saying "war is bad", i think that's why it's "survival horror", because whenever I play Silent Hill i never have FUN having to face an enemy and it ends up feeling like a form of relief when I beat an enemy, knowing that fight is over. The whole "war is bad" thing could come as a consistent experience which is potrayed through the gameplay itself. Which is what I think this game could easily feel like, as entertainment and reward comes in many different forms. also, we must bear in mind this all based mainly on speculation (since it isnt even out).

I don't disagree, I guess I'm just not convinced it will really go the survival horror route: I suspect there'll be a difference in experience between awkwardly clubbing a mutant to death with a pipe by yourself with the horrible Silent Hill control scheme and expertly machinegunning snipers with lovingly rendered military weaponry and a whole team behind you. I vaguely remember destructible environments as being big selling point so maybe that's why I have a mental image of some generic squad shooter with occasional bad guys jumping up suddenly from behind pots. Like RE4 or whatever which tried to combine spookyness with HEADSHOTS.

Like you say though it's not out at all yet so this is just speculation! I just wanted to throw out there that wargames are generally pretty awful.

i think there's another video where they explain why they put destructive enviroments in and it was because one of the things the marines told them that was a big part of it was the destruction (from gunfire and tactical use).

but generally, yeah wargame are pretty awful and it would be hard as hell to balance things to make it how it SHOULD be