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Battlefield 5 has a Nazi general that shares the same name as a historical antifascist
- Thread starter Muffin
- Start date
Making a purchasable character of a clearly mad scientist-like nazi feels pretty gross. It feels anti-thetical to the Last Tiger which had a tightrope to walk down and mostly nailed it. But here it's like "Hey, play Deathshead from Wolfenstein!" And in today's rising political climate of nazis, it feels even more inappropriate
What's next, Hans Landa?
What's next, Hans Landa?
Because heaven forbid they do some basic research and:
Perhaps some Dudebro developer thought it was fun and no one would recognize it?
Obviously nobody from EA or the developers googled the name after somebody came up with it. I mean they sell a Nazi DLC, how low can one go in greed for money?
Nah I from what we've seen the devs are fantastic people.
These shitheads are generally in the BF community itself. I mean just look at the comments of the other released female character Hanna Delacroix:
Fucking yikes. If anyone ever wants to tell me most of the negative reception doesn't come from a loud incel minority then I don't know what to say.
wtf even is this post? What exactly are you trying to tell me?
OP
OP
The wikipedia page literally says there's even a street named after him. Stop excusing simple incompetence as "just as a coincidence". Finding out if this name is problematic to use as name of a nazi takes a few minutes at most, even if you're not German. And it was somebodys paid job to do that.
Literally the 2nd google search result outlines him as an Anti fascist.
Wait, I could be wrong here, but isn't the term "nazi general" kinda dumb and wrong? The Wehrmacht was not dissolved and reorganized into a nazi-army, like every modern army every Wehrmacht-soldier had to pledge allegiance to the Reichs-chancellor/ president (Hitler combined both positions). Officially every German had to enter the NSDAP after Hitler fully took over, but that doesn't make every general automatically a nazi-general.
Btw: Dr. Mengel in EDF Iron Rain is a far more problematic coice.
Btw: Dr. Mengel in EDF Iron Rain is a far more problematic coice.
But there's no new real-life Nazi running around, is my point. Because creating those seems to be a popular past-time among online services.
What I want to know is if the people tripping over themselves to criticize Dice for historical inaccuracies over women in their games are now defending this obvious historical inaccuracy.
I don't need to ask, do I?
I bought Hannah and play exclusively girls in the game for the specific purpose of pissing those idiots off when i kill them (and it works very well might i add).
Frankely, it's disgusting beyond compare that there's even a Nazi Avatar you can buy to shoot at allies - yes, even with the game revolving around WW2. But let's put that aside, sickening as it is, since this thread is about something different.
I just googled (actually, startpage'd) the dude's name and the first three or so results were wikipedia articles for various Wilhelm Frankes, with the one on top being this one:
Even without being able to speak a lick of German, that URL alone should tell you enough about the man. Anti. Fasc(h)ist. One letter difference to the english word. This is not rocket science. You'd actually have to be braindead to not understand that the man was decidedly not on Hitler's side. It's right there in the title, the URL and the page excerpt on the search result page. I mean, come on. Even if you're three strokes and a bypass into retirement, the mere existence of a (German or non-German) Wiki page should automatically raise some eyebrows and require more research. The other two Frankes are a politician and a musician (organist), so that's added fuel anyway.
This is not a coincidence. It's negligence, and outright malicious negligence at that, given how trivial checking the name is for anyone with even the most passing interest. What a thoroughly sad display of incompetence for all involved parties.
I just googled (actually, startpage'd) the dude's name and the first three or so results were wikipedia articles for various Wilhelm Frankes, with the one on top being this one:
Even without being able to speak a lick of German, that URL alone should tell you enough about the man. Anti. Fasc(h)ist. One letter difference to the english word. This is not rocket science. You'd actually have to be braindead to not understand that the man was decidedly not on Hitler's side. It's right there in the title, the URL and the page excerpt on the search result page. I mean, come on. Even if you're three strokes and a bypass into retirement, the mere existence of a (German or non-German) Wiki page should automatically raise some eyebrows and require more research. The other two Frankes are a politician and a musician (organist), so that's added fuel anyway.
This is not a coincidence. It's negligence, and outright malicious negligence at that, given how trivial checking the name is for anyone with even the most passing interest. What a thoroughly sad display of incompetence for all involved parties.
In BFV universe a Norwegian heavy water sabotage was completed by one girl instead of 40 soldiers, what are they talking about?
This is a serious letdown considering how well DICE handled the German side of the war and the question of guilt, indoctrination and tag-along enablers in 'The Last Tiger' (better than any other WWII game to date IMO). Now it's back to black and white comic book sadist monsters. And they even manage to drag the name of a German resistance member, someone who actually fought back against the Nazi regime and risked their neck doing so, through the mud too.
It's a really awful 180 and as a German this really hurts, especially considering in the current political climate with extremist right-wing nationalist parties on the rise almost everywhere.
It's a really awful 180 and as a German this really hurts, especially considering in the current political climate with extremist right-wing nationalist parties on the rise almost everywhere.
No, NSDAP party membership was always voluntary, even until the end of the war, though if you were belonging to certain stratas of German/Austrian society, like the upper class, it was often expected or brought serious benefits over those that didn't join, especially if you wanted to e.g. get business deals with the government (or didn't want the political decision makers to raise an eyebrow every time your lack of NSDAP membership was mentioned). To be precise members of the Wehrmacht were actually FORBIDDEN to join any political party (a leftover from the Weimar constitution) until 1944 AFAIR, when the restriction was lifted by Hitler. It's the reason why SS divisions not only weren't part of the Wehrmacht, but also so favored when it came to prestige and always getting the best equipment first, because the SS was made up of NSDAP party members, even if SS units often performed well below regular army units (especially early in the war).
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When Ubisoft managed to change the ending in a game, or artworks within a game's universe, EA surely should be able to change that name.
Seriously. If we would go that fictional joker/wild card route we could have any (sick) shit in a game and shrug it off with "iT iS jUsT fiCtiOn, bRo!". But we don't and most of Era haven't.
EA responds
OP
OP
EA responded and is changing the name, which is a good move.
The response itself has some stuff I can only shake my head at though:
The response itself has some stuff I can only shake my head at though:
??????
"No political statements" In a WW2 game. They really don't want to piss off the alt-right/Gamergate crowd anymore, huh. Weak af.
OP
OP
Not a nazi, just a German officer in WW2. Also there's no politics at all in our game about WW2, lol.
"He isn't actually a nazi!"
Oh fuck off.
Forget loot boxes and all that shit. The thing I'm ACTUALLY tired of in video games right now is developers being to spineless to actually say anything and instead pulling out the "we don't have politics!" card anytime their feet get held to the fire over stupid as fuck decisions.
Oh fuck off.
Forget loot boxes and all that shit. The thing I'm ACTUALLY tired of in video games right now is developers being to spineless to actually say anything and instead pulling out the "we don't have politics!" card anytime their feet get held to the fire over stupid as fuck decisions.
I guess this is how they justify the removal of any swastikas. All the German soldiers aren't actually Nazis
To be fair they actually don't reference the German/Axis forces as nazi's at all in the game. They use the Axis flag from WW1 with the iron cross instead of the nazi flag with the swatztika.
What a stupid response.
They should have said that it was a mistake and done.
"we are not political", bullshit, you have an entire war stories about the Nazis soldiers and generals not caring about their attrocities
They should have said that it was a mistake and done.
"we are not political", bullshit, you have an entire war stories about the Nazis soldiers and generals not caring about their attrocities
OP
OP
But it's not like they needed to justify it is what is confusing me
In future games they don't even have to remove swastikas anymore, as those are allowed in games sold in Germany now
Yeah I gotta wonder why the other stuff was even necessary.
This is one way to normalize/dilute the war crimes committed by Nazi Germany during WW2.
As a german I can only shake my head at that much spinelessness.
Pfui!
Nothing at all awkward about EA perpetuating the 'clean wehrmacht' myth. Can't see any issues arising from that.
It's definitely a strange call. They model weapons and tanks down the tiniest detail but then pretend the Germans in the game aren't Nazis. It feels like a sanitization of the actual conflict
Which him? This general character is presumably a different character, with the same name. People share names, it's a fact of the world.
Literally from the translation in the OP: "There are no biographical parallels to the historical Wilhelm Franke."
A name is not a person. Maybe if the name was very unique or very historically relevant, but it doesn't seem to be.
Suggesting a "google search" would have solved this is such a simplistic view for multiple reasons.
It's a pretty uncomplicated post mate, which part is causing you difficulties?
BF5 changed history in the Operation Gunnerside mission into a mission where a mother and daughter ski into the Norwegian heavy water plant and duo dozens of nazi's together and blow up the plant. That operation was key in preventing the Nazi's from developing nuclear weapons. In reality it involved three different waves/missions across a year, dozens of men many who were captured and killed, and a group of Norweigan and British commandos who spent months in hostile territory scouting for following waves. No mother and daughter team were involved at any point. Ridiculous History had a great podcast on the actual events and they are pretty insane
So yeah, DICE changing things in Battlefield 5 is no surprise because the game has very little basis in actual historical reality. Hell, they should just pop up Doc Brown and have him do a whiteboard of alternate timelines at the start of their next game because thats all really Battlefield (and even Call of Duty) are, alternate history games. Call of Duty doesn't even pretend, but EA/DICE like to wave the "based on historical events" when it suits them and stay very quiet when this kind of thing is pointed out.
So yeah, DICE changing things in Battlefield 5 is no surprise because the game has very little basis in actual historical reality. Hell, they should just pop up Doc Brown and have him do a whiteboard of alternate timelines at the start of their next game because thats all really Battlefield (and even Call of Duty) are, alternate history games. Call of Duty doesn't even pretend, but EA/DICE like to wave the "based on historical events" when it suits them and stay very quiet when this kind of thing is pointed out.
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Your post has nothing to do with the topic and it doesn't even make sense when you think about it.
I guess this is the other side o the argument, where Dice is critized for selling a nazi soldier and applauded for mostly removing nazism from the game
In light of that a response like "We don't actually make a ww2 game about nazis" makes more sense. Even when it obviously rings hollow
In light of that a response like "We don't actually make a ww2 game about nazis" makes more sense. Even when it obviously rings hollow