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Battlefield fans are upset you play as a regretful Nazi soldier in the new War Story

CenturionNami

CenturionNami

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Nov 2, 2017
5,230
Seems like these woman hating incels what a campaign that glories Nazism. And a prot that isn't regretful of his side. Fucking bastards.

Here's just one example.
AqUxtTD.png

But the thread is full of them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Battlefield/comments/a2psh9/battlefield_v_update_chapter_1_overture/

For context, the new War Diary is from the perspective of a regretful Panzer Commander in the Fall of Berlin
 
Mario_Bones

Mario_Bones

Member
Oct 31, 2017
3,526
Australia
I knew this would happen. I don't know why you'd WANT to play as an evil Nazi (EDIT: I mean, I do know why THEY do, but I can't fathom being like that)
 
thetrin

thetrin

Member
Oct 26, 2017
7,663
Atlanta, GA
I wasn't aware that's the story they're going for. That's pretty cool. There are stories of Germans that abhorred fighting for the Nazis, but were either forced or swept up in nationalism.

How you can complain about this is beyond me.
 
themadswagger

themadswagger

Banned
Nov 3, 2017
167
From reading some of the comments, some people are against this kind of story because it can cause the player to empathize with the nazi or almost feel bad for them. I don't think there is anything wrong with being against the switching sides trope.
 
Lego Killer Moth

Lego Killer Moth

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
1,292
I thought you were going to say they were upset about playing as a Nazi. Nope, they're upset that he's regretful. Never underestimate how disgusting the fans of this series can be.
 
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,231
The comments on that reddit post don't seem to be as upset as you're implying. Some probably are and others seem to be calling out the predictability of it but most of those comments seem aware of the difficulty of having a pro-Nazi soldier mission in a game.
 
Inuhanyou

Inuhanyou

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,214
New Jersey
i love this kind of scenario. after COD WAW, i always wanted to see a game that had US troops emphasize with civilians during the invasion of Japan and perhaps show a different side to the conflict that isnt actually shown. It wasnt about buff freedom loving white dudes versus evil asians
 

Deleted member 48434

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 8, 2018
5,230
Sydney
I like the idea of playing from the perspective of someone on the bad side, who has too question if what they are doing is right.
Make me think of that "Are we the baddies" sketch.
Honestly I think the premise could work for an entire game.
 
Aters

Aters

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
7,948
I can understand people want to play as purely evil character in videogame, and there are quite a lot of games that let you do it. Nazi, however, is highly sensitive, so I don't think any publishers would publish a game that lets you as actual Nazis.

Edit: hold the fuck on, it's fall of Berlin yet there's no red army? DICE is actually rewriting history?

Inuhanyou said:
i love this kind of scenario. after COD WAW, i always wanted to see a game that had US troops emphasize with civilians during the invasion of Japan and perhaps show a different side to the conflict that isnt actually shown. It wasnt about buff freedom loving white dudes versus evil asians
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Was there an "invasion of Japan" at all? Japan surrendered before the main island was invaded.
 
Cenauru

Cenauru

Dragon Girl Supremacy
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,009
/r/BattlefieldV is actually pretty good, it's the main /r/Battlefield sub that is full of shit flinging racists and sexists
 
Aly

Aly

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,177
I see more complaining about it being predictable especially after Battlefront 2, which was disappointing.
 
ImperatorPat

ImperatorPat

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,461
USA
themadswagger said:
From reading some of the comments, some people are against this kind of story because it can cause the player to empathize with the nazi or almost feel bad for them. I don't think there is anything wrong with being against the switching sides trope.
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Switching sides did happen during the war but very rare. The only occurrence I can think of is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter . Real life isn't Star Wars after all.

I doubt they could make a game now where you play as an unabashed Nazi. This isn't the 1990s where gaming was stuff like Panzer General which featured an alternate history with the Germans conquering Washington DC if you win all the battles they lost in real life. Of course that type of gaming was niche compared to gaming today.
 
RoboPlato

RoboPlato

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,813
I'm interested to see how they handle it. The War Stories are mostly too short to really do any of the narratives justice but I'm curious about this one.
 
Buzzman

Buzzman

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,549
Whatever you might think of the nazi soldiers, the last weeks of the war in Berlin was hell on earth for a lot of people. Women getting shelled waiting in line for food, 15-year old SS fanatics roaming around and executing anyone suspected of "treason". Massive amounts of refugees from the east warning of a murderous wave of rape and looting that will soon be there. A constant drumming of artillery that is coming closer and closer every day signalling the destruction of everything around you. Absolute terror. Fascinating if they can get even a small part of this right.
 
Dyle

Dyle

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
29,988
By 1945 enthusiasm for the war and faith in Nazi ideology had seriously deteriorated and there were many soldiers who attempted to defect or hamper the regime, especially as it was becoming clear that the Nazis were going to fall. It's an interesting storyline and one that is not totally divorced from historical events.

However I agree that if the only story content of Nazi soldiers are ostensibly about good guys it misrepresents historic facts and makes it easier to play the game without thinking about the moral implications of your actions. Is there future story content that will involve playing as Nazi soldiers and possibly avoid this trope or will this be the only one?

Making it the Americans and not the Russians is a very odd and somewhat less authentic choice though
 
TheGhost

TheGhost

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
28,137
Long Island
I mean yeah it's transparent from what they are doing with this character from when you first start playing the game. It's also transparent that the character will probably die....just like I do...every match if I don't hop out of the tank quick enough when spawned up top like a sitting duck.
 
Ebullientprism

Ebullientprism

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
3,529
I dont know how many of these are actual BF fans and how many are alt right shit heads looking to grind an axe. That subreddit has become a cesspit.
 
Dr. Caroll

Dr. Caroll

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,111
EA have long lacked the spine to put the player in the shoes of unrepentant evil. In Syndicate 2012, Miles Kilo is railroaded into betraying Eurocorp. Which honestly always felt out of tone with the IP. Star Wars: Battlefront II similarly chickened out with a glib redemption arc.

I don't think audiences are ready for it, to some degree. EA are pretty bold narratively, but not THAT bold. Even Activision tend to be more daring when it comes to the player, for example, setting unarmed civilians on fire.

The problem is not the story of a person struggling with their conscience. It's a valid and valuable story. The problem is that it's conspiciously the third time EA have demonstrated this is the only story they're capable of telling. I don't see EA ever making a game like Syndicate or Star Wars or Battlefield where your character is an agent of evil and that's just fine.
 
Lant_War

Lant_War

Classic Anus Game
Banned
Jul 14, 2018
23,601
The battlefield sub is a shitshow right now. They're pissed because Dice called them out on the launch party, going as far as saying that the mods are being paid by EA to censor """""discusion""""".

It also doesn't help that it's filled with T_D subscribers and actual pedophiles.
 

Deleted member 8861

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
10,564
I can get the "heh it's not original" angle but here's the thing

what exactly did you expect out of battlefield

of course more people in those comments are pissed about a nazi being regretful in the first place
 
Coyote Starrk

Coyote Starrk

The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
53,274
How stupid are these people?


Do they not realize that a significant number of German soldiers opposed Hitler and what the Reich was doing to it's people? Have they never heard of the numerous assassination attempts by Germans against Hitler? The most famous obviously being the "Valkyrie" attempt by Claus Von Stauffenberg and his numerous allies within the German military.


It's like these morons have never picked up a book.
 
Dmax3901

Dmax3901

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,910
thetrin said:
I wasn't aware that's the story they're going for. That's pretty cool. There are stories of Germans that abhorred fighting for the Nazis, but were either forced or swept up in nationalism.

How you can complain about this is beyond me.
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Panzer crews weren't made up of forcefully conscripted German farm boys. A large part of their number were Waffen SS.

I'm in the camp of fuck Nazis and fuck stories that try and empathise with them.
 
Aters

Aters

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
7,948
Sou Da said:
faction not in MP doesn't mean they can['t exist in the campaign. There are french troops in the Senegalese campaign
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I was talking about the campaign, did you watch the trailer?
Dynamite Cop said:
People need to chill out over this shit. It's a video game, not a documentary or a museum.
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It's a WW2 videogame. If you make a Fall of Berlin campaign and all the tanks and airplanes are American, you fuck up big time.
 
Nooblet

Nooblet

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,643
I knew from the time they announced the story that this will be a redemption story. And I also knew that regardless of what kind of story it is it would generate "controversy".

Case 1) Dice makes a redemption story and people get pissed because either they hate the idea of sympathising with a nazi or because it's predictitable

Case 2) Dice makes a story about a ruthless Nazi and people get uncomfortable playing as a Nazi.

People were going to be pissed one way or the other.
 
ShinUltramanJ

ShinUltramanJ

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,950
Chandler said:
/r/BattlefieldV is actually pretty good, it's the main /r/Battlefield sub that is full of shit flinging racists and sexists
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That's what I noticed today. The Battlefield V subreddit is for people playing the game and it's rather large.
The standard Battlefield subreddit is where all the crybabies are. It's pretty irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.
 

Morpheus

Banned
Oct 6, 2018
8
Dmax3901 said:
Panzer crews weren't made up of forcefully conscripted German farm boys. A large part of their number were Waffen SS.

I'm in the camp of fuck Nazis and fuck stories that try and empathise with them.
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You can make a story that explores the twisted mentality of someone who follows a blind nation and their gradual realization of evil without "empathizing" with them. Also implying that every German in the Wehrmacht was a nazi is factually false. Looking at the world as good vs evil and white vs black is for elementary school. Game devs can explore darker themes. Hell Modern Warfare 2 did this with their 'no russian' mission.
 
Andrew Lucas

Andrew Lucas

Banned
Nov 27, 2017
1,309
Aters said:
I was talking about the campaign, did you watch the trailer?

It's a WW2 videogame. If you make a Fall of Berlin campaign and all the tanks and airplanes are American, you fuck up big time.
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In this case, agreed. People don't even bother reading the comment properly, you better watch out for that, a trigger happy mod can also do the same, happens often.

It's like putting aliens arriving at Omaha Beach, but fuck it.
 
ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

Member
Nov 8, 2017
13,135
thetrin said:
I wasn't aware that's the story they're going for. That's pretty cool. There are stories of Germans that abhorred fighting for the Nazis, but were either forced or swept up in nationalism.

How you can complain about this is beyond me.
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I'm quite sure the people complaining are mostly frothing idiots and/or verifiable nazi sympathizers. The only comment I'll make against it is just that depending on how it's handled it may contribute to one of the variety of postwar myths. "The clean Wehrmacht" or "there were only a very small number of true nazis" or "just following orders" or w/e. We don't typically see anything from the German perspective outside of abstract strategy games and if the only story that gets told is "the Story of the Good Nazi Who Was Very Sorry" then you're walking a tightrope for not trying to get across the wrong message historically.

5 years ago I was very keen to play as Germans, Japanese, Italians etc in WWII story campaigns for a change of pace and perspective, but 2018 is probably not the ideal point in time for that to be happening for... obvious reasons.
 

KratosEnergyDrink

Using an alt account to circumvent a ban
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,523
Aters said:
Edit: hold the fuck on, it's fall of Berlin yet there's no red army? DICE is actually rewriting history?

Was there an "invasion of Japan" at all? Japan surrendered before the main island was invaded.
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US threw atom bombs on civilians after pearl harbour than the country surrendered.
 

ChippyTurtle

Banned
Oct 13, 2018
4,773
I'm still annoyed that BF1 didn't have any Central Powers campaigns, and literally just consisted of Brits, Americans, and Australians. Frankly, I'm bored of redemption stories. Also, I don't know but if its really set in Berlin, during some Fall of Berlin scenario, to have it be set against Americans against the Red Army, it....sorta feels disrespectful for the Russians. Dunno. You wanna use the fall of Berlin, imo, a big part of it was the fact that they were facing the Red Army, not the Americans, actually, many German units held as long as possible to allow German forces and civilians to retreat westward to surrender to the Western Allies.
 
BoxManLocke

BoxManLocke

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,158
France
Morpheus said:
You can make a story that explores the twisted mentality of someone who follows a blind nation and their gradual realization of evil without "empathizing" with them.
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Of course you can. I might believe it if we were talking about a full, single-player focused game.
However I wouldn't trust a couple of hours long (maybe even shorter) "war story" in Battlefield to achieve that level of depth, or even aim for it. I'd expect a pretty basic side switching story.

Very curious to get feedback on this though since it's easily the most interesting one conceptually.
 
Heromanz

Heromanz

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
20,202
Wait a min, they are using american instead of the soviet for the fall of berlin, that is fuckin stupid.
 
ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

Member
Nov 8, 2017
13,135
Francesco

Francesco

Member
Nov 22, 2017
2,521
The comment you posted mention battlefront 2.
That game heavily promised showing a new perspective on the star wars only to have the imperial woman switch side after a half hour. I'm sure there are nazis out there liking to play as a monster, but that comment seems to be addressing the narrative cheap way out of a bad side pov.
Can't speak for the guy with certainty though.


Aters said:
Edit: hold the fuck on, it's fall of Berlin yet there's no red army? DICE is actually rewriting history?
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I'm all for women in the game, but erasing Russians for American military nationalism is just fucking stupid.
Can someone confirm?
 
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