There are women in Battlefield V, a game set during the Second World War. They’re in the game, they’re in the trailer, they’re even on the posters! And a lot of people are very upset. Is this what their forefathers fought for?
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/05/battlefield-5-ww2-first-look/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/tk9sbgvu0xcbmlbca0yd.jpg” title=”Here’s Our First Look At Battlefield V, Which Goes Back To WWII” excerpt=”Battlefield is going back to World War II, developer DICE said during a livestream today, promising that the newly announced Battlefield V will tell “real stories about men and women who changed history” over the course of the second World War.”]
To recap, in case your job is blessed and does not require you to monitor the worst of websites like Reddit and Twitter, some folks are angry that their favourite violent multiplayer shooter, which has never been based on anything approaching historical accuracy, now has historically inaccurate portrayals of women and a black man fighting – with guns! – in the Second World War.
It’s tiring to have to face this year after year, so it’s almost not even worth pointing out – like the guy at the bottom there tries – that women served in armed forces across the world during the conflict. Mostly as support personnel, yes, but there were also examples – in the Soviet Union especially – where they served on the frontlines, both on the ground and in the air.
But like, that doesn’t even matter here. Any idea that this, of all things, is what shatters the credibility and historical credentials of a series that has long reduced the war to endless skirmishes between jeep-flipping, plane-crashing brave soldiers named 69XX_cvmlauder_xx69 is insane.
Watch this trailer and tell me that, above everything else, it’s the gender and race of the combatants that seems unrealistic:
Yet that’s where we are today, because we’re talking about the words “historical accuracy” among gamers on the internet.
Those two words rarely mean what they look like they mean. At face value they appear to suggest a game has, or is striving to attain, some semblance of accuracy in its portrayal of the events of the past.
The nature of video games means that rarely happens. To capture history in a digital experience would require a developer to adapt the language, architecture, beliefs, society, and culture of the place and time being represented, and to do so knowing that the records of the past (and subsequent writings) were shaped by the prevailing politics.
To truly present something “accurate” to the time period would probably result in a game you wouldn’t really enjoy playing. What we often see in a “historical” FPS action game is just the visual trappings. And that’s OK – it’s a mass-market action game, not a history lesson.
What angry dorks mean when they say “historical accuracy” is not a game that’s accurate to the time being presented, then, but accurate to the aspects of that time (or the popular historical re-telling of it) that are sympathetic to their current political and cultural beliefs.
It doesn’t bother them that a randomly-created soldier with no training can jump behind the controls of a complex fighter aircraft, or expertly handle a cross-section of enemy weapons. They don’t care that the streets of European cities aren’t recreated 1:1, or that uniform details aren’t strictly adhered to, or that Battlefield‘s war is fought to time limits and kill counts.
Those things are acceptable compromises. It’s a video game, and those are video game things that the Second World War just needs to accommodate with its representation in order to work. Yet introduce something as relatively harmless (it has zero impact on gameplay!) as women or black soldiers where historically there were none, and suddenly the sky is falling.
It’s almost as though opposition to a British woman holding a gun, or a black man serving in a combat role has little to do with “historical accuracy,” and everything about someone finding their current views on gender, race and society challenged in a space – the good old days – they thought was safe.
Battlefield isn’t, and never has been, about recreating the past. There are far more serious and studious Second World War games for that kind of business. Instead, it’s always been about letting people in the present use war as a playground. And if DICE wants to broaden the scope of those represented in those games, then that’s awesome for everyone involved.
Well, almost everyone.
Comments
127 responses to “Oh No, There Are Women In Battlefield V”
To be honest, it’s the uniforms that get me about the series.
I don’t recall anyone during WWI/II (be it men/women of any colour) looking so god damned stylish and cool.
There were cats getting around in WW2 like Mad Jack Churchill who wielded a longbow and claymore while dressed in a kilt.
Interestingly, Churchill was also a keen surfer. According to Wikipedia:
Ha, I though you meant Winston Churchill for a second, that’s an image I won’t be getting outta my head for a bit.
That’s the Battlefield game I want.
Mad Jack Churchill was apparently very annoyed with the American’s dropping the atomic bombs.. he was on his way to the Pacific theatre and “the damn American’s finished the war before he got there”
He also recorded the only kill on the western front with a bow an arrow after rampaging around the French countryside on a motorbike during the retreat to Dunkirk.
The guy was as close to Rambo as you could get except he loved his job
Dunno. A whole lot of millitary personnel went to war wearing Hugo Boss
Ha! Not a lot of people are going to get this.
Na! See, they will.
they were pretty sharp dressers thoes nazis
Other than the SS…… Hugo Boss designed the uniform
haha nailed it
Me too, I agree.
To be fair, I’m not very familiar with World War II, only major events, not so much individuals, uniforms etc.
But it seems to me that these uniforms and appearances are designed to be “cool”, but also to be fair, it probably helps the player(s) recognize key characters to the story. Might be hard if they’re all dressed essentially the same.
Yeh, its not like their soldiers in uniforms or anything, oh wait
Thomas Burberry (the founder of Burberry) actually designed the uniforms (like trench coats) for British army in the early 1900’s so theres that.
I’m not defending any of the actions of the Nazis, I’m just saying that if WW2 had been a fashion parade, Germany would 100% have won.
Ha, no doubt there.
Makes me think of that British skit show where one German officer turns to another and says:
“Have you ever noticed there’s little skulls on our uniforms?…..Are we the bad guys?”
Yeah i love that one hahaha
This game looks like it will be a crazy enough take on WW2 to be alternate history/fantasy which absolutely owns and I am extremely prepared to jury-rigged claw hand a nazi in the spine.
To be honest the artificial claw hand took me out of the “reality” of the game more than anything else. Having a frontline soldier disabled like that would be more unlikely than anything else in the trailer (how does she load her weapon?) That said, I’m not exactly enamoured with the fact it’s a woman* or that she’s using a cricket bat to kill someone.
* Like has been pointed out British women typically weren’t soldiers. That said, maybe she’s supposed to be a spy or something? It’s hard to tell from the trailer just who the people are supposed to be since it’s so bloody chaotic.
Interesting article about British Women’s role in the war here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwtwo/women_at_war_01.shtml
Who fucking cares it’s a video game.
You don’t. I don’t. But others want a game that’s more realistic and immersive. They’re entitled to their opinion.
That’s fine, but we aren’t watching a single player story demo or being sold an accurate historical warfare simulator. It’s a trailer highlighting multiplayer customisation. Characters in the trailer literally die then come back. All the classic squad spawning stuff is in there. It’s a ridiculous complaint given the last game featured notable historical events like the march of the Italian Terminator and how flagrant the character choices are in the trailer. Dude has a fucking Hanzo steel for God’s sake and a woman is the issue.
I didn’t play the last game. And only played the preceding ones a little bit – apart from the first game which I played a lot. While the physics of the earlier games weren’t terribly realistic they were at least based roughly on real events. So you had vehicles and weapons that pretty much matched their real world counterparts and a number of maps that were meant to at least capture the feel (if not the reality) or real battles.
So to me, if you’re going for the original BF42 style of game just with better technology driving it on more modern PCs then you should try for more realism. Not genuine realism since that isn’t what the game is about, but approximate realism.
Anyway, like I said, maybe the woman is meant to be a spy. Since there were actually female spies in the war. But like I said, I dislike the fact she’s got an artificial hand since that takes me right out of the game and back to reality. Unless they try to explain it as some sort of pseudo sci-fi alternate reality WW2 it’s just rubbish.
And I mentioned in another post, my Grandfather who fought in WW2 in both Egypt and the Pacific (New Guinea) actually had a Japanese sword taken from a dead officer. So it’s not impossible for that either. In fact it’s probably less unlikely than the metal hand.
Dude, it’s not real, it can do whatever it likes. Buy it or don’t. I’ll get it because I love this franchise but the last couple of games are played out and boring. The last thing they need to do is make a boring grognard sim.
@Coco – At the end of the day, Battlefield is not for those that want a realistic, immersive WW2/war game. There are great examples out there (and in the works) that cater far better to this (check out “Hell Let Loose” or “Post Scriptum” for World War 2 very realistic immersive FPS games, or SWAT, ARMA 3, Insurgency, “Escape From Tarkov” for modern day combat). Battlefield can not and never will compete with these far more realistic, simulation-style heavily technical shooters (that are far more niche).
I am a huge Battlefield fan (up until BF1 which I couldn’t get into) and am pretty pumped for all these changes they’ve made for BF5. The trailer doesn’t do a very good job at all of depicting the massive, tactical, realism changes that Dice have put into this new iteration of BF. Do yourself a favour and ignore the trailer and go hunt down the details of actual gameplay changes that are coming.
As for the controversy regarding the different avatars/characters in the game, give us a break… We all know Dice have done this (a) because they want to appeal to a wider audience, (b) they want to up the anti on character customisation (in the wake of Fort-Pub-nite-G rise, etc) and will likely make money from this move through paid character customisation, and I hate to say it but (c) because lead women characters are simply popular at the moment (in all forms of media – I’m not against it, its just a pretty glaring move from Dice with this trailer).
*
“They’re entitled to their opinion.” Yes, technically true, but the Catch 22 is that their opinion is that only their opinion matters. If they want a game that’s more realistic and immersive, why don’t they fuck off an play a different game? No, they just want everything to be the way THEY want it, ALL the time.
It’s still a representation of history. It generally has been considered a bad thing to be rewriting history for current and future political agendas. The fact it is a video game is irrelevant to this argument.
Alternate history in entertainment media is not a new thing and battlefield has included wacky stuff since 1942.
Ok, then clearly state it’s alternative history. Then zero problem.
Dude, did you watch Inglourious Basterds and think it was a documentary?
Man, you must have been REALLY pissed off when Wolfenstein 3D ended with Hitler trying to kill you with a robot suit equipped with dual miniguns. Must have steamed you right up!
I am unaware of when Wolfenstein ever passed itself off as being in anyway realistic. It was always a fictional Nazi universe.
Is the game fun?
Yes?
Sweet, then I’ll play as a fucking panda!
Damn these people have serious issues. Surely the biggest issue here is the fact that they have blue painted on their faces. Isn’t that supposed to be Braveheart?
I assumed that’s the traditional paint of the Scottish Special Forces. I also assumed they scream MEL GIBSON! as they charge into battle. Honestly, I’m pretty bad at history.
It’s a little known fact that Braveheart was actually filmed live using advanced Scottish technology and then Mel Gibson buried the film in a secret location until the technology of the rest of the world caught up. This is historically accurate. You can tell because it’s on the internet.
More games need to let you play as a panda.
I’m sick of SJW types like you forcing publishers to panda to your demands for better representation in games.
I think the issue I had with the trailer is it didn’t feel like a WW2 game at all. They tried to squeeze far too much action into one sequence and it ended up looking irredeemably contrived.
It gave me almost a feel of alt-history more than anything else, which would be perfectly fine but for their statement that the game will tell “real stories about men and women who changed history”. So I guess I’m just more confused about what direction they’re taking the game more than anything else, the fact women or black people are in it doesn’t matter in the slightest.
You forget that now they are competing with Fortnite and need to show many colourful whizz-bangs to attract the attention of teenagers. If this reveal trailer wasn’t done with Fortnite in mind I’m Elvis Presley!
I think teenagers is too old. I work at a lot of primary schools and the amount of 10-11 year olds that come up to me and ask me if I play Fortnite and want me to watch their Fortnite videos is crazy.
Real war was insane and chaotic, but yeah the trailer seems way over the top. It’s like they tried to jam every crazy thing they could think of into that minute. Of course, that’s kinda what a trailer is for…
I’m more concerned with all these trained pilots flying their Me 109s around at an altitude of about 5m.
I hope this alternate timeline look means alternate timeline secret weapons vehicles to mix up gameplay. I demand spider tanks with flame throwers; no sarcasm… like 100% legit want weird shit.
Battlefield V: Beyond Wolfenstein
Can only get so aroused.
And the moral wars continue, as everything is reduced to the most inane of levels.
Keep stoking those flames, Kotaku.
In what way do you think “Any chance the deluxe edition removes all the THOTs from the game?” has been reduced beyond the inane level it already exists at?
It’s fine to call these things out on a video game website and criticise shitty aspects of gamer culture. People are going apeshit over “realism” and “accuracy” in a game where you can fire yourself into the enemy line using a deck gun.
My favourite take so far.
https://twitter.com/DaveMilbo/status/999426392239390721?s=19
That top gif with the 3 soldiers riding the horse while firing a flamethrower will never not be funny.
https://youtu.be/gw9KcqQSRRI
RIP… Im dying
bahaha fk me that’s amazing
I don’t think its a very honest take on the situation to try and defect any comments with dismissive fallacies like that. Players abusing bugs or wonky game mechanics is not the same as the devs intentionally putting things into the game.
It would be like…I dunno if in mafia III they replaced MLK jr. with a white man but then when people complained they showed the unrealistic mechanics of the game as some sort of justification of their actions.
These things are not equal.
Except there were both black people and women during ww2.
So hush up babe and go take your guest account back into the darkness.
Can we as a society just give companies the go ahead to tell people who say shit like this to just shut the fuck up? would make things so much simpler if we could all just agree that stupid people need to be told they are fucking stupid and to shut it.
I hear that! I would go one step further and make it politically agnostic.
So to people who complain there are not enough superficial traits, a company woulld be free to say “It’s a game, it’s fun, shut the fuck up”. And to people who say there are too many superficial traits a company would be free to say the same.
It is race baiting in both directions and there are enough games out now that not every single one needs to fit into your idea of a racial utopia… Whatever that is.
They already kinda do that, but reserve it for microtransaction shenanigans.
They’re happy to draw a line in the sand when it means dollars in the bank. 🙂
A lot of people expected taht when DICE returned to WW2, that it would be an improved version of BF1942, rather than COD:MW with a WW2 skin.
Lol. Haters guna hate. Its a game and thats the beauty, you dont have to stick with anything. You put anything you want in it. The girl looks kool with her prosthetic arm. Cant wait.
That’s bullshit, we all know that the Battlefield series has long been known for it’s historical accuracy and realistic battles. What will they make next, a Battlefield game set in the future?
Just like Battlefield 2142!
Whoosh
Presumably you’d be just as chuffed with an action/espionage game about slaves escaping from a plantation that featured enslaved white men amongst the African Americans?
Yes because the world wars were exclusively white men affairs, weren’t them? Exclusively white men were participants so representing anybody that is not that into a game loosely based into those events is an incredible offence.
Could easily just do Eastern Front in a Stalingrad or Leningrad scenario where women were fighting as snipers. Nothing from stopping them putting in women as French Resistance or any type of resistance for that matter too.
Women in combat has never been the norm and probably never will. That doesn’t mean that it’s never happened or that it shouldn’t be depicted in a work of fiction be it movie, book or game. Those criticizing the game for including women need to get over themselves. It’s a game, who cares?
Having said that, the trailer left me rather bemused. I don’t take issue with the woman, but I don’t like the prosthetic arm. I’m pretty sure losing an arm mean’t you were out of the fight. Even today losing a limb means you’re off the front line and today’s technology is light years ahead of what it was in the 1940’s. It looks to me like DICE were riffing on Charlize Theron’s character from Mad Max: Fury Road. That’s not what I’m looking for in a WWII game.
I take issue with cricket bat. No self-respecting woman would drive dozens of nails into her bat. It would totally ruin it!
It’s not just a prosthetic arm. It’s a cybernetic arm. And it looks awesome.
The whole things seems to be channeling the Howling Commandos from Captain America/ Peggy Carter fame. It looks like a whole heap of fun.
The sad thing is that one of the chief reasons that women in combat has never been the norm is because men disallowed them from doing it (and/or humiliated/mocked/abuse them when they tried, nevertheless). And then they complain that women didn’t participate so they don’t deserve representation in the fiction based on those events. In other words, it’s boys not letting girls into their boy’s club citing the fact that boys have never let girls into the club as proof that girls are not worth of joining.
I dunno…. I kinda see the complaints as being directed toward the shoehorning that’s going on here, rather than the presence of women in a video game. I’m not defending the people having a sook (I feel I need to say this, lest I incur the same wrath) but in my opinion, if you’re making a highly stylised game like this why not just create a fictional alt-reality for it and avoid shitting all over history? I’m thinking along the lines of the recent Wolfenstein’s etc. What they are doing just seems like lazy box ticking.
Ultimately though…. live and let live? The whole tone of this article is “who cares?”. So can’t we just apply that approach across the board? Some people are passionate about historical accuracy. Some people are not. Who cares?
Ah yes, the shoehorning argument. Would you argue that Inglourious Basterds shits all over history?
That was one of the other examples I had in mind really. To me it seems so obviously “fictionalised” and stylised that it can’t be mistaken for anything other than that. I’ve never played a BF game, but in the past i’ve had the impression that they try to play off the “historical” aspect of the franchise. I don’t really have a problem with any of this, as I said above, but I would be disappointed if EA tried to pass it off as something it wasn’t. But yeah, i’m not suggesting that I think BF is a sim – it’s obviously not. What I saw of BF1 in trailers though looked like it was going for authenticity.
To be totally clear though – i’m not defending the knuckle dragers here. To be honest, I just find it hard to resit a bit of E.A bashing. The flesh is weak.
Oh, and the shoehorning bit – i really do mean that. I think it’s shit of EA to do that. Put in the effort and include that stuff in an accurate way – educate the buffoons whilst entertaining them. As many people have pointed out, women and non-white cultures played all kinds of roles in WW2. A bit of effort would result in an amazing story. Maybe that’s what they’ve done, but i’m expecting it to be a generic reskinning of roles that act and feel “white male”.
I think it’s more a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t scenario. Women and people of colour are big enough demographics that the absence of one or the other from a game is going to generate backlash. Possessive and scared white men are a large enough demographic that they are able to generate vociferous complaints about the inclusion of minorities, because they feel it threatens them and why do things have to change? There is no perfect solution. In the end, the devs and the publisher make the game they want to make, and we as consumers individually consider whether it is something we want to buy.
There really were people of colour as you call them, in WW2. Whole platoons of them. The only inaccuracy if you want to call it that was they tended to be segregated rather than integrated into other units.
Yep, you can find plenty of examples of both women and non-whites fighting in WWII but for some it will always be unwelcome to see them in a game.
I’d assume that’s often because devs are white and just make white characters. To be honest, if they’ve got the resources I think it’s better to have different models and customization to make your character look like whatever you want. Especially in a game that’s basically a shoot ’em up.
But it kinda depends on the game and what they’re trying to do. If they’re striving for realism then shoot for that. If there’s a lot of character interaction then your choices of skin tone and gender could (and should) affect how NPCs react to you for example. Or in some cases make it outright impossible to make certain choices.
That would work, if we were talking merely about people expressing their opinions peaceably. But time after time, these folks cry “SJW!” at every single thing where people other than straight white men, preferably American and Evangelical receive representation and not simply to express their opinion but with the naked intention to crush the thing in question or force a change that suits their preferences. That’s not opinion nor “living and let living””.
Sounds like the Clark Kent problem to me. No one cares that Superman can fly or shoot lasers out of his eyes, but some people get upset at the notion that he can disguise himself just by wearing glasses.
Well that’s the problem with suspension of disbelief. As long as you can establish a set of rules for something fantastic (ie: Superman comes from Krypton so he can fly) that’s ok. It’s when you break a rule or ignore something obvious that people get upset. We recognise people with or without glasses all the time, Superman is just a person so why wouldn’t we recognise Clark Kent as Superman? In the comics at one point they tried to explain it by saying he vibrates slightly all the time so photos come out a bit blurry and he’s harder to recognise.
It’s the same thing for this. It only takes one small “error” to break suspension of disbelief. For me, it’s a soldier with an artificial hand in WW2.
Given that this makes no real attempt at anything like historical accuracy, I don’t care, and neither should anyone else. If you were looking for historical accuracy from this you were looking in the wrong place from the start!
This is quite different from trying to shove women into games that try to more closely depict historical combat, because that doesn’t make any sense. But ridiculous shit like BF5? Lol, for fucks sake there’s bigger issues in the world.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Women_in_World_War_II
Some women did fight behind enemy lines like in the trailer, so yeah.
“In the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Churchill recruited around 60 women “to set Europe ablaze”. They were deployed behind enemy lines, usually by parachute or fishing boats, to help form a ‘secret army’ of resistance fighters preparing the way for the Allied invasion. One of the most recognisable British SOE members was French born Vera Leigh who was posthumously awarded the King’s Commendation for Brave Conduct after being captured and murdered by the Nazis. Another, Violette Szabo was immortalised in the famous film ‘Carve Her Name with Pride’ starring Virginia McKenna.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-women-of-the-second-world-war
The dude that jumps out of the window has a katana strapped to his back….just saying.
Wow, I totally missed that.
But on that note, my Granddad brought back a katana from WW2. So it’s not entirely unbelievable that you’d see one on a soldier there. That said, he fought in Egypt before fighting in the Pacific, not the other way round.
You can’t demand historical accuracy from a game that is as farcical as shown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
They should have named this a sequel to Codename Eagle, lol.
Historical accuracy lol, it’s a dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers shooter with a vague theme.
The type of people that are outraged by this are either pedants or MRA-leaning man-children.
The best part is all of you are willingly partaking in what can only be described as a cynical move on EA’s part to maximise copies sold. It doesn’t matter whether you obstinately believe in historically realistic depictions or an all-out (and slightly anachronistic) drive for inclusiveness – EA laughs all the way to the bank whichever stance you take.
I’m amused by people complaining about accuracy when BF4 had an Aircraft Carrier sized fucking shark that could eat helicopters in one map. Just saying.
I’m more concerned that the author is claiming he has to search the bad parts of Twitter or Reddit for a story. That isn’t journalism, that is finding low effort click bait outrage. Better yet why not reach out to some of these people to hear why they are outraged by his trailer as opposed to just taking a few tweets and patting yourself on the back.
I think DICE could have avoided all of this by saying it was an alternative history instead of wording it like it was historical. I don’t care either way I have adult things to worry about like work, bills and family.
You missed the beginning which is context. In case YOUR job, not his.
Not the worst parts, the worst websites.
So you are being pedantic. Fair enough have fun with that.
I’m inclined to agree, Twitter and reddit are the worst of websites. Twitter especially. Mainly.
They want historical accuracy do they? So being shot 26 times before droping is historical accuracy? Man, the war would have been very different if that was the case.
It’s that prosthetic arm that ruins it for me. Most of the gimmicks in BF 1 did have some basis in reality even if stretched to their absolute limits for the sake of variety and fun. I know that the gameplay mechanics aren’t realistic but their was nothing visually out of place for the time period like this.
It’s a basic claw, pretty sure they had those by the 40s.
Approximately 30k women and 50 million men were on the frontlines. As far as I know, none were British and no one, man or woman, got that kind of surgery and returned to the frontline.
It’s not historically accurate, but I don’t think it needs to be. As long as it stays away from the real battlefield drama (lootboxes, ugh) and plays well I think it will be another fine addition to the franchise.
the hilarious part about people complaining about woman in CoD WW2 was the fact there are so many silly gun skins, emblems all kinds of ridiculous gaming things but it is girls they say break their immersion. Roll eyes.
“There shouldnt be women in this game! Its unrealistic”
Proceeds to run around in game with a fully loaded MG42 and secondary weapon on their back. Along with several grenades and can miracously call in airstrikes with just a smoke grenade
I wonder if all the characters that were shown in the trailer were purely just multiplayer characters you can select and customise. While the single player campaign will be more grounded in somewhat “historical accuracy”. So they can show the heroes and events of war while having the craziness that is multiplayer?
My guess is that these are multiplayer characters considering the way they die and respawn. I am on board for a more lighthearted campaign starring make believe SOE heroes as well though.
That’s what I was thinking, especially since they kept respawning and saying “ello again”. Isaw they’re talking about the more unknown stories like resistance group fighting and “secret war” types of events which i’m down for. We’ve seen alot of historic battles, but i’d love to see those real intimate skirmishes that occurred in-between.
See I don’t mind the inclusion of females (though it does seem like a bit of an easy 2018 move to try and be appropriate), my issue is that the trailer makes the game seem arcadey and cod-like. Let’s just hope they remember what made BF1942 so good in the first place…
Shooting your teammates across the map into battle using a howitzer?
Nothing about that trailer seemed historically accurate, Hogan’s Hero’s was more accurate than that Michael Bay piece of………. Why the Braveheart war paint? Historically accurate wait until the multiplayer gameplay, with everyone hopping and shooting and shooting and jumping in front of each others lines of sight.
So what if there are women in it. I just realised she’s a cyborg terminator as well.
Will there be someone who’s genderfluid? Now, an attack helicopter would be handy.
Heh, this reminds me of Ubisoft saying girls used to go to school while also saying they didn’t in Assassins Creed.
Look, we all know why she’s there. We all know why she is missing an arm and doing more work than all the men. This is just an inclusive checkmark that they think will help sell the game. They’re advertising her to people who aren’t interested in the game, who will at least write articles on why EA are suddenly not evil for doing so, which in turn helps advertise the game for them. They used to do the soldier standing and staring at you box cover before everybody started complaining about it, now they’re just doing the same but replacing the soldier with a woman or a black person.
We also know that in the story she’ll be safe. She can’t die because the people who they’re advertising for will write articles about how offensive it is, and she’ll never get injured because it’s in poor taste to injure a disabled person. Add on top that the BF series has, at best, only made average campaigns and it’s pretty obvious that the single player just won’t be interesting to play.
With the drama over ‘mai representation’ in the last few years people are getting sick of it. So of course they’re going to complain. Then get annoyed when people take their criticisms and act all smug and sarcastic with it.
I honestly don’t think she’ll be in the story. I think she’s just a character model for the multiplayer in how you can customise your character. They showed one female character from the campaign in the event and they said she was a Norwegian resistance fighter fighting the German occupation.
The response from the community just shows how cancerous the gaming community can be, which sucks because there’s so many responsible gamers.
Isn’t this how you’re acting? What you call “criticism” is a series of assumptions –the worst possible– and then taking your assumptions as reality to prove yourself right. And then, when someone calls you out on this, you’ll dismiss their actual criticism to your position as “smug sarcasm” or something, all while feeling very pleased with yourself.
I’ve seen more collective bitching about the people who complained in my feed over today than I’ve seen actual bitching about the cover art. I doubt this is a problem worth paying attention to.
That being said I’d put good money on this article being pre-written in anticipation of any acute grumbling in order to blow it up for eye balls.
There were female combatants in WW2, it was just overly dominated by males you’d just not hear about it. Think Russian for example had quite a few as snipers. No doubt this BF5 doesn’t really portrait a realistic image of their roles during WW2, who cares, its a game.
Wow! Glad World War 1 never happened. That would’ve inconvenienced a whole lot of people. This whole article/comment section stinks of SJW bullshit. The defence that “It’s a game” is ludicrous. Battlefield 1’s story mode was quite historicial accurate, which I really dug. It would be a shame to change it so drastically for the sake of being socially acceptable.
Honestly, I have no issue with putting females in multiplayer. Go for it. Apparently, nobody plays single-player mode anymore, not with the “battle-royales” and such. So leave that section clear for me, m’kay?
But why stop there? Let’s put all 71 genders in. Have an issue with this? It’s a game.
BF1’s story mode had you sit for day after day in a trench hoping you didn’t get dysentery and then you got shot when you finally got the order to charge? Glad i skipped it
Well, if you had played it, you’d probably know that only the intro is set on the front lines, where you’re expected to die, making a point about the futility of war. The stories are laden with so much attention to detail that one could consider it “realistic”.
But no, let’s make it all unrealistic for the sake of pleasing a vocal minority. Whatever works, hey?
What on earth are you on about?
That’s… not what the author is saying. WWI is but a frame of reference in this and other games which they use precisely because it happened. But when you add all the “gamey” mechanics to it (you know, in order to make it a fun experience as opposed to the hell that reality was), the end result is several steps removed from reality.
At that point, as others have mentioned, a woman as a playable character is nowhere near the most unbelievable thing in the game. Yet somehow, lots of people take umbrage. Why do you think it’s the case? Why some other frankly ridiculous stretches of disbelief in these games are happily embraced, but this one little thing gets some folks incensed?
”Watch this trailer and tell me that, above everything else, it’s the gender and race of the combatants that seems unrealistic:”
Faaark wow. I totally see what you mean. Everything is off the charts stupid. I’ve seen dumb games before but nothing comes close to that.
Personally the more surprising thing is not the disabled female soldier in the WWII game.
It’s the amount of people that are apparently totally on board with deliberately misrepresenting history.
If people were arguing for there being a historical basis, based on a real person(s), telling stories not normally told. That’d be one thing. I however have seen so much written here and elsewhere online where people are outright excusing and saying it’s a good thing on the rewriting history argument.
That’s actually really worrying.
Saying it’s just a video game doesn’t excuse it. It’s a major release in a major entertainment format.
It’s just fascinating and really worrying how many people have the attitude anyone questioning a potential deliberately inaccurate portrayal of history, which they think may have been done for political and social reasons. That that person is automatically in the wrong. Due to said political and social reasons. Which mean it doesn’t matter whether or not the question of historical accuracy is address.
Spooky stuff.
The takehome message for me? this journalist is easy to bait, and dont listen to small minorities of toxic people like this on the internet,
in public they wouldnt ever have a platform to behave like this so lets just let them be toxic and pay no attention to them? lets not give them the spotlight and hope their stupid ideals die out.
That’s exactly the attitude that the academics of the Weimar republic had about those dismissible ruffians from that upstart political party, “National Socialism”. Didn’t end well for them.
(NB: I’m not drawing a direct parallel with Nazism, merely stating that there’s historical warnings regarding what happens when discriminating or violent ideals are allowed to fester and spread because they seem toothless).
The issue is not just that a woman is in the game. The issue is how literally everything around her, about her, and about the setting is being handled.
If you had women in the game who were like Lyudmila Pavlichenko, ie hard as nails no nonsense soldiers who just happened to be women, I don’t think people would care nearly as much. However thats not what we’re getting here. We’re getting a Furiosa copy paste complete with robot arm and dumb make up. Not to mention stupid melee weapon and trench coat.
The issue is not “Oh no, a lady” the issue is “Oh no, a completely blatant Mary Sue”
And I am aware there are a fair number of Gary Stu male counterpoints to this, but they tend to just be inhumanly skilled while looking like normal soldiers, as opposed to being inhumanly skilled and looking like they came from an entirely different game and different Genre.
Also, as far as I remember, they never had a trailer specifically showing a side character being better than you from the start. It undermines the entire idea that you, the player character, are the hero of the game. Because clearly this lady in glam rocker makeup should be, since she’s better than you in every way.
I think you are missing the context. In the context of that trailer everyone is looking a bit ridic, not just the femme. So they are shaking up the multiplayer with more character customisation, the end.
The clip’s not realistic at all, every knows the real battle was with EA’s net code.
I’d hate to see how anybody complaining about a woman in a video game reacts when they have a real problem like an overdue mortgage or a child with leukemia.
People are mad at this trailer not for there being a women.But that she is prominent even though women were not that prominent in the war.Also she has a prosthetic arm while being a sniper.Not a single military would give a handicapped person a sniper,otherwise you would have the worst military in the world.
Women in a WWII game? Awesome, always loved hearing about the Russian fighter pilots and snipers!
Wait, she’s from Britain, a country that didn’t use women in combat? And she has a robot hand? And she’s in a game that looks nothing like WWII?
EA had an opportunity to tell the real story of these brave Russian women, but instead they decided to make an Overwatch ripoff?
Thank God for Red Orchestra, Rising Storm, and 1914-1918. At least some people give a shit about history.
I honestly don’t care if there are females in the game. If anything, it’s great that girls who play video games are given the option to.choose their own gender. However, there is a problem where a campaign mission replaces a norweigion commando squad who laid out their lives trying to take out a German heavy water factory with a mother and her daughter. In this “war story”, a mother and her daughter single handedly kill multiple German soldiers. This is a pure sjw bs move by dice and it’s outright offensive. It’s honestly so stupid that they would do something like this. I get it that hey women are just as strong as men blah blah but fuck off. People legitimately died in this mission, show some fucking respect and tell it how it happened. There is no need to twist a story to fit your stupid agenda. And if you want to make up your own stories, do not base a game off something that actually happened.