History Buffs Discover Inaccuracies In Battlefield 1 Trailer (hothardware.com) 74
MojoKid shares an interesting article from Tom's Hardware. While the new Battlefield 1 trailer may be the most-liked trailer in the history of YouTube, it's also historically inaccurate, according to a popular YouTube channel about World War I. "Some of the scenes feature some unusual or experimental gear," reports Indy Neidell, the voice of the video series The Great War, "and some weapons are carried by soldiers from the other side."
Thousands of people joined the YouTube channel after the release of the game's new trailer, prompting this special video review of the historical accuracy of the Battlefield 1 trailer. "Some of the most spectacular moments in the trailer, such as the tanks bursting into trenches or giant, ominous zeppelins hovering, are actually historically accurate," reports Tom's Hardware, adding that the YouTube commentator "ultimately applauds Battlefield 1 for incorporating so many different elements of WWI. Many people often forget that much of WWI was fought through hand-to-hand combat or that battles took place throughout Eurasian landmass."
Thousands of people joined the YouTube channel after the release of the game's new trailer, prompting this special video review of the historical accuracy of the Battlefield 1 trailer. "Some of the most spectacular moments in the trailer, such as the tanks bursting into trenches or giant, ominous zeppelins hovering, are actually historically accurate," reports Tom's Hardware, adding that the YouTube commentator "ultimately applauds Battlefield 1 for incorporating so many different elements of WWI. Many people often forget that much of WWI was fought through hand-to-hand combat or that battles took place throughout Eurasian landmass."
Re:Did you know? (Score:4, Funny)
The fact that this post was downmodded is proof that the Italians did 9/11.
News at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Work of fiction is shown to be fictional.
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Re:News at 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:News at 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
In that same vein, I saw someone complaining yesterday about the fact that in the Dark Souls franchise, it's utterly unrealistic that rolling around (one of the core game mechanics for how you avoid taking damage) should be able to make you immune to any form of attack, since it makes the game less believable when someone swings a sword at you and you just roll right through it to dodge. It was quickly pointed out that he's playing a game in which he's an undead spawn of a demigod consuming the souls of the gods and demons he slays while fighting dragons, monsters, and the aforementioned gods and demons, so it would seem to be a bit odd that rolling is what's making the game less believable.
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I've actually complained about this since Demons Souls, the invulnerability frames during rolling, it should be for movement and that's it, the game is applauded for the fantastic hit detection (that stops being relevant as soon as you press the roll button)
It's for the most part a player vs player complaint, you can stab seven feet of a spear through someone, while they're rolling towards you, even further skewering themselves onto the spear, but they take no damage from it because they were rolling and th
Re: News at 11 (Score:5, Informative)
This is a standard 'best practices' story writing method in literature that has also carried over to gaming.
Most plots require that one thing that is unbelievable or breaks the laws of physics or what not. If the writer keeps everything else in their literary universe as accurate as possible, it makes it easier for the reader to suspend their disbelief further for that one "out there" plot device thing.
If your story just throws tons of established universe rules out the window at once, the reader has a harder time both relating to the world your characters are in as well as suspending disbelief for them, and usually such stories suck pretty badly.
That's why some people correctly ignore the one major disbelievable plot device while able to bitch about all the little things that Try to be accurate but aren't somehow.
It's still silly yes, but that's the explanation for ignoring the major time traveling knife all together while complaining about the really tiny discrepancies all at the same time.
Re: News at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite right. A lot of it comes back to the human mind's fascination with what-ifs and their ability to tolerate the results that come out of the assumption that began the what-if.
If you start with "What if there was a knife that allowed for the manipulation of time?", then anything that would come as a natural result of that assumption (e.g. the holder would be able to rewind time if they made a mistake), regardless of how absurd it might be, gets a free pass, while anything unrelated (e.g. the architecture looks wrong) gets no such free pass.
The more complicated the scenario, the more difficulty we have in seeing the connections and how they logically connect back to that beginning point of divergence from reality. By the time you get to entirely fictional universes, we're basically only holding onto the laws of physics, any tie-ins to the real-world that appear to be evident (e.g. if I see a medieval suit of armor, I'll expect a lot of the other medieval trappings as well), and whatever else has been mentioned in the universe, so it becomes extremely important to do some world-building and maintain consistency in how it's presented if you want your world to feel believable.
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It isn't really that unbelievable, no.
You'll notice that in your own example, the gamer was more interested in the gameplay than the story; that's not a coincidence. Personally, I like games that have an in-depth storyline, a well-developed world that the characters all "emerge" from...that's obviously not what everyone else likes. That's not even why a lot of people _play_ games.
So if you're playing a game and you're not interested in the game's plot or characters, what are you playing it for? The game _me
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Even the title isn't historically accurate, why the hell would the content be?
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The most important innacurracies (Score:4, Insightful)
WWI and wars in general are not FUN and you don't re-spawn every time you die.
It's a fucking game people.
Re:The most important innacurracies (Score:5, Funny)
and you don't re-spawn every time you die.
Citation needed.
Re:re-incarnation (Score:5, Insightful)
But even they acknowledge that you lose all your gear and accumulated XP.
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But you do get to keep at least one stats counter. Apparently it's really important for the next several spawns.
Historically accurate = Boring game (Score:5, Interesting)
WWI was a lot of just sitting in the trenches and just kind of living in a world where you just can't lift your head above the trenchline. Just kinda slogging it and trying to survive, while living a miserable existence. For a game, rather boring.
Being also in a video games you are controlling characters not real people the strategy needed is different. In games NPC are disposable, there is no having to face the public and state that you sacrificed 50% of your unit, just to win the objective, where in real life it would just be to surrender or retreat. Because although you may win the battle, the losses would hinder the war more than what you would gain in the battle.
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I didn't even know they used blimps at all, all I knew was that the Germans used Zeppelins as bombers against England. That they did, though, until 1918.
Re:Historically accurate = Boring game (Score:5, Informative)
"Blimps went out of use the moment airplanes became popular."
Blimps were STILL used in World War 2.
Of course by then they were inflated with Helium
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The buff didn't even know that Blimps went out of use the moment airplanes became popular.
There's a nice museum at Moffet Field Naval Air Station in California, documenting the use of blimps in WW2, by the US Navy, to hunt submarines. It's in the most enormous hanger (height-wise) that you'll probably ever see. Very impressive.
In addition to covering convoys near North America, South America, and the Caribbean, the blimps were used over Gibraltar (launching from Africa) to cover the straight at night, when it was too dangerous for aircraft to perform that mission (which required flying at low
Re:Historically accurate = Boring game (Score:4, Insightful)
A historically accurate game of WW1 would indeed be boring. And frustrating. You climb out of the trench, then run down a wasteland. Should you roll well on your saving throw you have no influence in whatsoever, you jump into the enemy trench and start hacking Krauts (or Tommies, same texture in a different color, basically). If you're lucky and nobody hacks your back apart, a few hours later the others will come running at you where you actually get a bit of gameplay where you may shoot at some of them before they jump into your trench and again it's mostly a matter of luck and less one of skill whether you survive or croak.
Oh. By the way. No respawning. You get randomly hit by a stray bullet, the best you can hope for is some sort of spectator mode for a few hours where you lie in that no man's land between the trenches and your character slowly dies instead of quickly.
Sounds like fun, eh?
Re:Historically accurate = Boring game (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Historically accurate = Boring game (Score:4, Insightful)
On the Western Front, yes. Although there were some intervals where there was some movement even there.
Many, many attacks had one side or the other make it to the other side's first few trenches and there was heavy fighting there. And then you'd get counterattacked and possibly thrown back.
The major problem isn't the possibility of a good FPS fight in the trenches, its the fact that there was a very high casualty rate for getting there. Between machine guns, artillery, barbed wire and such, a lot of troops didn't make it across the No Man's Land. What would justify your character getting across? I'd presume, however, that you could use the narrative to simply suggest that they were one of the lucky ones who did simply because if they didn't, there'd be no game.
Now on the Eastern Front and in the Middle East (which they took some care to show), it wasn't all trench warfare. Remember this is when Lawrence of Arabia was active, so you're going to be mobile in any campaign that is located there.
Re:Historically accurate = Boring game (Score:4, Insightful)
The major problem isn't the possibility of a good FPS fight in the trenches, its the fact that there was a very high casualty rate for getting there. Between machine guns, artillery, barbed wire and such, a lot of troops didn't make it across the No Man's Land. What would justify your character getting across? I'd presume, however, that you could use the narrative to simply suggest that they were one of the lucky ones who did simply because if they didn't, there'd be no game.
Obviously many people did survive multiple trips over the top. But there were also other types of attacks such as trench raids where they would sneak up quietly at night and attack a section of trench, whether to capture prisoners or just generally create mayhem and keep the other side on their toes. In those cases it was pretty easy to get to the other trench. The trick then was to not get blown up by a grenade or bludgeoned to death by a guy with a persuader. Oh, and make back across to your own trench afterwards of course.
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Let's not forget the great flu epidemic, trench flu, shell shock and trench foot. More likely to get you than a bullet or bayonet.
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Right, because there was nothing other than the Western Front.
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The Eastern Front was even more boring than that. Not for the soldier, mind you, but as a game it fails miserably. If you want to play that, play your average game of ArmA. 10 hours searching for an enemy for 1 minute of fighting.
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Would you prefer we ensure we make these kinds of games so realistic that even the armchair general suffers from PTSD?
Seems we've quickly forgotten the side effects from sending humans onto an actual battlefield.
Or, more likely, you've forgotten that we're talking about video games.
They can only go so far (Score:3)
If video games tried to be as historically accurate as possible then things would be a lot different and very few people would buy them. For instance in COD World at War, if that game had been historically accurate then in the levels where the Soviets are fighting through the streets of Berlin the models for the German soldiers would all have had to be young boys and old men. A World War I game would involve (if later in the war) hours of sitting in a muddy trench or marching around, enduring a artillery
The Onion on Most Realistic Modern Warfare Game (Score:5, Informative)
Designers say the new game explores the endless paperwork, routine patrolling a modern day soldier endures in photorealistic detail.
the horrifying cleaning power of Clorox(tm) gas (Score:1)
Yeah, in real life the Kaiser's spawn point was hundreds of feet away from where they put it on this board! Also, you had to wait until the Rapture to respawn!
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Americans don't like facts, remember?
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that the merkins are late to the party.
That sounds kind of judgemental. Lord knows the Great War caused enough bitterness to go around, but what would you have preferred? Something like this?
"Mr. President, members of Congress, citizens of America: The Archduke of Serbia has just been assassinated. I know that doesn't sound really relevant to us in America, and that we've got our own stuff going on. But since every third country in Europe now has a hyphen in the name, and the political situation in Europe is basically a house of cards soaked
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And probably should never have joined.
Shortest Game Ever. (Score:2)
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Or you get slightly more gameplay when you're not killed but wounded and traumatized and shipped to a convalescent home where the doctors, not knowing of PTSD, persuade you that you're merely a bit shell-shocked and it is your duty to King and Country to return to the hellish front.
It's the second bit of action when a bullet blows your head off.
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It's a game (Score:3, Funny)
I can't help it, when I read this, immediately this [youtube.com] is what sprung to my mind.
Alternate history disclaimer (Score:2, Informative)
They straight-up admitted it's not going to be historically accurate because it wouldn't be any fun. [arstechnica.com]
And while there's a time and a place for that (it's important to know how much the real World War 1 sucked) this is a video game.
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The other side?! (Score:2)
"and some weapons are carried by soldiers from the other side."
G-g-g-ghost!
World War I wasn't just trench attrition (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think thats true. And its also quite the shame.
Especially when the bonus is: The western front of WW2 might be the least relevant one, to later geopolitics.
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>. I would like my blood and violence to come with a healthy dose of fiction.
I think I prefer an unhealthy dose myself. I always preferred the uberpowered weapons and cartoonish gameplay of Quake and UT over the realistic FPSs like CS. Gaming was escapism and the violence wasn't supposed to be realistic, just fun and with lots of giant explosions.
Now, in my thirties, I avoid FPSs entirely - I got bored with the entire concept a long time ago. Give me a good RPG like Morrowind or physics sim like KSP inst
One inaccuracy (Score:5, Informative)
One thing he got wrong, the tank crewman at 7:14 isn't the driver, its somebody starting the engine. Engines of the period had crank-starts. I don't know why British WW1 tanks had the crank handles on the inside, but I'd guess it was because the engines constantly broke down and had to be restarted, and you'd get shot if you had to go outside to do that.
In this picture https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org] - you can just about see the crank handle, on the left of the window.
This is what the actual driving position of one of the things looks like.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/... [wikimedia.org]
Didn't Really Tear it Apart (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone should watch The Great War series though it's awesome what they're doing. They're following the war week by week as we go through the 100th anniversary of it. It's really worth subscribing to.
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Everyone should watch The Great War series though it's awesome what they're doing. They're following the war week by week as we go through the 100th anniversary of it. It's really worth subscribing to.
I had never heard of it myself. But as someone who considers this [amazon.com] to be light recreational reading material, it sounds like it's something right up my alley. I grew up watching the History channel before it turned into the "Hitler and aliens" channel, listening to Kenny Rogers talk about the Civil War before school and watching black and white footage of WWI and WWII with British narration after school, and seems like this will bring me back to those days.
Wow! (Score:2)
A Fantastic series of articles on The Great War... (Score:3)
Over at Mental Floss, Erik Sass is compiling a tremendous body of work on the topic.
http://mentalfloss.com/section... [mentalfloss.com]
As of today, there are 235 articles. I believe there are about 1 to 2 per week for several years. He is covering the events that lead to the War and occurred 100 years ago. Snippets from journals, letters, and old photographs help convey what it was really like then. It has been a very large eye-opener for me. As a history buff, I thought I knew a good deal about the topic...but there is so much more.
Just to be clear, I am not connected with Mental Floss or Mr. Sass in any fashion. Only a large fan of this series.
Installment #1 posted on November 4th, 2011
http://mentalfloss.com/article... [mentalfloss.com]
Historical inaccuracies in the trailer (Score:2)
To say nothing of the actual title.