'Call of Duty: WWII' won't ignore the Holocaust anymore
Video games set during World War II tend to be Holocaust deniers.
It's more a product of smart business than toxic beliefs. Video games weren't mature enough to tackle difficult topics when World War II shooters were in their heyday. Wolfenstein 3D established Nazis as uncontroversial villains, but there wasn't room to respectfully explore war atrocities in a game that ended with a boss fight against "mecha Hitler."
For roughly the next decade -- until Call of Duty 4 popularized more modern war settings -- mainstream shooters set during WWII followed a similar pattern. Developers avoided touching on the Holocaust, and in doing so they also built up a body of work that denied its existence.
It's harder to argue in 2017 that games aren't mature. Look at examples like Gone Home, Spec Ops: The Line, and Firewatch; all of them, gut-punching interactive stories with something meaningful to say. Games have long since proven they can treat difficult topics with grace.
Now we have Call of Duty: WWII coming in November. Sledgehammer Games is taking the blockbuster series back to its roots in this year's release. But can the studio realistically do so without touching on Nazi atrocities? Would it even want to?
"We didn't want to shy away from history. We wanted to be very respectful of it," senior creative director Bret Robbins said during a recent interview.
"Some very, very dark things happened during this conflict and it felt wrong for us to ignore that."
It's not just a matter of accepting the reality of the Holocaust. The game's 1940s setting is rife with intolerance, from the open hostility of Nazi atrocities to the more insidious reality of living in the "free world" before the Civil Rights movements of the '60s.
"Unfortunately, there was anti-Semitism," Robbins said. "There was racism. It's actually a very big part of our story, the fact that that stuff existed, it was real, and our characters deal with it."
It's even there in your own platoon. The main character's best friend is a fellow rookie soldier named Zussman; he's a Jew from the south side of Chicago and someone Robbins describes as a "fun" character.
"Right out of the gate we tackle the fact head-on that not everyone in the squad is comfortable with the fact that he's Jewish. And that was just a reality of the time. This is something this character has had to deal with his entire life," Robbins said.
That squad-level intolerance comes up again at a later point in the story, after you link up with a group of black American soldiers. As is the case with Zussman, the game doesn't gloss over the fact that some of your fellow soldiers aren't OK with this.
"We make it a story piece. It sort of elevates [the characters], in a way, to overcome this institutional thinking."
Against a narrative backdrop like this, the Holocaust becomes impossible to ignore.
"We absolutely show atrocities," Robbins said. "It's an unfortunate part of the history, but ... you can't tell an authentic, truthful story without going there. So we went there."
Robbins referenced the Band of Brothers episode "Why We Fight" here. American soldiers during WWII arrived in Europe without knowing the extent of Nazi atrocities. The episode in question follows one such squad as they discover their first concentration camp.
There are some thematic parallels here with what we do know of Call of Duty: WWII. Ronald "Red" Daniels heads off to Europe as a starry-eyed private who hopes to come home a war hero. It's only after he's confronted with the grim reality of war that that perspective changes.
One question lingers: why now? If World War II-set games have traditionally shied away from heavier topics, what makes it OK for Call of Duty -- a series that is known for its gratuitous action -- to now go there?
"I think video games are growing up," Robbins said. "15 years ago, there wasn't that expectation that you could tell a mature story. And in fact, there wasn't even a motivation to do that, really. It was much more about gameplay and new graphics and everything else."
There's been a shift in recent years, however. There's a bigger appetite for mature stories. It's partially a product of technology: performance capture allows for a more nuanced range of emotions from virtual actors. But that's not all.
"I just feel like the audience expectations and the maturity have changed," Robbins said. "I know when I ... play a great single player game and I want a great story, it's no longer enough just to have it be very surface-level and simple. I want something deeper and more complex, just like I do out of the movies I watch.
"So it's just maturity, I think. People are ready for it. They want it."
Topics Gaming
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
