Posts Tagged ‘FPS’

Many reviews commented on the story’s short comings. A problem I believe was born from conflicted directions in the overall vision for the game and struggling to settle on an overarching theme. While the graphical tone and hopeless nature of the story are a persistent and suffocating through out, there seems to be disparity between some incidental scenes and the message it wants to convey at its culmination.

In some ways KZ2 tries to mimic the Call of Duty games by focusing not on your character but your squad during a single battle in a larger conflict. It is an undertaking in which developers Guerrilla succeed and fail at in near equal measure. For much of the game the focus is on those around you, keeping your character relatively faceless. This is often achieved remarkably successfully due to the fidelity of the graphics, but there are a few instances when the illusion is broken. Part of the problem are the occasions its pulls out into the third person. These establish a different dynamic between you and the character. It isn’t you any more. You are not witnessing this battle, it’s the protagonist you control (Sgt. Sevchenko) who while devoid of personality is no longer just a ball of clay for you to mould in your image.

Facial animation manages to convey emotions effectively; unfortunately the emotions seen are often hard to reconcile with the characters actions.

This fracture (which for the sake of argument I will define as between narrative and marketing) seems to run through the majority of the game. It seems one side of Guerrilla were trying to pass a commentary on the futility and duality of war by placing you as a lowly grunt trying to survive the orders of your superiors, watching the death around you. As they wrestled with the task though the other half of the company seemed hell-bent on trying to demonise the Helghast antagonists. Their Nazi appearance serves merely as a convenient touch stone to for what the story depicts them engaged in, their torture, jingoism and elitisms. It makes them seem like an enemy worthy of eradication. If this was just a summer blockbuster movie style of game then this depiction of the foe would function perfectly but there are constant hints of something else. An alternate plot that was maybe too unpalatable for the marketers and the mass audience they hoped to reach. In truth you are the invading army, the aggressors. Members of your squad become progressively more brutal, and in the end they too commit war crimes, but it all seems marginalised in the overall context of the game.

I needed to squeeze this game quote in here somewhere, “What makes this train so important? It’s either going somewhere or carrying something important.”