I just started playing COD Black Ops Cold War because I got it through my PlayStation Plus subscription and wanted to try it out. I’ve previously played some others like Modern Warfare (1 and 2) and WWII. While it always felt a bit over the top and propaganda-ish, I really liked it for the blockbuster feeling and just turning your mind off and enjoying the set pieces. However, Cold War has a section in Vietnam and I suddenly started feeling really uncomfortable and just turned the game off.

In WWII you can easily feel like the “defender”, and even Modern Warfare felt like fighting a very specific organisation that wanted to kill millions. Here however it just becomes so hard to explain why I’m happily mowing down hundreds of clearly Vietnamese locals that I was unable to turn my mind off and just enjoy the spectacle.

I turned to the internet and started browsing and found this article and I really agree with what the author is saying.

I don’t know if I will be continuing the campaign or not, but I just feel that I don’t want to support these kinds of minimizations of military interventions.

I just wish there were more high budget / setpiece games that don’t glorify real life wars. Spec Ops The Line was amazing in that sense, but it’s also quite old already.

I would love to hear your opinions on this subject.

    • knokelmaat@beehaw.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      Well, not really as I’m European and have no connection to any side in the Vietnam war.

      I just feel that if your game is based on real life wars than you should be very careful to give a nuanced view of the situation. Even allowing a campaign on both sides would be interesting if executed well.

        • knokelmaat@beehaw.orgOP
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          1 year ago

          I knew about this. As a Belgian though, I don’t believe we had a lot of presence there.

          Sadly, we have done our share of horrible stuff on foreign soil (but we haven’t made any videogames about it)