While adequate representation of various groups and themes is now coming under scrutiny in the world of videogames, war never has to worry about falling out of fashion. It’s the star attraction in countless games, both modern and classic. It works its way into the names of the games, as Warhammer, Warcraft, Warfighter, Warface, and even the dubiously titled Wargasm go to show. It’s even manifest as a playable character in Darksiders. How much more proof do we need that war is the real centerpiece of gaming?
As expounded many times before, it’s not too hard to see why. Games have a challenge aspect by default, and presenting a conflict is one of the easiest ways to set the stage and present an external motivation to complete that challenge. As far as conflicts go, war is pretty much up there.
Ubisoft certainly get their fair share of mileage with this particular theme. Maybe not as much as Activision or EA, but the Brothers in Arms series, as well as all the Tom Clancy games, are firmly in the Jingo vein of things. However, the game of theirs that I'm featuring is a little more recent, and more importantly, a little different.
Valiant Hearts makes the bold decision to set their game during The Great War instead of going for the tried-and-tested WW2 setting, with its familiar setpieces like Normandy and Stalingrad. WW1 and its trench warfare are a recipe for bland level design where first-person shooters are concerned, but it turns out that it’s actually quite suitable for a sidescroller, which is what Valiant Hearts is, aside from a few racing segments.
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he game follows four main characters. The main face of the game is Emile, a French farmer who is drafted into the war effort and forced to leave his pregnant daughter back at the farm to fend for herself. To make matters worse, his son-in-law Karl just happens to be a German who was recently deported from France back to his native Germany and then drafted into the German army shortly after. Emile soon finds a friend in Freddie, an American soldier bent on revenge against the campy villain Baron Von Dorf. The last character to round off the troupe is Anna, a Belgian nurse who has also been on the trail of Von Dort ever since he kidnapped her scientist father and forced him to devise new weapons for his army. Actually, make that five characters, since we can’t forget about Walt, the Doberman who belonged to a German soldier before being befriended by Emile, and then the rest of the cast.
And with this quintet of heroes, we’re plunged headlong into one of the most harrowing battlefields in history. The story takes a number of twists and turns, with edge-of-the-seat moments aplenty. Despite the crisp and attractive art style, there’s a sense of melancholy that runs throughout the game. It hits a little harder because the characters aren’t your typical gung-ho grunts, just people who are thrown into a terrible situation and reluctantly go about their business. Freddie is the closest to a typical war game protagonist, with his single-minded focus on vengeance, but even he has a few curveballs in store. The amazing thing is that, besides one incident, none of the characters ever get to fire a weapon, which reinforces the idea that the game is less about the combatants and more about those affected by war, which makes for quite the refreshing change.
The game doesn’t try too hard to reinvent the wheel where gameplay is concerned, borrowing a few tricks from platformers and adventure games and mixing them together for a smooth experience.
There’s no in-game dialog (besides the voiceovers for cutscenes) and the snatches of French and German that you hear are entirely for flavour. You’re left to figure out proceedings through text bubbles and thought balloons, and thanks to a solid art treatment, you rarely feel lost.
Ubisoft Montpellier has really trumped its head studio with this one. Just goes to show how big business game development has the danger of killing the soul of unique experiences like this, but props to Ubi for funding a game of this kind in the first place.