Call of Duty : World War 2 (EN)

We start in the hold of the boat taking the American troops to Normandy, through a long cinematic that presents the four main characters (all four of whom will come out alive) including the one embodied by the hero. They play cards, talk about the country, eat a little, until the moment when they are called by the high-ranking officers who automatically impose himself as a threatening and ruthless authority figure to land on the battlefield.

A few moments later and it is D-Day as we have already seen a hundred times, the difficult progression under the bullets and permanent explosions, the capture of the beach bunkers by the team of main characters and the victory with very heavy losses.

One of the following scenes shows two soldiers: Zussman (the character's best friend) is wounded, the high-ranking officer tells him that his wound will take weeks to heal, he tells him that he has his word not to fail in battle, and the high-ranking officer ends up telling him that his words are worthless. There is both the principle that "what matters are the deeds, not the promises," but also a reference to the humanity and fragility of the soldiers, which is surprising for a game of this license. The conversation ends with "you've got guts, young recruit, I just don't want to see them": there are quite a few such traits.

Daniels (the player) climbs into a tank, where a conversation takes place between the recruits on whether the Germans are good or not (given that they're just in front of a mass grave of bodies of German soldiers at that time): they talk about Mozart and Marlene Dietrich and have a debate interrupted by the arrival of German bombers that kill three-quarters of the soldiers and destroy the tanks in less than two seconds. We notice the presence of a Hispanic soldier in the American ranks, there will be others, as well as an African-American soldier in the position of corporal. There is a constant mention of his "difference" and the last scene where he appears will be the one where the other characters recognize his value as a man, even going so far as to say "I was wrong about you", proving an assumed racism that goes through what the soldiers say, leaving me very puzzled about the why of this behaviour.

The impression of immersion is very present, especially from the second mission where we spend the whole game dragging wounded Zussman with us, the camaraderie is extremely high unlike all the other opus where we had to rely only on ourselves (and on the high-ranking officers): the two soldiers exchange throughout the sequence, to give each other courage and to enjoin each other to continue (we hear the character in the film say "I got you" at least three times).

Just after the medical staff has been entrusted with it, it's hell again: the progression along the beach of the mission is interspersed with comrades falling on mines and catching fire under the helpless eyes of the player. We learn that Daniels comes from Texas, land of the Republicans. During the missions, the approval of the superior and the other soldiers is very important: as soon as you hit a target or complete a mission, you are entitled to the nice remarks of the others (but the opposite is also true: if you play badly or not very quickly, insults will be hurled).

They still call the Germans "the Krauts" throughout the game, that hasn't changed.

The two main characters (Daniels and Zussman) seem to be very close and have several conversations about the human side of the soldiers, the questioning of authority, their differences of point of view (especially on religion, one is atheist and the other Jewish) and their unfailing friendship: they do not hesitate to express their disapproval of orders from superiors, to make decisions (such as saving German civilians) and to try to bring a little "humanity" to the war.

From the first scene of the game, taking place in the hold of the boat taking the soldiers to the beaches of Normandy, we find a certain Christian ideology: Zussman (who is therefore Jewish) bets with Aiello (I'll put their names so that we can better understand them) his medal of Saint Michael, patron saint of soldiers, and wins it to then wear it until he is captured by the Nazis and sent to a labour camp (the last shift of the game will consist in going to save him), The character played by the player will find the medal when Zussman is captured (thinking about it, one might think that this medal is an allegory of salvation for the screenwriters) and will in turn wear it until the moment of the heroic rescue. During the last sequence, Daniels will want to give it back to Aiello, who refuses, arguing that Zussman "will need it much more" than he does, so he will give it back to him before returning to Texas to find the unmistakable figure of the pregnant fiancée waiting at home, and the last words he will say will be "to the end" and addressed to his comrade saved from the labor camp thanks to him.

These three words will be a central point of the relationship between Daniels and Zussman, since they will be repeated by both of them at least at five different moments (in a scenario mode that only includes eleven sequences), like a vow or a promise, justifying their multiple sacrifices for each other (Zussman takes a knife in the abdomen to save Daniels, the latter renounces his order of end of mission and his medal of honour to go and fetch him from the labour camp...): this relationship of co-dependence is also symbolized by the gameplay. Indeed, Zussman is the entire guarantor of the hero's life bar since he is the only one who owns and can share his life packs (this is the first time this specificity of the life bar appears in a Call of Duty, before it was enough to take cover to automatically regain life and no bar was visible on the screen), his presence is made completely mandatory and useful by this skill. It is also a means of conveying a certain form of camaraderie and interconnectedness between members of the same team. Each of the three members of the team has its own specificity for the player at some point in the game (or all the time in Zussman's case), and this particularity was greatly emphasized in the promotion of the game as well as in the press articles published shortly after the game's release.

"Experience a wartime story of perseverance and brotherhood" (Call of Duty official Twitter, October 23, 2017, a few days before the game's release).

Our studios wanted to offer their current view of this conflict," said Michael Sportouch, vice president of Europe at Activision Blizzard, the game's publisher. Our first episode dates back more than a decade, and there's a big difference between what we could offer then and now. And then, all of our research and all of our discussions with the community have shown that there's a strong demand for it. »

This war has very identified good guys and bad guys, more so than the First World War, thanks to the figure of the villain par excellence: the Nazis," says David Peyron, a lecturer in information and communication sciences. There is no need to present them, we know in essence that they are the enemies and all violence is justified against them. It's something you find in many war films or in Indiana Jones. »

Many criticisms have been made of the treatment of concentration camps in this game, since Zussman is being rescued from a labour camp for soldiers and otherwise never mentioned. The fact that he is a Jew is not discovered by the Nazis, so he is treated similarly to other soldiers, and while the promotion of the game promises an emotional and realistic immersion, one realizes during the final mission that the camp is completely emptied and that there is no trace of what took place in it, just a gallows in a corner, Zussman himself will be further away in the forest. No mention of the camps is made in any other FPS on the subject of the Second World War.

A lot of emphasis has been put on the reenactment of the Second World War, historians were present at every stage of the game's design, documentation has been provided (including photographs) and the main characters are all based on soldiers who actually existed, they all have the same names, by the way.

But they had to face a general lack of interest from the public for the scenario mode and a rather bad reception in general: only 30% of the players made the scenario, the press gave them a lot of lapidary criticisms.