Recently, I decided to play through Gearbox Software’s 2005 World War 2 First-Person Shooter (FPS), Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30*. The game places you in the boots of Matt Baker, a sergeant in Fox Company of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the famed 101st Airborne Division. Just mere hours before the D-Day invasion took place, the 101st Airborne parachuted behind German lines to disrupt enemy operations and inhibit any possible German counter-attacks. The story-line of Brothers in Arms is set over seven days and attempts to accurately represent the harrowing journey of the 502nd Regiment. The missions have you clearing out towns, blowing up bridges, assaulting and defending farm-houses, etc.. Beyond that, you also get acquainted with your “brothers in arms,” learning about them, fighting with them and sadly, even watching some of them die.
For me, Brothers in Arms was a gritty strategic experience. The game, far from being a cake-walk, takes patience and persistence. Fail to find cover – you’re dead-meat. Send your squad-mates recklessly scampering toward a German machine gun nest -and you’ll find their limp bodies later. Think you can take on a German tank with your rifle – think again. The game forces you to think like a soldier, act like a soldier and live with the brutal consequences. It’s one of the most vivid and realistic experiences I’ve had while playing a videogame.
In fact, I greatly appreciated the game’s desire to be realistic and in some way, tell the story of the 502nd Regiment. These men were heroes. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 opened my eyes to that in a whole new way. Yes, I’ve read about books about World War 2. I’ve watched Band of Brothers. But I’ve never realized what it was like to be a paratrooper. I’ve never ducked behind cover as bullets whizz by. I’ve never heard my squad-mates screaming for me to get-down. I’ve never watched as a fellow soldier lies dying on the ground. I’ve never experienced that until now. Well … sort of. You see, as realistic as Brothers in Arms attempts to be, I could shake the feeling that I was only playing a game. Sure, it was immersive. Yes, it faithfully traced the foot-steps of the 502nd Regiment. And even better that I didn’t feel it was reveling in war, but rather depicting it as it is in all of its bravery and bloodiness.
And yet when it all said and done, I walked away from the game realizing it was only a game. And that bothers me.
Maybe the irksome feeling started when I died for the first time and realized that the game didn’t have “perma-death” (when it’s over, it’s over). Or maybe it grew when I realized that if I left my squad-mates out to dry and got them slaughtered in one mission, I could usually count on getting them magically resurrected to full health for the next mission. Or maybe the feeling festered when the game wouldn’t let me finish a mission without killing one more poor stranded German. No taking prisoners here.
Whatever it was, I walked away from Brothers In Arms being reminded that all mediums have their limits. While a FPS videogame can do so much more than a book or a movie in bringing World War 2 to life, it cannot do everything. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a realistic, sober-minded FPS like Brothers in Arms may actually do a grave dis-service to its own subject matter if it’s not careful. How so?
Well, consider that any video-game is comprised of a bunch of rules that you have to obey in order to progress through the experience. No matter how immersive or historically faithful the game is, the medium is still gripped the inexorable pull of 1’s and 0’s. You either satisfy the game’s rules or endure the fail state. You either make it out of the level with sufficient health and satisfied objectives or you don’t. It’s either “Next Level” or “Game Over.”
And while this might be perfectly acceptable in a game like Tetris or Mario, it raises questions in a game like Brothers in Arms.
How do you take something as complex and bloody and heart-wrenching as World War 2 and faithfully represent it in a game with health ratings and pre-programmed level design? Is something lost when we can replay a level over and over again without any of the physical and psychological devastation that the real soldiers encountered? And because games are often played to be fun, what do we lose or what do we foster when we make killing nameless German foes the core objective of our game? Does life, even if it’s “virtual life,” become cheap – a commodity to be consumed on the insatiable altar of our entertainment desires?
In the end, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 leaves me conflicted. It was a well-designed, historically-accurate, thoughtful FPS game. It was an engaging play. But it was also an uneasy play. I am left wondering in the back of my mind if the colossal travesty of World War 2 has merely become an epic virtual playground for me? Am I truly honoring the heroes of the past or blissfully playing a complex game of cops and robbers over their cold tombstones? I am not sure, but one thing I do know – I need to tread carefully on this hallowed ground.
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