Azint wrote:I need to comment somewhere about the whole Battlefield V fiasco, and in general the public reaction to things in video games. To put it short and simple: Who gives a shit?
To state it more elaborately; What is the problem here? That there is a woman? That there is a prosthetic arm, and a katana? People are complaining about historical inaccuracy in a video game when the developers have made a lot of statements saying that they actually want to stray from it for the sake of doing something different. I don't even play Battlefield, and I think it's ridiculous. DICE has done a long string of fairly faithful reenactments of different wars, some even in space. But the instant that they put a woman front and center, people cry for blood. I mean, it's not even the strangest part of the whole trailer. There is a lot of ridiculous things going on in Battlefield V, and it looks like they want to have fun with it, because after all, we all need another straight-faced WWII game.
This is a game. They are the authors, and I do believe in auteur license in that the creator of a piece of work is allowed to do whatever they want with it. Tarantino killed Hitler in his WWII movie, and that was given a pass. I will defend DICE's decision to thin out some realism for the sake of fun, considering how many minor inaccuracies Battlefield 1 ran with. Did people forget that many fictional pieces of media in general have this disclaimer about how it is a work of fiction, and not meant to be taken for serious historical value? If DICE was actually trying to tell people that there was a legion of black female Nazis, then they would be lying, but this isn't the case.
Even Yoko Taro, the director of Nier Automata has said that this is absurd. Japanese media has a record of turning literal battleships into these moe-blob waifu things for the sake of entertainment, and they've been getting away with it for however long that has been a thing. It might be a case of realism vs obvious artistic license, but I was never going to take Battlefield that seriously as an article of war documentation.
I think the main problem is the way the devs mishandle literal "realism" and "aesthetic realism".
I've been pondering more and more on this lately and it's along the same reasons why if Star Wars or Star trek were made with "real science" when affixed to their science fiction then all the action would be boring as every shot of the exterior of the ships during space battles would be silent.
So when players say "Oh that's not realistic" what they're driving for is "that's not aesthetically realistic". For example the whole "Germany had no Black soldiers because they're from Germany and all white and Aryan pride, blah blah" but when you look into the Africa Korps there are loads of black soldiers. One is "real" and one is "I wouldn't expect this given what I'd expect from the material".
Battlefield's main problem is that they tout a game drenched in realism and history yet also provide a very wild and bombastic experience that resembles fiction rather than realism.
Now with the whole "prosthetic arm woman" thing it's an example of where the aesthetics don't match with the "realism" attempting to be provided.
Yes those prosthetics existed. Yes there were women fighting in WW2. Yes there were some that got injured. The main problem is the Venn Diagram alignment to have all three happening at the same time makes it a rarity. A rarity that would not be represented if thousands of people all have the experience of it, therefore applying the subconscious attributing of playerbase numbers to soldier numbers, which in turn equals "thousands of paraplegic female soldiers" in a subject material where we know that it's a rarity.
But in my opinion the biggest flaw is that the trailer is just the same as when DICE put out a "realistic" experience. Nowhere have I so far seen anyone from DICE actually confirm that this isn't another trailing down the "realWW2 " games path and is more along the lines of "play WW2/fictional game with WW2 backdrop". The trailer appears to take itself as it's game entity as seriously as the serious games did and it has the broader playerbase confused.
TBH they could easily fix it by making it Dieselpunk-lite and the robo-arm would fit slightly more, but the rest of the aesthetic would need to follow.
TL;DR: DICE are touting this game as "actually realistic" when they meant "Aesthetically realistic" and the playerbase is confused and mad as the mishandling makes rare elements in reality seem absurd when taken seriously.
