So, I missed the whole "why russians hate coh2" thing...

I dismissed the Russians bashing and even blacklisting CoH2 as simple idiocy, I mean, anyone playing CoH for any time knows that it had great storylines, and good historical accuracy, and no real mention of crimes for either side, but of gameplay and BATTLE history. but then after actually starting single player for CoH2, seeing clips of it, and knowing more about history than relic apparently, I understand fully their concerns and outrage, and the last 10 threads or whatever that got locked are full of ignorance. I honestly can't believe this. If I was Russian I would boycott this game and hope for relic to go bankrupt or at least atone for this nonsense....


The "russian that looks like Justin Bieber" was right. Holy crap. I feel dirty and ashamed to even be associated with the game now.


Bracing for flames, ban and lock, but whatever, I had to get this off my chest. This would be like Relic rewriting CoH1 to follow the airborne to Audouville-la-Hubert where they massacre unarmed surrendering germans, or maybe a new DLC expansion to Sicily where we can follow the 45th infantry division and watch a the main characters murder 73 italian and german prisoners?

Ok, so these were in fact isolated incidents? Ok, so were the ones in CoH2, not only fairly isolated incidents, but also still very poorly portrayed and nonsensical which puts russian soldiers pretty much as the enemy of humanity, the nazi hoard destroying the whole country and killing millions is just a sideshow to relic I guess...and to fight the germans was just to take a picture at the reichtstag, not in defense of their country that had been invaded. Maybe they made a gamble that the german player base is more important for the game than the russian playerbase, but why even cater into the nonsense? Why not just portray the hardships of war for all, in a FAIR way?

Maybe when no one cares about the german CoH community anymore we can have some German DLC where we can run the camps and be an SS officer hanging wehrmacht deserters in 1945, perhaps kill some americans at Malmedy? Portray the entire german military as thugs, criminals, rapists, and murders just as the russians are portrayed? Even though a fair look at history shows all nations were guilty of war crimes, but warcrimes by frontline soldiers for ALL nations, including russia and germany, were far and few between considering the amount of battle taking place.

Oh, and before I hear that I am some pinko-Communist, (btw, communism is one of the worst plagues the earth has seen) or that "well, the russians really did kill people, did you know about holodomor or Katyn", no duh, but this is a war game, and RTS, not a political history class lecturing to me about the ills of the Red Army. The whole storyline of coh2 seems based on not a company of heroes, but a company of criminals, thugs, deserters, and murders. COH was supposed to be about battle, not politics or criminal activity.

What if the Eastern European devs at warthunder made some single player missions as US and Brits to burn innocent german, and italian civilians alive, zooming in on the houses as the women and children run out on fire, then another mission where the US nukes japan and shows the carnage of all these Japanese civilians, and then show the red airforce being the gentlemanly hero about it all on the other front? That's how it must feel like from the Russian perspective, only the events in question in the game are truly misrepresented and manufactured to top it all off! ABSURD!!!!

Wait til you play episode 11.

Wait til you play episode 11.

I saw some clips. I don't even want to play such a disgusting misrepresentation of history. The Christian cross on the partisan girl and the mention of capitalist is a nice touch, no? As is the germans not actually being germans according to their uniforms, but "Russian Liberation Army" soldiers. Did anyone do any historical digging at all?


Perhaps next we can all buy some DLC from the german perspective where we do much the same?
I won't image the pics here because I'd prefer to not be banned for it, but here's some ideas for the writers!! Let's piss off the german CoH community too, by misrepresenting the entire wehrmacht as well!
http://www.museumsyndicate.com/images/6/56909.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LoPTdkHrjjk/SzB5_aNcVtI/AAAAAAAAGDc/Kxvd2fvENB8/s640/ww2-invasion-poland-second-world-war-two-incredible-dramtic-pictures-images-photos-historyimages.blogspot.com-german-soldiers-execute-polish-civilians.jpeg


I will continue to play multiplayer as both factions for the fun of the game but the single player storyline is just beyond words...

Since they managed to condense the wartime experience of 30 million red army personnel in this quintessential industrial total war of the 20th century into 15 episodes of epic war crimes (notably depicting the duty of every soviet political officer as shooting my own troops in the head with a pistol, from Stalingrad all the way to Berlin). I was genuinely intrigued to see the way the relic writers were going to treat the nazi occupation of eastern europe in this game. We've had operation Barbarossa and case blue so far, although nothing remotely comparable has come out for the german side of the campaign. What does it say about these writers?

Since they managed to condense the wartime experience of 30 million red army personnel in this quintessential industrial total war of the 20th century into 15 episodes of epic war crimes (notably depicting the duty of every soviet political officer as shooting my own troops in the head with a pistol, from Stalingrad all the way to Berlin). I was genuinely intrigued to see the way the relic writers were going to treat the nazi occupation of eastern europe in this game. We've had operation Barbarossa and case blue so far, although nothing remotely comparable has come out for the german side of the campaign. What does it say about these writers?

It says things I dare not say out loud for fear of being banned. What a joke. You know, maybe if the german DLC was equally as dark, with a logical german soldier trying to make sense of atrocities and prevent them, as well as showing similar, and indeed much worse atrocities as shown from the russian side, it would have led to some fairness. But still, there is no excuse for the complete misrepresentation of all those who fought and fell in the russian military, for the complete nonsense like burning your own citizens and soldiers alive, and executing your own men for things, of which, even in the maligned red army, would have won you HONOURS not an execution...like saving a trapped officer amidst a firefight. Laughable.

I dismissed the Russians bashing and even blacklisting CoH2 as simple idiocy, I mean, anyone playing CoH for any time knows that it had great storylines, and good historical accuracy, and no real mention of crimes for either side, but of gameplay and BATTLE history. but then after actually starting single player for CoH2, seeing clips of it, and knowing more about history than relic apparently, I understand fully their concerns and outrage, and the last 10 threads or whatever that got locked are full of ignorance.

That's kinda funny, since a lot of people who dismissed those complaints did so saying that the guy complaining has never even played the game.

That's kinda funny, since a lot of people who dismissed those complaints did so saying that the guy complaining has never even played the game.

I read some necro threads, and it's truly ironic isn't it? The loudest critics of the russian community criticizing CoH seemed to be either elaborate trolls or complete idiots who didn't even bother with SP or seeing just how badly the russians were portrayed...I fell in this camp but I was never dumb enough to openly bash the russians for it. ...Now I know.

Alright I'm super confused here, how is the campaign a misrepresentation of history again? It sounds to me like the OP is only upset because the Soviets were shown to have committed war crimes...just like every other nation during WW2. We shouldn't have to be shown the Germans doing the same thing, as it's already implied anyway, and it's something that is already shown time and time again in the game/movie industry.

Again, I have to ask, what has been shown that is so terrible and wrong, that it warrants complaint?

The argument is that Relic chose not to show the war crimes of any other nation in their games with the Soviet Union being the sole exception.

Considering that the Soviets are also the protagonists of this game, all the special attention to war crimes can be seen as a statement or stance from Relic which can easily be taken as offensive.

Let's face it: it does seem extremely unlikely that a whole squad would be shot for saving a superior officer against overwhelming odds.

I think if Relic simply imitated CoD: World at War and had Soviet troops gunning down and molotov'ing surrendering Germans, it would have been a much more acceptable portrayal of "war crimes" than the particular events that took place in the game.

Alright I'm super confused here, how is the campaign a misrepresentation of history again? It sounds to me like the OP is only upset because the Soviets were shown to have committed war crimes...just like every other nation during WW2. We shouldn't have to be shown the Germans doing the same thing, as it's already implied anyway, and it's something that is already shown time and time again in the game/movie industry.

Again, I have to ask, what has been shown that is so terrible and wrong, that it warrants complaint?

It's a misrepresentation because it took isolated incidents, threw them all together, then falsely reconstructed things that happened, and made it appear to be so rampant that you would be part of war crimes and murder for almost the entire single player. Killing your own population with flamethrowers? Killing your own men for saving an officer of your army? Murdering partisans that are helping you? Machine Gunning your own soldiers? Also, then there's the more ideological issues like the protagonist saying millions died for a picture of the unused, and thus unimportant Reichstag, I mean, that is beyond laughable at it's face.

This is all so crazy. I mean, it would be one thing to represent the "take no prisoners" attitude that occurred a lot on the east, but to do all these random, nonsensical, and criminal actions that didn't actually happen the way it was portrayed is just stupid. It's like someone at relic watched enemy at the gates and lived through the cold war...

How are you so confused about this? How do you portray the entirety of a 30 million man force as a bunch of cowards, criminals, murderers, and thugs, when the game was supposedly going to represent the harshness of the eastern front, and depict the soviets as protagonists against the invading nazi hoard. It's like the game gives all moral authority to the nazis ffs....

Think of the examples I mentioned earlier. They could have easily put war crimes in any theatre coh has covered, many by the allies, hell, why not depict us soldiers slaughtering unarmed german PoWs? Or using PoWs as human meatshields to clear land mines? Or murdering unarmed wounded? This happened to a much greater extent by the allies than we've all been told, so why not include this in COH?

It's not that the soviets didn't commit crimes, it's the fact that every nation did, and the entire fucking single player is a nonstop crime wave of murder and war crimes, meanwhile you're fighting an invader who is destroying your country and committing countless war crimes against you but there is nothing about that. Does not compute...does not compute....does not compute...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieuBkWHfCuc

SNIP

OK, so what? Relic decided to show the Soviets doing these things, because like you said, it's a campaign from only their perspective. It also doesn't mean that they were the only nation doing this stuff at the time, nor does it mean that whatever atrocities that were being committed by the Soviets were the ONLY thing the Soviets were doing. To think other wise is crazy and delusional. The campaign shows the heroism and sacrifice the Russian people made for the country, just like every other nation did for theirs.

If you think a scene involving a corrupt soviet officer is suppose to symbolize an entire nations way of thinking, than you're have a very limited and corrupt way of thinking, especially when taking in information from entertainment.

Watch any war film, and there is always a scene that is similar to the one mentioned.

Snip

You say the game portrays the Soviet people as murders,thugs,etc. but it does the exact opposite. Not once in the campaign are the people who are actually fighting, anything but heroic men and women willing to give their lives for their country. It is the high ranking officers within the Soviet Union, that are avatars for the corrupt near the seats of Stalin, who are the ones who commit the bad deeds.

There IS NO AGENDA, NO PROPAGANDA, from Relic, like so many Russians think. Relic isn't deliberately trying to portray Russia as a nation composed solely of heartless criminals, that's preposterous! This is a game made by a bunch of Canadian developers who wanted to show the nitty gritty of war, and that it wasn't anything like a "America hell ya! War is awesome!" kind of situation. To deny that things like this actually happened, where men were killed by their own, and that a nation was willing to sacrifice a lot in order to achieve victory, is the real sin. Germany did it, USA did it, Britain did it, and yes...so did the Soviets.

Now, was the portrayal of these war crimes excessive, or occurred way to often in the campaign? That is a stance that has more ground for debate. But to outright say that these types of atrocities never happened in Soviet Russia, or anyplace else, is a completely false and delusional position to hold.

But the real question is: "why show it at all?"

Or better yet: "why not show it in a more acceptable manner?"

Or even better: "why not show dirt on both sides?"

If you think that I am personally offended by the game (which I take by your tone to be the case), I am not. I, however, am not Russian either. You cannot expect people of the nation being portrayed to be as impersonal about it as a third-party.

By your logic, you are saying that it is absolutely fine to show a game about the Roman Catholic Church where you take control of a priest and do inappropriate things to little boys. This is just offensive and wrong, no matter if it had or had not happened at some point in real life. Even if it does not represent every Catholic priest, do you really think Catholics would be fine with their religious leaders being portrayed this way?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

There is a reason why Activision gave players an option to skip the Moscow airport massacre level in MW2.

Snip

That analogy doesn't make sense, because the deeds of one individual would never even be considered as a representation of a whole organization or group. We as human beings here and now can see today pedophiles who are also priests, but no one is assuming that the those priests are who and what the Catholic Church compose solely of. That's ridiculous!

On top of this, no where does it even remotely state within the campaign that the deeds of the corrupt are a representation of the entire Russian people. Especially since we see other Russians who are completely fine reasonable people in the very same campaign.

Try again.

Ive played about 50% of the campaign, and then just got flat out bored.

As negative as the portrayal was up to that point, it was to my viewing centered on representing the war, state and propaganda machine of the Soviets as an enemy equally as deadly and inhumane as the actual invading enemy.

This was then used as background to throw into stark contrast and highlight the suffering, sacrifice and heroism of the main protagonists, who represent the actual human participants in this terrible period in history, not only at the hands of the actual enemy but of their own ideological state as well.

Its just a different way of telling the same story, that instead of glorifying war, shows it for its inhumanity, and the hard decisions millions had to face when placed between a rock and an even harder place. I dont really understand why some people choose to fixate on the controversial selected background setting, rather than the actions of the protagonists IN those settings.

To my viewing, it portrays personal heroism, great sacrifice and the enduring struggle of the main characters to maintain even a semblance of humanity and morality, in a terrible time when there was precious little of that and a human life was considered sometimes cheaper than the bullet it took to take it.

I think its a better and more "modern" way of telling the story, and in retrospect, I wish it had been done sooner in more war-related games, rather than glorifying war, and could just as well have been applied to a Nazi campaign with equally horrific and inhumane backgrounds highlighting personal heroism of people atleast trying to do "the right thing", the humane thing, even in war.

As negative as the portrayal was up to that point, it was to my viewing centered on representing the war, state and propaganda machine of the Soviets as an enemy equally as deadly and inhumane as the actual invading enemy.

This was then used as background to throw into stark contrast and highlight the suffering, sacrifice and heroism of the main protagonists, who represent the actual human participants in this terrible period in history, not only at the hands of the actual enemy but of their own ideological state as well.

Its just a different way of telling the same story, that instead of glorifying war, shows it for its inhumanity, and the hard decisions millions had to face when placed between a rock and an even harder place. I dont really understand why some people choose to fixate on the controversial selected background setting, rather than the actions of the protagonists IN those settings.

To my viewing, it portrays personal heroism, great sacrifice and the enduring struggle of the main characters to maintain even a semblance of humanity and morality, in a terrible time when there was precious little of that and a human life was considered sometimes cheaper than the bullet it took to take it.

I think its a better and more "modern" way of telling the story, and in retrospect, I wish it had been done sooner in more war-related games, rather than glorifying war, and could just as well have been applied to a Nazi campaign with equally horrific and inhumane backgrounds highlighting personal heroism of people atleast trying to do "the right thing", the humane thing, even in war.

This. couldn't have said it better myself, thanks Nullist.

It's a misrepresentation because it took isolated incidents, threw them all together, then falsely reconstructed things that happened, and made it appear to be so rampant that you would be part of war crimes and murder for almost the entire single player. Killing your own population with flamethrowers? Killing your own men for saving an officer of your army? Murdering partisans that are helping you? Machine Gunning your own soldiers? Also, then there's the more ideological issues like the protagonist saying millions died for a picture of the unused, and thus unimportant Reichstag, I mean, that is beyond laughable at it's face.

I think initially you write something about having read the threads about all these accusations, back in july/august?

Well, did you read anything but the wild allegations?

Did you for example read some of the threads that looks into the validity of the allegations themselves?

The point here is that some of them are FALSE and based upon a deliberate twist of what the game shows.

If you missed those threads, don't take it personal because you are not alone. The majority of the discussion on the forums just accepted the allegations flatly and spent all their energy discussing if Relic should portray an unhistorical image that was so unfavourable to the russians or not. Almost noone cared to discuss IF that was actually what Relic had done.

Relic ofc stayed far away from the discussion allthough they ofc. could have pinpointed all the mistakes made by the russian protesters.

Unmodest example: The torching in the campaign is not what it seems if you take a closer look, but threads like this got almost no attention. Noone cared. They just wanted to hop on the hype about the anti russian campaign.

Eh? There was a story? I skipped all the cutscenes.

Some wargames have a more military history impetus, and dont bother delving into any dramatic portrayal of the actual personal adversities of its participants with cutscenes and scripted storylines, yet it can be universally said, that there is a a certain irony in wargames overall regarding the dehumanisation of all the millions involved in fighting the battles they historically represent.

As a player, does anyone really give a shit about lose units? Do they bother considering that the representation of a soldier in the game might have had a family and three children or an ailing mother at home, when he is sent into an objective that is probably mined, without sweeper support? No, he just considers it a MP loss and an annoyance that he now has to reinforce the unit. That all the models in a unit all look exactly the same, as if they where clones, even further dehumanises and distances the player from the actual people the battle is representing.

I remember being somewhat disconcerted in the later Close Combat warfare sim series, that each individual soldier had a personal name, and even morale and health status. Suddenly I started relating to units in a completely different way. It wasnt just random cloned model nr 1,2,3 or 4. It was Hans Schmidt who was left wounded, crawling, by a burst of MG fire from an emplacement I was trying to flank. It was Joe Caravaggio who was shellshocked by mortar fire blowing his squadmates up, and left cowering in a mess of their corpses, and screaming for his mother, God, or SOMEONE to end the madness of war and let him finally go home.

I think the campaign storytelling in CoH2 does that better than most previous wargames, in terms of the dramatic sequences and hard decisions with terrible consequences that the protagonists have to make. I suppose the next improvement would be making players able to actually choose the decisions of the protagonists. That too, would be a more humanising element to storytelling, where you are no longer passively watching horrors unfold, but are YOURSELF forced to ask, what would I have done in that situation.

The stringing together in a scripted storyline of a sequence of stereotypes regarding the Red Army and State ideological actions is yes, contrived. But that is just a device to build a setting or the dilemmas of the main characters to act in. A Nazi campaign could have been portrayed almost exactly in the same way, to the ssme end result.

Relic did claim this particular storyline, atleast supericially, is based on the recallings of one particular real life psrticipant. As in all dramsric portrayals, artistic license allows for somewhat loose interpretation. The historical accuracy of the attrocities portrayed in CoH2 are real and documented enough, however the sequence and preponderance of all of them happening to one guy, in a string of events, is ofc, false. But who cares, when their purpose is to paint a canvas that extends beyond the experiences of one soldier, to portray the horrors possibly faced by millions, in the same war, even on different sides, and how each and everyone of of them had to somehow deal with them and live on, without being crushed completely, as a human being and all that can and does stand for for one and all of us, by the inhumanity and antithetical horror or war which all to often has brought out the worst in us and among us, as well as the best in us and those among us.

As to Russian response to the game, Id warn against taking the more vocal critiques as representing general sentiment. There is, unfortunately, a very real resurgence of ulta-nationalism in Russia atm as well as some deliberate politically motivated revision of Soviet history. There is not a single family in Russia that was not touched by WWIi (which can also be said about most of the rest of the world), however, for Russia, the period is partifularly sensitive due to what happened concurrent to and after the war, namely the 60 years of Soviet hegemony. Im sure most Russians enjoy the game and storyline just as much as anyone from anywhere else in the world.

another russian with buttheart...