Where's all the personality?

Anybody else feeling this? The game's personality seems to have disappeared in the name of realism.

vCoH was kind of a caricature of WWII; it was more like a bunch of WWII miniatures had sprung to life than an actual war. It was consistently larger than life both with the units, their personalities, and most of all, the art!

Games are a fantasy, why not exploit this? Sure the bases were completely imaginary in vCoH, but they had so much personality. I liked all of the Hollywood in vCoH, making the axis sort of sinister (although I suppose they sort of made themselves sinister in the actual war) and the allies less so. Instead it's pretty hard to tell the difference between the German base and the Soviet base.

Not just the art though, the actual gameplay itself had relatively little interest in simulation. A tiger could obliterate a Sherman from what, a mile away in the real war? Not in vCoH; everything was designed as a fun gameplay mechanic (well, most everything) whereas in CoH2 some things just seem to be designed to conform more to reality (e.g. tanks taking criticals well before 5% from non-special abilities).

Am I the only person with this experience?

It does feel a bit more like real life (or a game that mirrors real life more closely than vCoH, like Men of War) in some respects (very high lethality on stuff like flamethrowers, mortars, and tank shells, true sight, extremely damaging tank combat at long ranges, reinforcements coming from off-map rather than from buildings, less stylized buildings, fewer obvious/clear tracers, no magic line from snipers and AT guns showing where they shot from, tank criticals before 5%, no bright green +XP pop ups, true sight).

Also, am I imagining things, or in vCoH did the borders of windows change color when a play entered the building? That definitely doesn't happen in CoH 2 but it happened either when you upgrading a building to a forward HQ or just when you entered it in CoH.

I'm not sure you have to lose personality by being more realistic (Close Combat is pretty realistic and it has a ton of personality), and in some areas they went less realistic (the floating numbers over recrewable stuff, the nerfed small arms damage, the explosions on vehicles) but it does feel like there was an effort to make things more believable and less like the magic fantasy land that vCoH took place in. I think the tank ranges and lethality are the biggest part of this. It's not quite as easy to drive tanks around each other and do wacky looking stuff in CoH 2 because your health bar will go down really fast.

since i don't have time for a serious post this is where it went.


edit: also it has to do with nostalgia.

I have to agree. It's one of those things that it hard to point at one thing objectively. But vCoH just had this "life" about it that CoH 2 lacks. Many game have this or lack this, usually the sequels lack this.

I think a lot of it has too with poor feed back from the world. In CoH 2 you feel more detached. In CoH you felt more in thick if it.

About personality i think it mostly came from things that the units told you when you were commanding them , i explicitly remember the american squad leader when he was commanded to take cover in the semois graveyard saying '' follow orders or your gonna end up in this '' which was simply put awsome , but on a positive note music has been considerately improved in tune with the concept of the game that has become darker and grittier . Other than that its my faithfull conviction that gameplay should always come firts and not realism , its a game after all not a battle simulation , the immersion vcoh offered was first and foremost an outcome of its gameplay , in that aspect they have not improved it , so i think i agree with you .

Dont agree on this. Sure, i kind of miss the beefed up wide shoulder infantry we saw in the first game. However I think this game has personality, just not the same as in vCoH. Not that I disliked the personality och vCoH, but I really dont want a game that is a copy of the first one. I think it is hard as a developer to improve, say graphics, without a bit of the connection to the old game. From that perspective I think they did a really good job.

There will always be a balance between the players who want more realism and the players who want less realism, no matter how you put it. It is a step towards realism compared to vCoH, but I like those changes and think that they add a personality of its own.

Yeah the beefy bulky infantry were one of the fun parts! They were so well stylized that they were very crisp, especially with the distinct uniform artwork and so on. Everything was very visually communicative.

Infantry in this game seem more difficult to distinguish, not to mention that the Soviets have about 4 combat capable T1 infantry squads.

Don't forget the fact that the tone of this game is darker.

Environments in vCoH were full of destroyed objects from everyday life (the infamous piano, for example, bathtubs) that gave the world some life, as well as a certain stylization.

In CoH2, the world is darker, grittier. The game is set in the darkest, most violent point of the war. The setting is cold, harsh and lacks all sort of human interaction: its rural, and desaturated.

I don't mind it. It doesn't have the same personality as vCoH, but it doesn't lack one. IMHO, the "dramatic" scenes in vCoH almost seemed comical and cheesy. Now, there's less of the uncanny valley, and more of the nasty things in war.

i personally think it has alot of personality just not the same personality as vcoh.

I'm pretty sure the life of CoH comes mostly from the fact that you've been playing it foe several years.

The lack of good voice actors this time... was the first thing I noticed when I got the alpha... Sad day.

Seeing the life of a game (esp a RTS) comes from familiarity. I've never played SC2 and have only watched streams and some casts of it, and it looks lifeless as fuck to me. Everything seems sterile and boring. If I played it some more that opinion would probably change. CoH would probably look the same if you hadn't played it a lot (few units covering a lot of terrain, for example, can give the feeling of the game being barren and not intensive) it will come with time, I sincerely think so.

The lack of good voice actors this time... was the first thing I noticed when I got the alpha... Sad day.

Remember you haven't seen the finished game. There may be a lot of audio and video assets still missing, for the sake of size. Its unlikely, but its possible.

I've still heard some really good lines, though, like:

"I hear those americans always complain about the strength of our pioneers!" and a couple of others

"we ate the horse, now we have to pull the gun." - pak crew

"Fuck off." Pretty much any unit if you click on it enough.

Remember you haven't seen the finished game. There may be a lot of audio and video assets still missing, for the sake of size. Its unlikely, but its possible.

I've still heard some really good lines, though, like:

"I hear those americans always complain about the strength of our pioneers!" and a couple of others

The lines are good, but some of the voice actors aren't. I find the voice actor of the Grenadiers to be the worst of the lot. To be honest, though, I haven't payed close attention to all of them.

As much as I enjoy CoH1 and find it somewhat amazing that it has remained my gaming staple since 2006, CoH2 (even in Beta form) has a huge WOW factor. They are definitely two very different games. And that is good in my book. Personality? Both have it in clubs and spades.

I think the different feel of the game largely stems from the unit voices and sayings, it was one of the first things that I noticed. In CoH1 the units had different accents, but there seems to be less variety in CoH2. The voices are much more sullen now, and not so spunky. "Johnny on the spot with a .50" has been replaced with, "You need screening units?"

Personally, some of the pure exposition lines (like above), destroys the realism for me. What kind of conscript responds/identifies as a "screening" unit? When blizzards are subsiding your hear, "Normal weather is returning." The fuck is that? Blizzards ARE normal weather -- in fact, it's supposed to be so big and normal that the publisher marketed around the mechanic. A voice like that is pure exposition meant to signal to the player that they can now move about "normally," and the devs sacrificed the chance to do something a little more creative like, "Quick, thaw out the food, I'm starving," or, "Break time is over." "Normal weather returning" is the kind of line that competitive players will eventually cringe at because they don't need to be told about the weather cycles and what it means for gameplay.

In short, yes, I think the voices in CoH1 were more entertaining, but could also be cheesy at times. In Coh2 the voices are more realistic. One of the best I've heard so far, "They shot my friend right in front of me."

Jenni: You raise a really good point here that it might just be familiarity. I mean, SC2, from an artistic point of view, is a masterpiece. There's just such an astonishing level of attention to detail, love, and care that went into that game's visuals, but it doesn't do anything for you. Perhaps that's just where I'm at with CoH2 right now.

Mag: So far I agree. It's hard to really make a firm opinion, because all I'm really feeling could simply be discomfort that things have changed, and in a month I'll be fine with it. However the German announcers were very sinister in the original game and I loved this. There was limited immersion breaking in the original game, if I remember it correctly.

since i don't have time for a serious post this is where it went.


edit: also it has to do with nostalgia.

And then you get to play against germans with germans... Well that's an odd option when you advertise realism.