Dear Relic, can I have a word please? (Russian history)

This thread makes me glad that I left Russia to live in Australia. Never looked back.

Some of the points that have been brought up are somewhat valid and deserve to be discussed. Personally, I have played through the campaign and perceived it as a good attempt to cause an emotional reaction from the player. It was okay in that regard. There are movies and games where Soviets and Russians are so grotesque that it's laughable. COH2 is not one of them.

The tone, exaggerations and outright ignorance of the guys who try to convince the devs to put a disclaimer into the campaign intro are way out of line. The campaign is fiction, it is obvious to anyone with half a brain. In the end everyone will see what they want to see, no matter how many disclaimers are there.

Edit: Registered just to post in the thread.

This thread makes me glad that I left Russia to live in Australia. Never looked back.

glad to hear a voice of reason amongst so many fanatics. I'm really sorry for all the russians who aren't like those spammers. These spammers demonstrated abusive, aggressive behavior which overall damages Russia's reputation amongst millions of CoH core players worldwide.

The funny thing is they don't achieve anything. The millions of CoH core players will continue to play anyways.
Those who visit Metacritic before buying the game will see a user score that is so ridiculously low that they will read the reviews out of curiosity for sure. And then they will see what's going on and the user score will become meaningless to them.


In the end the only thing these 'very patriotic' russians achieve is making themselves look like fools and manipulative douches who are trying to ruin other peoples enjoyment of a great online RTS.


To all those 'true patriots' in Russia: As true patriots you should care if your country is liked in the world. What you are currently doing makes your country look bad. It will only make western countries think that their sterotypes were right and that Russia is indeed censoring history to look better. You are only damaging your country!

The first part is pretty cool, confessing and stuff. But then you get nasty in the second part.

Let's just say in war armies have sinners, some have more some have less but in the end it shows humanity at it's worst doens't matter who's waging war.

I've read heartbreaking stories from all fronts, not just Allies and most of the soldiers are just humans afraid to die and no clue why they are in a war. War turns people into monters and it doensn't matter who you are or where you are from.

This thread makes me glad that I left Russia to live in Australia. Never looked back.

Some of the points that have been brought up are somewhat valid and deserve to be discussed. Personally, I have played through the campaign and perceived it as a good attempt to cause an emotional reaction from the player. It was okay in that regard. There are movies and games where Soviets and Russians are so grotesque that it's laughable. COH2 is not one of them.

The tone, exaggerations and outright ignorance of the guys who try to convince the devs to put a disclaimer into the campaign intro are way out of line. The campaign is fiction, it is obvious to anyone with half a brain. In the end everyone will see what they want to see, no matter how many disclaimers are there.

Edit: Registered just to post in the thread.

I know many russian-australians (couple went to my school high school, i worked with one or two) and you guys are great people.

Also, you guys don't have to double-post- if you have more to add you can just click 'edit' on your previous post

http://www.change.org/petitions/valve-corporation-gabe-newell-make-the-company-of-heroes-2-game-unobtainable-in-the-cis-countries

Wow. Now they really are angry about this game. I think that's a bit too much.
In "Call of Duty: World at war" the Germans/ Japanese were a bit "offended" too, but that wasn't a reason for such a petition. They are going too far now.

I think I'll sign it so I don't have to play with them.

I couldn't resist.

the petition would serve nothing, but to deny russian people that actually wants to play the game from playing. if the OP argues that this game would be misleading to children into thinking that the soviet people as bad then i doubt that you played the campaign at all.

the game does not portray the soviets as evil, it did not mention any rape or murder of civilians, nor does this game portray germans as heroic at all, i don't know where people get that from, i hate it when people make shit up just to support their cause.

now when you are talking about the first mission, one conscripts complained of being unarmed. there were some soviet soldiers that were unarmed during the battle of stalingrad, but whatever or not they were sent to fight without a rifle is debatable. the russians did have a history of sending soldiers to fight unarmed, notably in world war I, so they may have done the same during world war II since the soviets suffered heavy losses before stalingrad and had logistical problems in a very desperate situation.

you probably didn't also see the soviets having the option to rescue trapped soldiers and civilians in a building, with shock troops that can slaughter massive amounts german troops, it didn't matter when conscripts were running into their deaths into the meat grinder because it shows that it was a slaughter for both sides.

the russian mg shooting down conscripts in that one scene was questionable but it was how relic really thought what the soviets did in stalingrad, there is no propaganda or anti soviet agenda. relic genuinely thought that happened. it may have happened since the soviet conscripts did need some persuasion since there were poorly trained soldiers that are sent to a meat grinder were soviet regiments get wiped out every day in the battle. i think relic made that scene so we could feel dramatic about the scene.

the scene where soviet soldiers killed that one surrendering german was also to make things more dramatic, but it also portray how eastern front was like since both sides did tend to kill surrendering troops pretty often. even though same things also happen in the west and the far east none of which matches body count of executed POWs of the eastern front. it also shows german troops killing POWs as well. in one of the missions where you try to rescue a bunch of soviet POWs from german hands you will always be too late as the german soldiers will kill them anyways.

after that mission there is nothing else that makes the soviet look bad. except that one instance where the officer killed the conscript that heroically went to save his commander despite all odds, even risking getting killed by the officer that they knew was an asshole. it only shows that the officer was a cunt because he shot the conscript just because he disobeyed orders.

if you see a scene where a soviet officer kills a women. she was a polish partisan and i think that scene was pretty accurate, because the soviets were dicks to polish partisans. the officer also justifies his actions to the main character which sounds reasonable. if polish resists against germans what's going to stop them from resisting soviets occupation?

there is nothing in this game demonizing the soviets, it just shows that soviet conscripts were fighting heroically under extremely harsh conditions and they fought even when they were sometimes outgunned, and also fought in murderous winter and that they sometimes had asshole commanders.

Somewhat related: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130729/08564023982/russia-to-ban-swearing-internet.shtml

They can't ban swearing. It the core of the Russian language ))

The only scene in the campaign that made me faceplam a bit was in the first and fifth missions, when they showed the cliché human wave running at Machine Guns with a rifle for two men, and then Maxim users gunning down retreating soldiers. Straight out of Enemies at the Gates and pretty stupid (albeit some say it did happen).

The rest, however? Scorched Earth policy happened. Sacrificing units to let other retreat happened. Penal batallions happened (albeit I doubt they carted SVT-40 rifles around, but w/e), hell they didn't even show the ''tramplers'' squads that were forced to walk through minefields.. Being dicks to Partisans happened, especially in Poland. Punishing/executing disobeying soldiers happened. War crimes happened in droves (they don't even show civilians in the game, but by jove I'm pretty sure the Red Army gave 0 fucks about any German civilian caught in a Katyusha barrage or somesuch). The war was extraordinarily brutal, even more than on the Western front, and Relic chose to depict this reality. Only real exageration they made is extending Order 227 to the entire timeframe; it ceased to be in effect a few months after its inception IIRC because even Russians don't gratuitously shoot their own.

In fact, the campaign insists on the fact that the soldiers themselves were a pretty damn brave and heroic bunch, and only depicts 2 officiers, random commissars and Stalin himself as being gigantic assholes (which seems pretty accurate to me, certainly on the Stalin part). The mission where the rank-and-file mobilize to save the protagonist was pretty great, but then the officier is a dick and orders executions. If someone honestly finds this russophobe, then they need some sort of reality check. And even then, the point of the story is that everyone who has seen these things was horrified, and the Colonel ends up shooting himself in the head over it. How in hell does this dehumanize the Soviets in any way?

I mean, even COH1 hardly sugar-coated stuff. The campaign had numerous instances of lives being thrown away or people dying for nothing; not due to incompetent/dickish officiers but still. Able suffers a 80% casualty rate over the course of the campaign. Hell the Germans were more sympathetic in that game, being seen as helpless targets of artillery and being protagonists in Opposing Fronts.

Also that petition is silly and incredibly dishonest. I'm French, and COH1 never showed any hint of the French resistance even though it was prety active during that time. I didn't throw a hissy fit over it or bomb any Metacritic rating (of all friggin things). It just wasn't part of the story. Relic never claimed to be representative of the entire WW2 within one game. They never claim that they are doing a historical documentary. They're telling a story, and that story is mostly based on facts. I mean, if I was to start a petition every time some idiot American made a comment about how the French only know how to surrender, I'd have thousands of the things running. Some people need to grow a thick skin it seems, and leave their overblown patriotism at the door when they play a damn game or go to a forum.

most of the players are just causal players, no lobby included RTS game in 2013 is indeed rare

repost accident

Of course not. But then you have generalisations and stereotypes, which is what you're indulging in. You can have those thoughts, of course, I'm not trying to tell you that you can't. But keep them to yourself please. This is not the place; using a couple of vocal, angry people from another culture (which you may or may not understand) to reinforce views of how millions of people behave and think is not the thoughts of a reasonable, educated person, which is what you are I'm sure, when not online.

Stereotypes are born from facts. Generalizations? Please. Everything I said about them is a proven fact. They're acting this way and the majority are exactly like this. They're making it far too easy and it is far more than a couple people as you seem to think.

So please take your PC shit and keep that to yourself. I understand Russian "culture" just fine and their is a reason why they are generally looked down upon.

This isn't a case of a few bad apples in the bunch. The entire fucking orchard is rotten.

BuzzcutPsycho, if these are facts please give your evidence, everything factual is proven so from evidence without it your are spouting subjective jibberish.

BuzzcutPsycho, if these are facts please give your evidence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvj717lf0bk

History is full of these perceptions. I think the bottom line is that you can't keep blaming people for what their forefathers did.

I am an Afrikaans speaking South African. My great grandfather was in a British concentration camp during the Anglo-Boer war (1899-1903). 26 000 women and children died in those camps which is a very high number compared to the total Afrikaner population of that time.

This was the second war between British and Boer, we refer to it as the second freedom war/"tweede vryheidsoorlog" (The Boers won the first freedom war). The British refer to it as the "Boer war". This is typical of one nation making the war be the other nation's fault. The British also burned farms and put poison into food of concentration camp inmates. They had a brutal scorched earth doctrine under Lord Kitchener. Google it if you don't believe me.

Do I hate the British? No. You can't blame people now for what happened so long ago. Will I forget about it? No. History is an important way to learn from the mistakes mankind made.

The same can be said for people judging Afrikaners/Boers for oppressing black people under apartheid in South Africa. I don't want people to judge me because of some laws made by the government so many years ago. I don't even agree with those laws. Accordingly I wont judge people on what their governments might have done a long time ago. Besides look at all the native americans / aborigines in australia that were murdered.. I don't blame modern day Americans or Australians for these things.

Nor do I blame modern day Russians or Germans for the atrocities of WWII. It is a fact that they happened, but lets not get over excited about a game. The game is about soldiers fighting, not Ideologies. If you were offended by single player then play multiplayer and don't sweat it.

People should just play the game and see it as fiction. It may be accurate, It might not be, if you want better facts go study history or read books. You will always have some point of view of the author(s), and I really don't think Relic were trying to hurt any Russian feelings.

I find Multiplayer is the best part of the game in any case so quit bitching about single player.

BuzzcutPsycho, if these are facts please give your evidence, everything factual is proven so from evidence without it your are spouting subjective jibberish.

I simply point to the bastion of progressiveness and personal freedom that modern Russia is today.

Those "people" make my case for my really.

I simply point to the bastion of progressiveness and personal freedom that modern Russia is today.

Those "people" make my case for my really.

That's funny since I just happened to meet a person form Russia and spent some days socializing with her (dwelling into topics, from WW2, to education, to Putin, to Military Service, to the custom some Russians have of drinking before hopping into a flight) . My home city also welcomes hundreds of Russians every single week, and I've met several Russians in other countries, as well as people from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, etc., which have Soviet cultures and traditions.

None of them fit inside your proven marquee of attitudes and personalities. I've had the chance to meet, discuss and socialize with people from every single continent in the world, and all I have met is people being people, with opinions and differences. None of them fit a specific pattern.

It doesn't mean I liked every person, or understood every culture, but it wasn't something I would dare encapsulate into a single sentence or even paragraph...

Well... Guys, take a look at this. Think of this as a contribution to the discussion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m4SCUaBHS8