Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

“War is hell”, as I’ve been told in many war films and games and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway does not trend far from the norm.  That’s what makes writing about the game so difficult – it’s so remarkable in its average-ness.  Now, don’t get me wrong – the game itself is solid and I actually appreciate the slower paced puzzle-like combat (know the four “fs”!) that you can’t find in any other game – but in terms of what the game does narratively, it’s just fairly lacking.

The game tells the story of a group of paratroopers during Operation Market Garden, following the story developed through the two previous Brothers in Arms games.  The fact that Market Garden was ultimately a failure, the developers of the game have the opportunity to present the darker side of the Second World War.  In fact, the tone of the game is sombre and depressing with the bombing of Eindhoven being the centerpiece of the game.  We see Germans execute Dutch civilians and we see a Dutch boy that we’ve rescued in an earlier mission killed by a German bomb.

But why doesn’t this resonate with me?  The designers chose to use cutscenes to tell the story but for whatever reason, these cutscenes fall flat.  On several podcasts, one common complaint is that the game doesn’t provide any context for the character’s behaviour – it assumes you’ve played the previous games and know these characters intimately, treating the story as if you were watching an episode of Band of Brothers in the middle of the series.  And I’ll admit that not knowing who these characters are did affect how I interpreted the story.  Baker’s struggle with PTSD and losing men around him should have been as effecting as Compton’s breakdown at Bastogne in Band of Brothers but it just doesn’t work.  I don’t know enough about Baker or the rest of the characters to be invested enough in his breakdown or any of the character development.

The designers do really try with their cutscenes though and there are several very impressive editing tricks that you’d only find in film – the reveal of what happened to Leggett and the history of Baker’s gun is perhaps one of the most cinematic cutscenes I’ve seen in gaming.  It’s just that the writing doesn’t seem to be up to par with the presentation.  The climax of the film features Baker recovering from the guilt he feels over the deaths of Leggett and the other men, triumphantly climbing atop a jeep to give the soldiers who are still alive a rousing and inspiring speech about war.  It’s a moment that should pay off, especially since it’s meant to lead into a sequel that is almost certainly going to be set during the Battle of the Bulge, but for me it just falls flat.  Even though I played through the entire game as Baker, I didn’t feel any connection with him.

Maybe like so many other games, there’s a disconnect with the gameplay and the narrative.  During the game itself, Baker and the rest of the characters are so anonymous that you see them only as pieces to be moved around the game field.  When a member of your team is hit and falls down, you don’t react and move on as if nothing happened.  Now, I understand that in a combat situation you can stop to nurse the wounded but for a man suffering from PTSD as a result of seeing men die around him, you’d think there would be some indication that these casualties are effecting.  Of course, there’s also the problem with the fact that no one really dies during the missions – characters only die in the cutscenes when the story requires them to die.  Any desire you have to keep your men alive is quickly evaporated when you realize that they won’t die anyway.

There is one “ludic” or “game-telling” narrative moment that I did find interesting.  As with most games of this nature, the first level is inevitably a tutorial that teaches you how to play the game.  Here, they get you to learn how to shoot, how to order your men around and the importance of suppression fire and flanking.  As you make your way through a hospital in Eindhoven, learning how to play the game, you eventually reach the end of the level where you are knocked down and surrounded by Germans.  The game proper then begins three days in the past.  As you work your way through the storyline, you eventually find out how you end up in that hospital.  What’s interesting here is that you end up replaying the tutorial level all over again so you know exactly what happens.  You race through the level heading toward the end where you know you will end up in a showdown with the German soldiers.  This is an interesting moment that manipulates your previous gameplay knowledge of the level in order to give you the feeling of agency.  It’s the equivalent of a film that builds to a climax that you’re introduced to right from the beginning (The Bourne Identity being one of many examples).  While this is the only example of “game-telling” in the game, it’s certainly worth mentioning.

Ultimately, I think the biggest letdown of the game is its inability to get across the “horror” of war either through cutscenes or through gameplay.  Sure, there’s the killcam with the slow motion shots of German soldiers being killed, but this almost trivializes gore and violence rather than emphasize any effect it may have on a soldier.  Call of Duty 4 showed that there are ways that games can explore war that other media can’t.  If Gearbox is given the opportunity to make the sequel that they’ve set up at the end of this game, I hope they look at games like Call of Duty 4 and try to implement some game specific narrative techniques.

Side note – they got Dale Dye to provide the voice of Colonel Sink in the game.  Now, I’m not invested enough to find out if this is meant to be the same character found in Band of Brothers, but I’m almost certain that it’s more than just a coincidence.  He may have consulted on the game and the designers may have thought it would have been a nice crossover with .

Second side note – Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts tells story of Market Garden from the perspective of the Germans.  I haven’t played the game so I don’t know how the story is handled, but it’s probably the only example of a Canadian/American representation of the Second World War that sympathizes with the “enemy”.  Admittedly, storytelling in the original Company of Heroes wasn’t all that remarkable either – mostly due to the limitations of the Real Time Strategy genre – but the fact that this is pretty much the Canadian/American version of Das Boot makes it worth considering.