Quick Look: Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Seems neat. I don't have a problem with the abstracted puzzles because, really, what's the alternative? Pick up bonesaw, use on ankle to remove trench foot?

This game looks great. looks a bit challenging but not bad and fun

The Hungarian Dance bit sold me on this game.

None of this seems good to me. The adventure part seems like The Cave and that action part at the end of the QL looks pretty terrible. Also, the visuals do nothing for me.

It's nice that they have real info on WWI though.

No I didn't say that nor can you imply that from what I said. The more I see of how this game plays the more it reminds me of Machinarium and that games theme is young love between two tin-can robots in a fantastical tin-can city. Not one of the greatest military conflicts of our time.

I'm with you on this, kind of. I sort of admired what they were trying to do with the collectibles, with it being just straight up, here's some history business. But the desire to let players know something about the reality of the war is undercut by the rest of the game. Chloring Gas wasn't being pumped out from some crazy machine in a supervillains underground lair, and I think the reality of it is probably much more unnerving and powerfully frightening. Maybe to some extent that's the point? I don't know. I felt something similar when the aeroplane appeared to strafe the car near the end, which seemed to sensationalise the role of aircraft in the conflict?

But the biggest thing that I feel this game gets "wrong" is that the mood it creates isn't one that chimes with what I know about World War 1, because they make it an odyssey, always moving from left to right. World War 1 was a very static conflict - in fact that's one of the most tragic things about it, in my opinion.

I've not played it obviously, so I'm just reacting to what I saw here. Ultimately I don't even know whether I think these are ruinous problems. Like I said, I think the sincerity of their intention shows through, and I don't think that there is necessarily a problem with softening up some of the presentation with a cartoony art. I just wonder whether some of the license they took damages "the message" a little bit.

@wuddel: He's an American who volunteered to fight with the French Army- there were a few of them even at the war's beginning.

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I really like what this game is trying to do; but I must say 2 hours in that the frequent shifts between tragedy and slapstick are kinda jarring. Thing is, you hear from accounts from soldiers, from civilians near the front lines in dangerous situations - you hear that comedy is all around you, that it's used as a way to stop you losing your mind. But even so, it seems out of place when the game switches gears from wacky to serious so often.

I'm definitely gonna finish the game, but honestly I thought it was going to be far more serious in tone based on the trailer.

@mbr2 said:

You said "To developers out there: Stop making your game about something it's not." More than anything, this looks like they wanted to make a WWI game and needed to include some sort of gameplay, rather than creating a puzzle game and then slapping any old theme onto it.

Oh, and everyone should listen to these...

Blueprint-for-Armageddon-I

Blueprint-for-Armageddon-II

Blueprint-for-Armageddon-III

Loved the visual style of the game but most of the puzzles were a bit too easy. Most of the puzzles seemed to be about pulling levers. Probably a limitation of the games 2d environments.

I think I know now -- this game is like a sanitized kids' version of events. Which is really something of a pet peeve of mine. Sanitized stuff for kids is not informing them, it's disinforming them in the interest of not scaring them (or sometimes propagandizing, but I don't think that's the intention here). I'm firmly of the opinion that people need to see the full horror of WW1. Learning a lesson from that horror, that something like that could happen again, is why we tell these stories in the first place.

This comment section bums me out so bad. Here is this fantastic game - one whose art and storytelling have made it one of my favorite games in recent memory - and all anybody seems to be doing is arguing over whether it is disrespectful to WWI. Ugh. A game finally tries to say something about war using a mechanic besides headshots to move the story forward and all people do is complain? Blows my mind. And it makes me sad. This comment section should be way more full of awesome.

Now the offense brigade thinks a Great War story shouldn't be told with drawings unless the drawings are really complex because otherwise it's offensive. They also think that if your Great War adventure game has any gameplay then it's offensive. Making your Great War game where four characters travel around and always seem to wind up at these key points and moments in history is offensive.

Some people are just so fucking sure that someone is doing something wrong that they can wave their fucking finger at, 100% of the time. It's never because it doesn't appeal to them, it's always that someone else is being disrespectful. Maybe it's not every other person and game company who are doing wrong, maybe you're just a cynical asshole.

Love the art, totally put off by the uninspired gameplay.

Not an adventure game guy, but this is something I think I will pick up. I can see why people would see the tonal shifts between the WW1 setting and the adventure gameplay, but I think it is vital to better educate people on what the First World War was like, even if it involves giant machines spraying chlorine gas (which my memory the Germans actually used pipes pushed into no man's land to vent out the gas, prior to the adoption of gas shells).

As a Canadian, it was nice to see the CEF getting some discussion, and the role we played on the Western front.

Also, a great graphic novel on the First World War for anyone interested in getting a better basic understanding of the runup to the war and 4 years of war is "Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales". Does a great job of breaking down the politics and battles using a comic style, but has some haunting images of millions of men being fed into horrible industrial version of Ares.

@professoress: Not sure how you consider it uninspired.. It has a huge variety of gameplay

This is painful to watch. There are literally signs on the screen depicting what you need to do.

"I'm offended by--"

Well, you can avoid this game and shut the fuck up.

Sorry, just judging by what I've read and seen in this and other videos. Variety, yes, but it still comes off as a string of simple mini-games to me.

Did Brad put a curse on Drew before he went on vacation?

This game looks amazing but I don't know about how the gameplay meshes with the themes. Seems slightly weird.

Can barely hear the gameplay again.

PUT THE F***** DOG IN THE BASKET!

Oh, internet outrage. You slay me.

The flag on screen near the start of this video is the old Canadian Flag - the Red Ensign. Just thought that was cool.

Hey guys, just because you don't find something offensive doesn't mean somebody else can't. Just because you feel a subject shouldn't be off limits, doesn't mean everybody else has to feel that way.

It's okay to have differing ideas of what is acceptable and what is not. You don't need to attack somebody because their set of values clashes with yours.

Especially when it's about a fucking video game.

so stoked for this game

There's a button to give bellyrubs to the dog!? Sold!

It's pretty amazing that there's so much handwringing about this game in the comments, and yet hey guys, Wolfenstein exists.

This isn't a teaching tool, its a game, games are supposed to be entertaining, hence why we have shooters that blur based in reality complex political issues into jingoistic "US AMERICANS ARE THE GOOD GUYS HOO RAHH!" statements.

OH GOD why can't they just watch what the dog is doing when they get stuck..

This looks great.

And man, it is painful watching other people play puzzle games, I don't know why still do it.

MORE DREW!

>dog repeatedly tries to dig in the dirt

>when the player character walks over the dirt patch he bends down with his shovel

"Well damn I'm stumped maybe we can interact with these background objects in the previous screen or walk through poison gas?"

I know I'm a couple days late to the party, but I'm curious if you have an example of a game that has respected the horror and tragedy of war. I've played a lot of games in my time and a hell of a lot of them involved historical wars. A grand total of none of them did anything more than have me kill members of the opposing side, or order others to kill members of the opposing side. I might be wrong about this but to my knowledge this is the first game in history to take place in a war that does not use the setting exclusively as an excuse to let the player kill people. But the question a developer then has to face is what exactly do you have a player do in a game set during a war if it isn't killing people? In my mind you either go this route of having players solve puzzles, or you take an even more non-interactive Gone Home or Dear Esther route and have them just walk through the game without having a direct effect on anything. Maybe the latter would have made for a better experience in the end, but let's face it, this is about as close to a pure art game as a major publisher is going to bankroll. Be thankful we got this much. If you want to rail against a world war game head over to the Enemy Front quick look, which manages to turn the tragedies of the French resistance into some bombastic Call of Duty clone where the only way to free France is to bring in an American to do it for them.

Definely on my 'get list'. I just wished it was on disc.

You really need to play the game. Despite the art style and moments of whimsy, it absolutely paints a horrific picture of WW1. Whether it's the Somme or the Nivelle Offensive, it's not afraid of showing there was immeasurable, senseless sacrifice on both sides.

@wuddel said:

He is American, but he joined the French army earlier than America entered, if I remember that piece of his story correctly.

@xerxes8933a:

it wasnt made in canada, and there is nothing canadian about it really

@billsk8: Beyond the fact the game opens showing the Canadian Flag, the only voice is mad Canadian, and that Canada is mentioned in the text more then any other country? Yeah, nothing Canadian here at all.

Just finished this game. It's god damn incredible. Don't let the gameplay in this QL turn you off, the puzzle they're showing here is one of the most random, contrived puzzles in the game. Not a good representation.