Shouldn't they have Rocky Marciano next to last? He kicked Joe Louis's ass.
Frivolous WI: Video games in a victorious Nazi Germany
- Thread starter Hrvatskiwi
- Start date
Shouldn't they have Rocky Marciano next to last? He kicked Joe Louis's ass.
Good point, I'll admit I was kinda on a roll in that post and brain-vomiting so didn't think about it too much. But yeah makes sense from a game design perspective to have a "rushdown" high DPS character like Marciano and then just make Schmeling the final boss with a one-hit KO right hand (because Aryan Supermen ofc, no need to try and reflect reality).
I was just going for the Coming To America reference.
Although it would give them an Italian, since they're doing a world tour.
Oh I absolutely will! because many timelines featured in this site inspired me!, the main issue that I see as of now however, is that although some of it is a standard alternate history worldbuilding story and alternate timeline, it has some supernatural/sci-fi elements like Wolfenstein, which would thus classify it as ASB, so I am not sure on which sub-forum the series would be allowed to be discussed in.
Chinese postal romanization was used through almost all of the 20th century, so I also recommend you look onto it!
Yes, Italian people say that all the time both in real life and on WhatsApp, I lived in Italy for 2 years, and people really do say it, so much so, that even Google Translate has added it onto its Italian section:
A doctor that I went to also referred to the Western genre as the "Wild West" in its English title, instead of how in Brazil we say the literal "Velho Oeste" (Old West) translation, the modern state of the Italian language is interesting, because while modern Italian has more English influence, Italian people (at least those from the city I lived in) barely spoke English, while saying a lot of English words, they were unable to speak the English language proper.
This sort of reminds me of the modern state of the Tagalog and Hindi languages (watch these videos to see what I am talking about) - there are so many English words in the daily vocabulary of these languages that they almost sound like an English creole, it is quite common for you to stumble upon a YouTube video with a title and all comments written in English, but then.... it is narrated in the Hindi language.
This is the exact opposite of what I saw in Portugal - I also lived in Portugal, and there is way less English influence in European Portuguese (there is more English influence in Brazilian Portuguese than the one in Portugal), however, Portuguese people (including some elderly ones) speak quite good conversational English despite them barely having any English influences in their language, and on that topic of "linguistic nationalism" and Portugal, there has been recently ongoing a ton of discussion in Portugal over the "Brazilianization" of European Portuguese, about how Portuguese children and teenagers tend to mainly consume Brazilian media, and thus start to grow up speaking with that accent, abandoning the old accent of their homeland.
This is just like the discussion that American kids are allegedly developing British accents due to them watching Peppa Pig, so yeah, there are ongoing discussions on whenever if this is a racist moral panic nothingburger, if it is an example of cultural imperialism, if we should or should not "preserve" a language or let it slowly be influenced by languages of a more powerful country, and whatnot, this is a very sensitive but still interesting topic.
I think one of the big things a few people are missing is the fact that, yes Nazi Germany was pure evil and criminal, and the Nazis were deranged villains, however, basic human nature doesn't change. Just because we know they did evil things doesn't mean they will spam out violent games actually showing those evil things. (even if styled up as being 'defensive' or 'against evil Communists/Jews/[Insert Minority]) One of the big reasons the Holocaust went from shootings to gassing was because of the sheer mental impact on the Einstanzgruppen including people (again despite being devout Nazis) committing suicide. The Nazis went to extreme lengths to hold up a paradoxical narrative of ultra-dominant violent strength and yet simultaneously extremely kind and innocent to their people during the war. Sure people might have in the end understood what was going on but the point is, the rhetoric stayed civil because Nazi-indoctrinated or not actually explicitly talking about mass murder, assault, pillaging, etc. is not going to be taken too well.
EDIT: What I said just before might sounds stupid when you think of Nazi propaganda regarding Jews, but remember Jews were not even called human, they were barely ever presented even in a humanoid way (demons don't count), so the explicit rhetoric about them can't count against the point I'm making. In Iran today, there is heavy anti-Semitic propaganda and the reason it holds up right next to 'be kind and virtuous' propaganda is exactly the same, 'what' Jews actually ARE is never ever mentioned, many children might genuinely not realise that they are even human because they are never referred to as such. So the natural human instincts of good vs bad doesn't kick in.
So especially considering the degree of censorship we can expect, I honestly doubt there would be ANY games made about the war at all; whereas most people so far have been posting pretty much only war games. I think Germany would instead try and move from the war and censure it (a victorious Nazi Germany is still one that bled and suffered heavily) and instead centralize the gaming industry and focus it around probably being educational. There isn't going to be FPS games explicitly targeting humanoid [Insert Minority Here]s, there might be some games where the villains are non-humanoid (say rats) but are heavily implied to be or on the side of [Insert Minority Here].
But really all in all I can't really see a large gaming industry in Nazi Germany. I just think it's much more likely that the Nazis would stifle it, either barely develop it or even completely ban gaming and call it degenerate. It goes totally against their ideals of 'healthy active German boys frolicking and enjoying nature' and the whole military AND civilian technological progress cult they're going for. Can't have ubermen sitting around in their mom's basements after all...
Similar regimes can be found in North Korea and Iran, and neither is known for its gaming (in both I think pretty much all games are pirated and smuggled in).
Anyway that's just my two cents.
EDIT: What I said just before might sounds stupid when you think of Nazi propaganda regarding Jews, but remember Jews were not even called human, they were barely ever presented even in a humanoid way (demons don't count), so the explicit rhetoric about them can't count against the point I'm making. In Iran today, there is heavy anti-Semitic propaganda and the reason it holds up right next to 'be kind and virtuous' propaganda is exactly the same, 'what' Jews actually ARE is never ever mentioned, many children might genuinely not realise that they are even human because they are never referred to as such. So the natural human instincts of good vs bad doesn't kick in.
So especially considering the degree of censorship we can expect, I honestly doubt there would be ANY games made about the war at all; whereas most people so far have been posting pretty much only war games. I think Germany would instead try and move from the war and censure it (a victorious Nazi Germany is still one that bled and suffered heavily) and instead centralize the gaming industry and focus it around probably being educational. There isn't going to be FPS games explicitly targeting humanoid [Insert Minority Here]s, there might be some games where the villains are non-humanoid (say rats) but are heavily implied to be or on the side of [Insert Minority Here].
But really all in all I can't really see a large gaming industry in Nazi Germany. I just think it's much more likely that the Nazis would stifle it, either barely develop it or even completely ban gaming and call it degenerate. It goes totally against their ideals of 'healthy active German boys frolicking and enjoying nature' and the whole military AND civilian technological progress cult they're going for. Can't have ubermen sitting around in their mom's basements after all...
Similar regimes can be found in North Korea and Iran, and neither is known for its gaming (in both I think pretty much all games are pirated and smuggled in).
Anyway that's just my two cents.
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I find it pretty hard to believe that Nazi Germany will make no war games. IOTL multiparty liberal democracies still produce war games. Why would the openly militaristic Nazi Germany, finding itself a European hegemon due to their war machine, pretend that it never happened. To be honest here I think you're taking the "Nazi Germany won't stay as hypermilitarised as during the war" stance and just turning the knob too far the other way. You're at once saying that German militarism will fall away naturally but that the promotion of outdoors-iness will stay and that gaming may be banned because of it. A big part of the emphasis on enjoying nature and being active was because the Nazis viewed the world as moving towards a state of eventually war between Europe and Asia/Africa etc. They believed in "survival of the fittest" and wanted to be the fittest. IF video games exist under a Nazi regime it will likely have relaxed that a bit, sure, under different leadership. But that also means they will relax about the focus on the ideal physique and being very fit, allowing video games to exist.
You're entitled to your opinions of course but there is also the word "frivolous" in the title for a reason. The point of the thread is to have fun and joke around about games that would never be made in our timeline but could be in a Nazi victory one. Of course no-one is going to say "Gran Turismo" clone because whilst in all likelihood racing games would exist, the point is to come up with funny/creative ways those games could be different to OTL ones, hence why so many of the examples lean into the militarism and the so-on-the-nose-its-absurd racism of the games.
That's my bad apologies.
In that case if it hasn't been mentioned yet what would a Nazi GTA be like?
Im very skeptical that the nazis would adopt videogames at all
Videogames as we know them kicked off in a westernized Japan and why the germans would want to replicate a "asiatic" product influenced by "jewish american degeneracy" is beyond me
Even IOTL West we had close calls over hysteria like "videogames cause violence" "games are an addiction that can turn you into a criminal"
A surviving Nazi Germany would be much worse than that, they'd be a white supremacist version of the late USSR at best or a eugenist Khmer Rouge at worse, not a good place for the estabilishment of a gaming industry
Videogames as we know them kicked off in a westernized Japan and why the germans would want to replicate a "asiatic" product influenced by "jewish american degeneracy" is beyond me
Even IOTL West we had close calls over hysteria like "videogames cause violence" "games are an addiction that can turn you into a criminal"
A surviving Nazi Germany would be much worse than that, they'd be a white supremacist version of the late USSR at best or a eugenist Khmer Rouge at worse, not a good place for the estabilishment of a gaming industry
Bear in mind, though, that in a scenario where the Nazis win, it is quite possible that being Nazi allies, the Japanese win too. And therefore whatever video games come out of a victorious Imperial Japan might not only look quite different from what we have IOTL, but also be much more amenable to adoption and/or replication in Nazi eyes.
I will freely admit it. Some of these didn't just make me chuckle, but laugh out loud.
The Junge Division one is probably the most realistic, but in terms of 'plausible frivolity' I can totally see the Konan, Fafnir and Max Dachshund ones existing in a victorious Reich.
Ostfront is very witty satire of both Space Invaders and the Eastern Front although I am not sure the Reich would permit a game in which you cannot win against the Reds.
Im skeptical of videogames existing in Imperial Japan too for similar reasons as to why North Korea hasnt created game franchises
But main point is, the nazis would still see them as products of the "mongoloid race" and their alliance was more so being co-belligerants than anything else
Also while I dont want to discuss the plausibility of a Nazi Victory here, as that is another topic entirely that goes against the spirit of the thread, Japan winning is an even more difficult scenario to address and the OP itself only mentioned the nazis winning
Here's the thing though. History already bears out that the Imperial Japanese were much more imaginative (and not beyond certain flights of whimsy) than the North Koreans. Just look at this for instance:
I don't see it as a great leap of imagination to envision a nation capable of producing the above, then going on to make video games in a similar vein.
Yeah people forget Imperial Japan was one more open the European facist ones, and a lot of the Japanese volkisch did drank the government kool aid
Erwin Bauer-Schau isn't a real figure, but the idea behind the title is based on the real trend of many wargames (at least, the older ones) having either the designer or the military consultant's name in the title, with those names seemingly always coinciding with the name of a famous general
Basically, he's supposed to be a designer named after Erwin Rommel.
And, well, to be fair, even if it isn't exactly supposed to be a Jew, the propaganda about how "the enemy" looks is bound to seep down into "childhood bogeyman" territory at some point...
Possibly? Once you handwave the "how" of Nazi victory, it's basically all YMMV on whether it's possible to imagine a cultural liberalisation of Nazi Germany, such as it is, placing videogames at the same level of movies; or if the mere concept is too foreign to entertain.
In my view the market would be there. Just might look very different, and it definitely would take longer than OTL to develop, since the stigma would presumably be stronger (though not impossible to overcome).
A few more ideas:
Nosferatu - Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror) - One of the first German survival horror games. Inspired by the 1998 remake of the German Expressionist classic from 1922. The player takes on the role of Thomas Hutter, an estate agent sent to Transylvania to visit a new client, Count Orlok. The first half of the game revolves around attempting to escape the castle of Count Orlok, whilst avoiding a number of supernatural creatures under the thrall of the vampire lord. This eventually leads to an escape to a nearby village, where Hutter must avoid the local Eastern European peasants who seek to offer Hutter up to Count Orlok to satiate his wrath. Eventually as the morning comes Hutter is able to get a carriage back to Wisborg, his fictional hometown, where he is followed by the Count who seeks to exert his hypnotic control over Hutter's fiance Ellen. A number of plot points are changed considerably from the two films that the game is based on. It was notable in being the first survival horror in Germany that didn't allow the player to effectively fight back against enemies (think Outlast).
Die Dunkle Seite des Mondes (The Dark Side of the Moon) - Science fiction and action game released on the Elektrounterhaltung-3 gaming console. Spawned one of the most popular franchises on the EH-3. The game is set on a SS-operated base on the Moon. This mining base drills below the surface and into an underground reservoir which houses a long-dormant species on endoparasitic alien monsters. These creatures quickly overrun the base and the protagonist has to fight his way to the docking bay in order to reach the flying saucer-like ships there in order to escape back to Earth. Later installments in the franchise widen the scope of the story to different planets and uncover the origin of the "Mondkreatur", which turns out to have been a genetically-engineered bioweapon created by a "precursor race".
Die Rittersaga (The Knight Saga) - A historical action-adventure game following a medieval German knight who travels to the Baltic region to join the Teutonic Knights and fight against the Pagan Lithuanians and later against the Catholic Poles. Notable for having an extremely sanitised perspective on the Baltic Crusade, fully supporting the German historiographical view of the crusade as a "civilising mission". One of the more sophisticated games in the hack-and-slash genre, and one of the last to have mainstream success in Germany before the genre lost steam.
Nosferatu - Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror) - One of the first German survival horror games. Inspired by the 1998 remake of the German Expressionist classic from 1922. The player takes on the role of Thomas Hutter, an estate agent sent to Transylvania to visit a new client, Count Orlok. The first half of the game revolves around attempting to escape the castle of Count Orlok, whilst avoiding a number of supernatural creatures under the thrall of the vampire lord. This eventually leads to an escape to a nearby village, where Hutter must avoid the local Eastern European peasants who seek to offer Hutter up to Count Orlok to satiate his wrath. Eventually as the morning comes Hutter is able to get a carriage back to Wisborg, his fictional hometown, where he is followed by the Count who seeks to exert his hypnotic control over Hutter's fiance Ellen. A number of plot points are changed considerably from the two films that the game is based on. It was notable in being the first survival horror in Germany that didn't allow the player to effectively fight back against enemies (think Outlast).
Die Dunkle Seite des Mondes (The Dark Side of the Moon) - Science fiction and action game released on the Elektrounterhaltung-3 gaming console. Spawned one of the most popular franchises on the EH-3. The game is set on a SS-operated base on the Moon. This mining base drills below the surface and into an underground reservoir which houses a long-dormant species on endoparasitic alien monsters. These creatures quickly overrun the base and the protagonist has to fight his way to the docking bay in order to reach the flying saucer-like ships there in order to escape back to Earth. Later installments in the franchise widen the scope of the story to different planets and uncover the origin of the "Mondkreatur", which turns out to have been a genetically-engineered bioweapon created by a "precursor race".
Die Rittersaga (The Knight Saga) - A historical action-adventure game following a medieval German knight who travels to the Baltic region to join the Teutonic Knights and fight against the Pagan Lithuanians and later against the Catholic Poles. Notable for having an extremely sanitised perspective on the Baltic Crusade, fully supporting the German historiographical view of the crusade as a "civilising mission". One of the more sophisticated games in the hack-and-slash genre, and one of the last to have mainstream success in Germany before the genre lost steam.
I do not see much changing for much of the videogames out there. A quick glance into your Google or Apple app store will tell you that 95 to 99% of today's games do not have any political or societal message and could be played just as well in today's society as in a surviving USSR or Nazi Germany. I do not see what a Nazi Germany would do different in writing Farmville, other than making the barns look more like your stereotypical Alpine farmhouse than a red US barn. Car racing games will still be around although I can make no predictions on the types of cars it features. Idem for flight simulators or even combat flight simulators. As for war games, if we exclude the abstract or fantasy ones, it is still one of the main attractions that you can play 'the adversary' and even win playing them. So a victorious Nazi Germany would still have its share of players preferring the Spitfire, the Sherman tank or even the HMS Hood. As for the other fighting games, many of them have generic bad guys such as street goons and if Nazi Germany discovers zombie movies, there will be lots of zombie shooters too
And of course, we will always have minesweeper, Pac-Man and Tetris
And of course, we will always have minesweeper, Pac-Man and Tetris
Admittedly, I have nothing to contribute to the discussion whether these video games would've always been patriotic or end up going 'soft'. My first thought was that these games would end up detracting from this vitriolic and fervently nationalist culture, and even end up as critiques of the Nazi state and its past actions--much like how many games today, like Spec Ops: The Line and especially the MGS series, are terribly critical of wars and more. Despite that, as we know, the Nazis are a terribly repressive and authoritarian genocidal regime, and I frankly don't know if state censorship of video games would soften as the years pass, or just remain as oppressive. Furthermore, I have to wonder if Nazi dogma would encourage gaming or see it as some sort of degenerate or lazy product.
So, all that aside, I have maybe three ideas jostling in my head. I'm not great with naming, so I honestly couldn't think of a way to make these game titles more.. Nazi-like.
Gunpowder & the Gun
At one point a highly controversial game, Gunpowder & the Gun (often plain called Gunpowder) is a post-apocalyptic RPG set in RK Moskowien, in the aftermath of a nuclear war between Nazi Germany and the United States, a year or two after specifically. It's a fairly bungled analogue for OTL's Fallout, in essence. The protagonist is customizable: anything from your hair and eyes, to your race and gender, to nose and facial structure--and so on. These options give buffs or debuffs, with ridiculous examples such as..
- picking a Slavic character means you take longer to sort or loot items, an intended jab at their supposed laziness
- giving your character blue eyes is only possible if you pick Aryan, granting a buff to your visibility and eyesight, as well as charisma--weirdly enough, the game gives you the option to eventually get surgery for blue eyes with said buffs were you to pick another race
- playing as a female character makes your character physically weaker and easily exhausted
..among other things. Outside of the robust character customization, the worldbuilding and environmental storytelling is often what grabs players--despite being an RPG, the game's NPC's and companions are immeasurably shallow and uninteresting, likely explained by how Aryan wastelanders and survivors tend to be flawless pinnacles of human-being, and other races/ethnicities predictably depicted as spiteful, thieving, uncaring, or plain murder-barbarians. The game's plot has the protagonist arrive by ship to Rostov-on-Don after a perilous voyage in the Black Sea, where the protagonist is sent on a mission to re-establish remnant German control over Southern Russia (consisting of the Don and Kuban areas, the northern Caucasus, and parts of Ukraine). While there are several factions in the game, none are exactly joinable. Outside of the Nazi remnants, other factions include..
- bands of loose German deserters and raiders who've turned to banditry and pillaging, with the option to "bring them back into the fold"
- Slavic raiders that, outside of ethnicity, resemble the Mongols and Golden Horde in organization and apparel
- American agents, who are often depicted working alongside Jews with cartoonishly evil behavior
- ..and various loose settlements and cities.
Outside of the German remnants an American agents, the protagonist is the only character capable of using firearms, with the Slavic raiders resorting to bows or spears, and even the German deserters having merely clubs, pikes, and sword, explained by the Slavs regressing, and the deserters being sluggish and wasteful with ammo. Despite being numerically inferior, the American agents and their Jewish sidekicks are the main antagonists of the game, with their mission being to sabotage and detonate an unused German ICBM within its silo before it could be used. The climax of the game is at this silo, where the protagonist has the option to:
- prevent its sabotage, but don't fire the ICBM (ending #1; technically neutral but heavily implied as bad)
- fire the ICBM at the US (ending #2; a good ending, showing an end-slide where Bakersfield, an impromptu capital of the US govt's remnants, is obliterated)
- fire the ICBM at Stalingrad, the home and capital of the Slavic raiders (ending #3; another good ending, with an end-slide akin to #2's)
- detonate the ICBM (ending #4; a bad ending, killing everyone at the silo including yourselves, with an end-slide showing Rostov-on-Don being overran by Slavic hordes)
- fire the ICBM.. at Neu Berlin, the new administrative center of Nazi Germany's remnants (ending #5; a bad ending, with an end-slide showing Jewish-Soviet-Golden Horde state lording over most of Europe)
The game sparked controversy for several reasons, and acquiescing to censorship guidelines took around a year despite the product being finished. One of the largest controversies was the game giving the player to play as a Jew, which would give insurmountable debuffs, but ultimately still playable. It was received poorly by critics for this very reason, believing it to be insulting and showcasing Aryans as weak when up against a Jewish protagonist. It was removed, although enough content remained within game files that modders would restore this feature. This sparked even further controversy, leading to a series of arrests by the modders, and these mods taken down by any platform that hosted it. Other controversy came from the fact the game permitted the player to nuke Germany and Germans, and aside with the enemy, although it was eventually permitted after the developers plead that they were "distinctly and clearly negative."
(please do note that when i say "good ending" that i don't literally think it's good, rather that's what the developers believe)
DALMATIA
A sort of "failed game", DALMATIA was banned as soon as it hit the shelves in Germany, after it somehow flew under the radar of censorship; around 4,300 copies were sold there. However, it has gained a substantially large following in the international market, with sales reaching around ~800,000 in the US. The game posits the protagonist as a soldier in the Wehrmacht during a fictional war in the early 2000's, sent among several others to put down a Croatian uprising in Zara. Gameplay-wise, it resembles an FPS akin to the Call of Duty or Battlefield series, with almost little to no dialogue and depth in regards to the protagonist. The plot essentially has the player put down this uprising brutally in conjunction with Italian soldiers and settlers, both unable to handle it on their own. The game, expectedly, is extremely linear, with no variation of endings or dialogue, with the game's action and characters compensating for its linearity. What makes the game so controversial is its obscenely gory and brutal depictions of war and how it impacts civilians, and while sympathetic to the Wehrmacht, holding disdain for the Schutzstaffel and Germany's Italian allies. At its core, it essentially depicts the Clean Wehrmacht myth in a world where they won. The player helps Croatian, Italian, and German civilians, and very often spare soldiers or insurgents instead of summarily serving 'justice' or blatantly murdering civilians just as the Wehrmacht had done IOTL. The game depicts Wehrmacht soldiers as heroic, with a particular cutscene showing Wehrmacht personnel escorting Croats to safety as tomatoes are hurled at them by Italian settlers as one of many examples. Ultimately though, the game was banned in Germany as the game perpetuated a terribly biased view of Italy and Italians, gave a sympathetic view to Croats, and elevated blame to the Schutzstaffel. Its impact outside of Germany was much more impactful, however. American education cut no corners when it came to discussing Wehrmacht war crimes and the Holocaust, but the game challenged these views, often infecting the minds of young Americans with a more sympathetic and even knightly Wehrmacht. While historians criticized the game to no end, it was a hit among American youths, and would end up perpetuating the myth.
Stripes over Europe
A stand-in for Wolfenstein in this universe, SoE takes place in a setting where America has bested Nazi Germany. Unlike Wolfenstein, where German advancement in technology managed to explode after uncovering Da'at Yichud's vaults, SoE explains America's victory by stating it entered a sort of "communion" with the literal devil. Whereas Wolfenstein's aesthetic was built around a greater level of technological advancement, SoE shows a world where society and technology is regressing, being nigh the same as it was in the late 40's. Replacing the high-tech and sleek aesthetic was occultism, black magic, and sorcery. American soldiers retained their uniforms like the M1943, but all of it adorned in blood, pentagrams, and other occultist imagery; soldiers operating M2 Brownings would often be clad in robes and hoods, and chant some kind of demon speak (it pretty much was just the VA's being told to speak gibberish). The protagonist is depicted.. predictably, being white, with blue eyes and blonde hair, and chiseled like some kind of muscle demon. Predictable one-liners, blatant racism, and a white knight complex, has made the protagonist loved by audiences in Germany, even with all the cheesiness involved. The game would kill the player if it attempted to use the black magic the Americans had harnessed, and would also make American weapons unpick-up-able, with an emphasis on using distinctly German weapons and engineering.
So, all that aside, I have maybe three ideas jostling in my head. I'm not great with naming, so I honestly couldn't think of a way to make these game titles more.. Nazi-like.
Gunpowder & the Gun
At one point a highly controversial game, Gunpowder & the Gun (often plain called Gunpowder) is a post-apocalyptic RPG set in RK Moskowien, in the aftermath of a nuclear war between Nazi Germany and the United States, a year or two after specifically. It's a fairly bungled analogue for OTL's Fallout, in essence. The protagonist is customizable: anything from your hair and eyes, to your race and gender, to nose and facial structure--and so on. These options give buffs or debuffs, with ridiculous examples such as..
- picking a Slavic character means you take longer to sort or loot items, an intended jab at their supposed laziness
- giving your character blue eyes is only possible if you pick Aryan, granting a buff to your visibility and eyesight, as well as charisma--weirdly enough, the game gives you the option to eventually get surgery for blue eyes with said buffs were you to pick another race
- playing as a female character makes your character physically weaker and easily exhausted
..among other things. Outside of the robust character customization, the worldbuilding and environmental storytelling is often what grabs players--despite being an RPG, the game's NPC's and companions are immeasurably shallow and uninteresting, likely explained by how Aryan wastelanders and survivors tend to be flawless pinnacles of human-being, and other races/ethnicities predictably depicted as spiteful, thieving, uncaring, or plain murder-barbarians. The game's plot has the protagonist arrive by ship to Rostov-on-Don after a perilous voyage in the Black Sea, where the protagonist is sent on a mission to re-establish remnant German control over Southern Russia (consisting of the Don and Kuban areas, the northern Caucasus, and parts of Ukraine). While there are several factions in the game, none are exactly joinable. Outside of the Nazi remnants, other factions include..
- bands of loose German deserters and raiders who've turned to banditry and pillaging, with the option to "bring them back into the fold"
- Slavic raiders that, outside of ethnicity, resemble the Mongols and Golden Horde in organization and apparel
- American agents, who are often depicted working alongside Jews with cartoonishly evil behavior
- ..and various loose settlements and cities.
Outside of the German remnants an American agents, the protagonist is the only character capable of using firearms, with the Slavic raiders resorting to bows or spears, and even the German deserters having merely clubs, pikes, and sword, explained by the Slavs regressing, and the deserters being sluggish and wasteful with ammo. Despite being numerically inferior, the American agents and their Jewish sidekicks are the main antagonists of the game, with their mission being to sabotage and detonate an unused German ICBM within its silo before it could be used. The climax of the game is at this silo, where the protagonist has the option to:
- prevent its sabotage, but don't fire the ICBM (ending #1; technically neutral but heavily implied as bad)
- fire the ICBM at the US (ending #2; a good ending, showing an end-slide where Bakersfield, an impromptu capital of the US govt's remnants, is obliterated)
- fire the ICBM at Stalingrad, the home and capital of the Slavic raiders (ending #3; another good ending, with an end-slide akin to #2's)
- detonate the ICBM (ending #4; a bad ending, killing everyone at the silo including yourselves, with an end-slide showing Rostov-on-Don being overran by Slavic hordes)
- fire the ICBM.. at Neu Berlin, the new administrative center of Nazi Germany's remnants (ending #5; a bad ending, with an end-slide showing Jewish-Soviet-Golden Horde state lording over most of Europe)
The game sparked controversy for several reasons, and acquiescing to censorship guidelines took around a year despite the product being finished. One of the largest controversies was the game giving the player to play as a Jew, which would give insurmountable debuffs, but ultimately still playable. It was received poorly by critics for this very reason, believing it to be insulting and showcasing Aryans as weak when up against a Jewish protagonist. It was removed, although enough content remained within game files that modders would restore this feature. This sparked even further controversy, leading to a series of arrests by the modders, and these mods taken down by any platform that hosted it. Other controversy came from the fact the game permitted the player to nuke Germany and Germans, and aside with the enemy, although it was eventually permitted after the developers plead that they were "distinctly and clearly negative."
(please do note that when i say "good ending" that i don't literally think it's good, rather that's what the developers believe)
DALMATIA
A sort of "failed game", DALMATIA was banned as soon as it hit the shelves in Germany, after it somehow flew under the radar of censorship; around 4,300 copies were sold there. However, it has gained a substantially large following in the international market, with sales reaching around ~800,000 in the US. The game posits the protagonist as a soldier in the Wehrmacht during a fictional war in the early 2000's, sent among several others to put down a Croatian uprising in Zara. Gameplay-wise, it resembles an FPS akin to the Call of Duty or Battlefield series, with almost little to no dialogue and depth in regards to the protagonist. The plot essentially has the player put down this uprising brutally in conjunction with Italian soldiers and settlers, both unable to handle it on their own. The game, expectedly, is extremely linear, with no variation of endings or dialogue, with the game's action and characters compensating for its linearity. What makes the game so controversial is its obscenely gory and brutal depictions of war and how it impacts civilians, and while sympathetic to the Wehrmacht, holding disdain for the Schutzstaffel and Germany's Italian allies. At its core, it essentially depicts the Clean Wehrmacht myth in a world where they won. The player helps Croatian, Italian, and German civilians, and very often spare soldiers or insurgents instead of summarily serving 'justice' or blatantly murdering civilians just as the Wehrmacht had done IOTL. The game depicts Wehrmacht soldiers as heroic, with a particular cutscene showing Wehrmacht personnel escorting Croats to safety as tomatoes are hurled at them by Italian settlers as one of many examples. Ultimately though, the game was banned in Germany as the game perpetuated a terribly biased view of Italy and Italians, gave a sympathetic view to Croats, and elevated blame to the Schutzstaffel. Its impact outside of Germany was much more impactful, however. American education cut no corners when it came to discussing Wehrmacht war crimes and the Holocaust, but the game challenged these views, often infecting the minds of young Americans with a more sympathetic and even knightly Wehrmacht. While historians criticized the game to no end, it was a hit among American youths, and would end up perpetuating the myth.
Stripes over Europe
A stand-in for Wolfenstein in this universe, SoE takes place in a setting where America has bested Nazi Germany. Unlike Wolfenstein, where German advancement in technology managed to explode after uncovering Da'at Yichud's vaults, SoE explains America's victory by stating it entered a sort of "communion" with the literal devil. Whereas Wolfenstein's aesthetic was built around a greater level of technological advancement, SoE shows a world where society and technology is regressing, being nigh the same as it was in the late 40's. Replacing the high-tech and sleek aesthetic was occultism, black magic, and sorcery. American soldiers retained their uniforms like the M1943, but all of it adorned in blood, pentagrams, and other occultist imagery; soldiers operating M2 Brownings would often be clad in robes and hoods, and chant some kind of demon speak (it pretty much was just the VA's being told to speak gibberish). The protagonist is depicted.. predictably, being white, with blue eyes and blonde hair, and chiseled like some kind of muscle demon. Predictable one-liners, blatant racism, and a white knight complex, has made the protagonist loved by audiences in Germany, even with all the cheesiness involved. The game would kill the player if it attempted to use the black magic the Americans had harnessed, and would also make American weapons unpick-up-able, with an emphasis on using distinctly German weapons and engineering.