Timestamps: 1. Adjusting to the Darkness - 0:00 2. Video game as an experience of war - 2:46 3. Themes - 6:53 4. Setting - 10:34 4.1. Locations - 15:11 4.2. Berlin - 17:43 5. Introduction to war - 19:30 6. Mission introductions - 24:04 6.1. Semper Fi - 24:54 6.2. Little Resistance - 27:00 6.3. Vendetta - 28:24 6.4. Their Land Their Blood - 29:39 6.5. Eviction - 31:03 6.6. Breaking Point - 31:56 6.7. Heart of the Reich - 32:31 6.8. Downfall - 33:15 7. Scripting the war - 33:55 8. Mechanics of brutality - 38:52 8.1. Gore - 39:55 8.1.1. Humanizing the enemy - 45:23 8.2. Fire - 47:49 8.3. Last stand and dying animations - 49:07 8.4. War of a different kind - 50:38 9. The hands that won - 52:20 10. The look of war - art style - 54:56 10.1. Colors - 55:45 10.2. Ash, Embers - 56:48 10.3. Fire as lighting - 57:40 10.4. Blinding sun - 58:25 11. Sounds of war - 59:34 12. Soundtrack to war - 1:00:28 13. Mercy at the heart of cruelty - 1:04:14 14. Roebuck's melancholic stoicism - 1:07:54 15. Aesthetic essence - 1:09:15 16. Legacy - 1:13:12 17. A living memory and the next best thing - 1:15:41
As a young boy, having been suspected of (and eventually diagnosed as) having autism/asperger's... This game and many interpretations of it's campaign helped me to truly accept how evil and indifferent life itself can and will be. Treyarch went from RTCW, to making me feel disturbed when I blasted a german with a shotgun. I've been looking for an FPS anywhere near as brutal and visceral as this, and only One Unit Whole Blood has even been a close second. Perhaps the strengths of both titles could make a penultimate show and display of evil in a shooter?
@@emulation2369 I have been diagnosed with adhd as well and this game is what got me in to ww2. Even though it has been 12 years since it came out im still longing for a remaster. It was an honor to play as people who fought for good at the benefit of all people and those who had died just to be forgotten. This games ending was especially good because it showed you didn't need a cliché bad guy but just the symbolic feeling of tearing down the evil that was nazi Germany and its allies was the best feeling. I still play the games ending to this day. Maybe I'm biased because i had a great uncle who fought in ww2 but the point still stands. This is one of the greatest world war 2 shooters of all time.
I was on kino on the Wii of black ops 1, I played with my mom and got jump scared so much times by round 4 when the zombies would sneak up behind you, then dogs came and I was like WHAT THE FUCK!then died, only recently have i gotten to round 100 on kino, like 2 years ago maybe now
I feel ya man. I was 11. I remember being excited when the cutscene started, thinking there was a little more game. Then got scared by the strange way, that man was running towards the screen. When the title card "Nazi Zombies" Came, I turned off my ps3. Later turned out to be some of the most fun i've had in a video game.
@@nobleradical2158 reason why people like modern warfare and black ops so much is because how over the top the campaign was i really done see a problem here
@@nobleradical2158 did modern warfare and black ops show the brutalitys of war of course not but if i wanted something showing the brutality of war i would watch a documentary not play a game
@@subzu2733 but a game is waaaaay better at giving someone the, as face full of eyes puts it, aesthetic experience of something. The game makes each interaction personalized, and reflect on your feelings.
Me before watching the video expecting that it would just bring up the positives of the game that hundreds have done already: "No one is going to watch this." Me after watching the video realizing how unique it is to other World at War videos: "Someone should watch this..."
@@chev3569 Oh yes, some hundred thousand views per video isn't really that much 😉 It is a relatively young channel, it needs time to grow. Maybe the new Far Cry 6 and the magical YT-algorithm will bring some newcomers over here.
When I first got a PS3 in 2010, I got black ops and played the shit out of it for several months. I got World at War after that and it was and still is my favorite war-themed shooter of all time, it was actually difficult to play blops after getting CoD 5. The atmosphere in world at war just captivated me from the beginning. As soon as I got my first PC I bought it again on steam lol and damn is it even more fun on PC, with all the zombies and campaign mods (and the MP40 isn't overpowered as fuck in PC multiplayer which is a plus). I haven't bought a new CoD since black ops 2 and I'm glad for that. Transit ruined my interest in zombies and I honestly just wasn't a fan of the direction the series was going in. Honestly WaW might have the most realistic campaign of any call of duty
@@partialbullet2215 World at War is the tragic CoD game that both solidified my love of the series, and set my standards for all subsequent games far higher than they could ever meet. I'd casually enjoyed the previous games; I fell in love with World at War. It was the definitive CoD. Unfortunately, it still is, years later, after many, many disappointments since.
Honestly, from what I've seen and heard, Spec Ops: The Line seems better. Maybe a bit more psychological, but I've played WaW. Some of the shit in Spec Ops is just... Dark.
My favorite track "Fight Parliament" i think best utilizes the grungy instruments. It uses the guitars to sound like gunfire & bombers, the drums like artillery. To me it feels like the most immersive track in the game.
My favorite was ring of steel mainly for the commisar's speech screaming "CITIZENS OF BERLIN! A RING OF STEEL SURROUNDS YOUR ROTTEN CITY! ABANDON YOUR POSTS! ABANDON YOUR HOMES! ABANDON ALL HOPE!" fucking chilling
You’re finale speech about your grandparents rings true to me. When the movie Dunkirk came out I went to the nearest theater to see it. Next to me sat an old man in his 90’s with his wife watching the movie, and he wore a hat that said “World War 2 veteran”. I spoke with him after the movie, and he explained to me how he read about Dunkirk in the papers as a teen, then later joined the Navy to fight in the pacific. That man might not even be alive anymore, but his story is through me.
Amazing story! I love talking to all veterans. I was at a car show last week and spoke to many Vietnam veterans. It's such an honor to speak with them and shake their hands!
those who die that we having meaningful interactions with - they survive through us by remaining in us like our blood. Never forget this man's stories.
I played the game in English when I didn't understand it. All the ambushes, calls for help, screams of agony and pleas for mercy felt more visceral to me. I didn't understand them but I knew what they meant. The fucking music made it all the more atmospheric and haunting.
This is truly a" once in a generation" game. It was impactful when it first hit the market, and still holds up in terms of gameplay and aesthetic many years later. World at War was a product of the Call of Duty golden age and it shows. They really don't make 'em like they used to.
In the US Army, at least, there is a concept that soldiers simply refer to as "the Shit". The Shit is not mere combat, soldiers know how to deal with combat. Rather, being in the Shit is to be in a place where the usual playbook isn't working, where command has even less clue than usual of what's going on, where the "quick" reaction force is an hour away, and the fear of death comes not from a stray bullet, but instead the distinct impression that the air is filled with more lead than oxygen. To me, World at War is a recreation of how people remember the Shit. It's not a true-to-life depiction of war, both via its nature as a game and by its stylistic choices, but these inaccuracies of literal reality instead mirror the fallibility and selectivity of human memory; a highlight reel of carnage, the things that refused to be forgotten with age, churned by restless dreams into something even worse than the truth.
I think it does a good job of portraying the absolute chaos of it, how even the best "plan" can change in a moment because unforseen forces both intentional and accidental. When my grandfather was in the war they where intent on setting up a position to stay for the next 3 to 4 months. They spent 2 weeks setting it up than had to leave immediately because the line collapsed to behind them
@@hankjwimbleton6598 That’s very true it’s like seeing it through their mind and their memory but emphasis on memories. Each of us can remember the same event but very differently and ptsd definitely plays a role in how some things are exaggerated. The first Black Ops game switched to dream like flashbacks that made the game way less realistic
Yeah I had someone say to me that modern warfare was the darkest cod, and then I told them waw was darker for these reasons, they said "but most of the main character die" he was a dumb fuck
You know I think the absolute number 1 thing that makes this game so different, so good, so immersive is YOU ARE ACTUALLY *JUST A SOLDIER*. You know your own name and you know your squad mates but you are fighting in a an actual living war against actual living people who are just on the edge of being your friend. There is absolutely no bad guy, there's no ultimate villain, there is no one to hate specifically. You assassinate one person through the whole campaign, and it isn't fucking Hitler himself, it isn't some famous General (that I know of), it is just another high ranking German (I presume) who you hate all more than the other you thoughtlessly rip apart. The ultimate enemy is the Reich itself, an embodiment of ideology, a hive mind. You can't just shoot one person and it's over. Because it is war, real war, true war, and this is something all modern CODs don't have. I personally don't think it's a bad thing, COD is about story, it's about being a bad ass with bad ass squad mates and doing bad ass things. If you want a war game, you play something else. None the less, I couldn't be happier WaW exists. Thanks for coming to my BEDtalk , I'm sleepy, goodnight.
That's how CoD was, you are one man, not a one man army. Cod 1-WaW was that, but since mw2 they strayed away from their roots. Highly recommend both Raycevick video on cod.
"World at War" did something that games didn't really do at that time: it showed you all the bad parts of World War 2... and dared to give us the choice to look away.
WaW felt like the embodiment of that phrase "shooters are inherently anti-war". I came into the game after having played many games that came out after it and the game truly made me realize the disgusting reality of true warfare. I didn't feel like some badass that singlehandedly took down the enemy. I felt like I went through a meat grinder and was just happy to have made it out alive. I think it is because of games like this that I ended up becoming obsessed with history, I started realizing just how primordial human suffering is, how we are only in this era of luxury via the suffering of millions. Our comfort is built upon a throne of skulls. It is in realizing this that I truly grasped the fortune I was blessed with, no matter how bad the world gets I acknowledge that prosperity is inherently fleeting so I should never expect the status quo to continue. I have reached a kind of zen state in the last year, humanity will always be presented with situations in which we suffer, but we trudge on, every moment of happiness will equally give way to moments of abject sorrow, and the key to coping with all of this is to learn to appreciate it. You cherish your good memories and learn from the bad ones.
I was relatively new to war shooters at the time (started with CoD4 one year prior) and WaW had me stop and look at a dead German soldier, lamenting the good life both of us could have had.
well, you have an anime avatar, you can swear you are lucky enough to live under this timeline and not before were weak people were truly oppressed and vulnerable.
@@mariano98ify true I can definitely see that point. Though I wasn't exactly weak growing up. I was a scrapper from a young age, getting into wrestling early on and getting into fights all the time with neighbor kids and my cousins. Though I was bullied to high hell all through school rofl, they just never got physical because they knew better. I am happy that other people that weren't as violent as I was when I was younger get to have the freedom to like what they want in this day and age.
I love how the closing cinematic cutscene in the game doesn't even give you a sense of triumph or optimism, it just reminds you that this was a very real event in human history. Every time I see the words "60 million people died as a result of World War II", I get goosebumps and a chill up my spine. I didn't just finish a game, I finished a depiction of a horrendous conflict actual human beings had to endure.
I got that same feeling from the ending of the Prairie Fire DLC for ARMA 3. After romping through the Vietnam jungle the game plays the actual "Prairie Fire!" radio audio. It was a sobering reminder that all that action and fun was based off of actual events that actual humans went though. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but it is still only imitation. It can be easy to forget that it is just that sometimes, and that when it comes to our escapism we often stand on the shoulders of giants.
That combined with the bell tolling in the background, then you see the words "It was *the most* destructive and deadly conflict in human history." Then the credits just roll and it leaves you sitting there. No parades, no victory laps, no happy cutscene. Just footage of the Enola Gay flying and a nuclear bomb exploding. I wish there were more experiences in video games like this, no overall narrative besides the matter-of-fact nature of war history.
Please never private or delete this video man, this is too good of a video essay. I've wanted to do a video essay on how to properly portray war in video games, but this is so much better than I could do. Honestly if I was a teacher for history, I'd show my students this video man. Amazing job man
It's so hard coming back to this video after Vanguard, Vanguard completely destroyed every hope of ever treating World War 2 with respect, it's now a plaything to tell fantastical stories, not a brutal reminder of how cruel humans can be.
@@thechugg4372 fr, these games could portray proper PTSD and how the truama could effect these ppl but they just make another skinpack for AOT n make another 500'000$
The game wasn't the most well received by fans because of genre fatigue back in 2008, but it was heavily praised by critics and players alike. It certainly is overlooked-- hell, even Treyarch themselves barely acknowledge the game-- but the game is nowhere near underrated.
Damn, i just remembered that this was indeed my first FPS! Well, not exactly as it was WaW: final fronts, and that's a way more classic cod game. But it's definitely my fav COD.
I remember playing this as a kid, being scared at what the officer did to the American troop, I was horrified. I'm glad I got to play it all the way, this cod is my favorite out of all of them
@@dankovac1609 Final fronts sucked... sure I owned it and found it fun at the time but it was not a good game by any means, especially compared to the main title lol
@@BananaPhoPhilly yeah definitely. Still it embedded the setting and the soundtrack into me at a young age. And i did then play the original at like, age 11 so i was more hyped for it knowing tge setting
One detail I always loved was the reload animation for the BAR in Call of Duty 3. You can see the characters' hands trembling, and his hand slips off the magazine while trying to eject it. It was the first time I'd ever seen something like that.
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."
To me, the soundtrack is one of the absolute best pieces of the game, riffs included. Because the way they built up in the level, matching the build up of violence the further you get in it, it's like the embodiment of your brain shutting off to deal with the horror and disparity.
The introduction to Downfall is one of the most powerful moments in video game history. For all Reznov's scolding and harshness towards Chernov, after his death he shows how he cares. At the beginning of storming the Reichstag Reznov is reading to you from Chernov's diary. This genuinely brings me to tears still frequently when I witness it.
27:52 "Out of the mitallic safety of the ship's womb, you are cast into the world that holds so many possible varietions of death." That is simply beautiful
@@dapeepingreaper6266 Killzone 2, which I think you are referring to, did not come until a year later in 2009. But I agree 2008 and the late 2000s in general had a lot of good games, despite how much people complained about it being "the dark, edgy, brown and grey" era. Speaking of which I would like to hear Face Full of Eyes talk about Killzone 2 since it follows a lot of the themes that WAW did as a dark gritty war game but with a hard sci-fi bent.
Kind of a bad take. Everything after 2007 suffered HEAVILY of post CoD4-itis for the next couple years, where everything had to become a shoed-in multiplayer sepia toned michael bay shooter, including the following games in this very series. Even THIS game suffered, it would have been more grand in scale and more clear in vision but Activision forced Treyarch into making it more like another CoD4 because it sold so well, see an entirely scrapped british campaign as well as the original plans for the multiplayer and see what we got in the end, which ended up being a RAPID rework before launch to be more like CoD4 multiplayer. Love or hate CoD4, it kinda ruined the entire gaming industry for a few years, but that's what influential, successful, and pivotal works kinda do, don't they. You could compare this turning point in gaming to something like the release of Skyrim and Minecraft in 2011 where everything had to become open world games with half-baked skill trees and crafting systems that they somehow think qualify as "sandbox" games.
WOW. Never have I ever felt this much dread, been at a constant unease and had my heart pumping with anticipation before, especially starting from the "Gore" segment all the way to the finish line. Just like the game, this is a really special video, there's quite nothing like it. And what a video it was. The wait was more than worth it and I can tell that it's going to be a good time finding all the little details in the multiple binges that are bound to happen in the months to come.
"It is good that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it" - Robert E. Lee. I feel the fact WaW shows that statement rather than than says it, means the brutal dread and horror of warfare is much more remembered but importantly, not idealised. Especially in a generation fortunate enough to not have to experience it and so ironically tend to imitate it through FPSs for the visceral imagery and adrenaline hit. Phenomenal video. Subbed
@@martinjugolin2087bro if Mussolini had a good quote and you put a posthumous statue of him somewhere someone would still, rightfully, think youre a fascist. Yes we shouldn't glorify white supremacists, and the statues of robert e lee that people like to remove were not built in his time. They were built, later, to celebrate white supremacy.
My friends copy had a bug that didn't allow you to save and come back. So we stayed up all night to finish the game in one go! It felt so good when we finished.
Haven't had such a woeful feelings since was watching documentaries about WW2 at school events. The main difference is that in Waw you don't feel "Ours were good, theirs were evil" type of thing. You see people in dificult circumstances fighting for their lives, and for lives of their close ones. No romanticization, no glorifying of murders, only the pain all the humanity went though. The pain that affected every family in some way. Personally lost a great grandfather in 1943 by Kiev, and was even named after him. Heard a lot of good things about him from my dad, and i know for sure a lot of people can tell similar stories about their close ones they may have lost too. Thank you once again for reminding us all about this great game, and about the legacy it wants us to remember!
This video is fantastic. Also, I am sorry for your loss, I know the feeling of wishing you had taken the time to hear more stories, and holding on tighter to the ones you managed to get.
As a native English speaker I can confidently say he has a better command on the way in college and much more advanced vocabulary and some people that speak it as a first language
Yeah, and as for me, English isn’t my fits that language too, but his speech is quite more understandable than speech of native English-speakers. That’s nice for such a long video-essay.
Man, that build-up to the Reichstag sequence wasn't a hallmark of visual storytelling, but it just felt so emotional. "Heart of the Reich" felt like a desperate tooth-and-nail fight for every yard of ground, a feeling that no other CoD game could even replicate. BlOps' city levels couldn't do the same as hard as they tried, and even the Washington DC setting of MW2 with all its sentiment didn't match the atmosphere. WaW rocked.
@@MarioTheLiopleurodon That music wasn't very anti-war just anti-Vietnam war, it was overtly anti-war but written by people with no understanding of war. It was political and ideological, superficial. WAW is anti-war in a visceral and apolitical way, transcending any single conflict or era, it exposes the very core issues with war; its complex brutality and the indiscriminate suffering and destruction it brings. It doesn't tell you to hate war, doesn't push an agenda, it just shows you as best it can what war is like and forces the audience to decide how to feel about it. That is anti-war, it has a power some hippy nonsense about peace and love will never have.
"Carnage and slaughterhouse seem too specific, and don't possess the implicational scale. Tragedy is too poetic, with its desperate reliance on catharsis. Darkness is truly the most concrete and vaguest term at the same time to describe this horror. The extent of the savagery. The scale of its madness. The very light of hell." One of many *masterful and profound* passages in this video.
Personally, I thought the guitar elements were meant to bridge between the times of the event and the viewer, to give a sense that, despite the potentially archaic appearance of the war, it was very modern. Further, the harsh and discordant instrumentation conveyed the cacophony of war as a mess of ideals clashing, rather than some cleaner concept of a battle. The Russian music early on contains a motif of a balalaika being strummed. The heavy rock slowly replaces it, initially the same tune as the balalaika before it, but repetitive strumming takes it's place with occasional simple variations, the corruption of the original theme. By the time the tide has turned, the gentle balalaika rarely makes an appearance, and the other traditional Russian and classical instrumentation mostly follows the more guttural guitar. The guitar in the American music only follows the American themes, putting it in greater contrast with the more traditional Japanese instrumentation which are often overlapping in the tracks, representative of the difference in philosophies of technological utilization.
I one hundred percent agree, there’s a reason they put metal in the soundtrack aside from it just being a very Treyarch thing, it shows the clash of the western metal music and the traditional Japanese music
Every time I hear it, especially in the second to last mission I always think, “Wow you would not think electric guitar works in WWII, but damn it’s powerful.”
@@weehoo2 right now I’m arguing with Face full of eyes about that, he doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of it being Call of Duty and being action packed yet still having a good sense of realism
I had a grandfather who was drafted into the 70th Infantry division in 1943. Known by nickname as "The Trailblazers". Rifle in hand, and a ragtag group of light and heavy armor providing constant support. His division fought through the carnage of South Saarbrücken, all the way to an ashen and broken Berlin. He was fortunate enough to bring a camera along to take photographs. I was born long after he passed away in the late 1980s. But he left behind a scrapbook loaded with his photos and entries of the war, even his old uniform patches. Polaroids depicting fields and semi-urban landscapes that had been shelled into oblivion. But amidst all the trinkets, I found some rather interesting photographs. Shock overwhelmed me when I realized they were German. There were five of them in total, possibly given to him by Wehrmacht POWs. Though it's hard to know that for certain, as his cursive was sub par and faded from decades of being stored in a musty basement. Most of the images were of shenanigans outside of the fight. Wehrmacht soldiers without kits smoking cigarettes, and enjoying the temporary peace. However. one of the pictures will be stuck in my mind until the grave. It's a picture of a Sturmgeschütz III tank destroyer with a short 75mm gun, parked in an open grassy hillside. In front of it, stands a crew of three tankers that look like they've been sent through a paper shredder. Their uniforms are raggedy and grease stained. The particularly dead faces they bear, almost come out of the Polaroid itself. Filling me with dread, and tiredness. Their Stug III had also seen better days. Scorch marks and dents for days, it was far from factory new at the time the photo was taken. I can only guess how my grandfather obtained these. And at the time, I'm sure someone would call him a sympathizer for keeping such things from being lost. But it seems his point of view regarding the war, was one of victory against the enemy. And also sympathy for those who were crushed by it. The German tankers I saw in the photo are absolutely long gone. Burnt alive in the Steel machine that they were forced to call home. Or perhaps pumped full of lead and cast into a mass grave. I don't know their names, or their lives before the carnage. How such a catastrophic event simply erased them from history. That alone, brings me to hope that such a war never happens again. But I'd be a fool to disregard basic human instinct.
These photos need to be digitized and archived online ASAP. There will only be less physical reminders of the war as time goes on, and these will be the only reminder that these events ever happened to these individuals. They are long dead, most likely anyone that was alive to hear their stories are dead too, and they live on only in the memories of us, who see these young men and remember their faces. We know them beyond just a mere statistic in Wehrmacht numbers. Soldier so-and-so assigned such-and-such men for production number whatever tank. Instead, they are captured forever in a single moment on the German countryside, unaware of where they will be in a year's time, if they'll be alive, and who will remember them if they're not.
@Angel Balanzar I mean, Blops 2 took place because a man's little sister was killed by a grenade and you have to rescue Woods from a shipping container filled with dead bodies from African militia troops right after you help a warlord who lets a man burn alive inside an APC. Pretty serious topics in just the first few missions of Black Ops 2, but sure, cartoonish.
@@sporter527That one is just an obscure and archaic synonym for "expert" lol. God knows why the writers used it, probably knew no one would get it and thought it'd be funny
As an informative video game, this title delivers what Elem Klimov's "Come and See" (1985) managed to describe as a poetic movie. It just leaves no room to grasp for you. You have to think about every death and movement in your own head.
@@cinemaspire7258 idk in my experience it's often overlooked and whenever there's a list of top tier CoDs nobody puts it in the top 10 games, for me it's probably the best cod
"It's not that you shouldn't fight them even more. Its not that they don't deserve death when standing to protect such vile visions of the future. But when they scream in agony, they speak the most human of languages." 💯💯💯
From someone who values aesthetics over anything in games, I gotta say, the attention to the smallest details you pointed out surprised me. Well done, video quality is super.
Something about being in the reichstag and fighting the nazis while der koniggratzer is playing quietly in the background and a german soldier is giving a speech it's a weird feeling i can't describe
It's eerie and it makes you sad and depressed when you entered those maps on empty servers. That's why I loved WaW and the Original black ops. Those games managed to capture the depressing nature of war. If you ever entered those maps on an empty server you would feel as if the ghosts of those slain solders were always staring. It didn't help that if you would stay for a long time on those empty servers you would hear literal voices, screams, moans, random radio static and you would swear you would see demonic things in the distance. The maps were full of blood, death and destruction, which captured perfectly what war was. I always felt that black ops 2 was the true decline of Call of Duty. The game just looked goofy. It was too colorful and it felt as if it was marketed for children. It didn't help that at the end of the game there was a dance party for all the characters of the series.
@@AsiaMinor12 WAW was a masterpiece the maps felt depressing and creepy in a way, was really disappointed with WW2 it was still fun for me but hopefully this years ww2 game is something but i doubt it because of SJW'S because once again they trust us with the usage of automatic weapons but not history and how brutal ww2 was, waw was just scratching the surface
I think one of the most horrifying animations has to be the one shown when you burst someone's chest open and they're left on the ground, trying to hold their intestines in while breathing their last breaths.
Honestly, I've always found the guitar riffs in the soundtrack to be very fitting. It's still a modern retelling of the war and I think they really add to the gritty feeling
Plus it helps sell that unnatural vibe to the "war horror" aspects of the game. The Pacific campaign sounds frantic and chaotic while the Eastern campaign is mangled and depressing. Black ops did something similar by using all of the above in order to help capture the dark and ambiguous world of soldiers fighting a war that wouldn't make it in the history books during a time period where ideology and private interests blurred the line between right and wrong.
"..the war is an unprecedently destructive event, sweeping away human lives in its blindness.." Holy shit, i love this quote! TH-cam Algorithm please do your magic and give this lad more subs!
Oh yeah, the king is back and covering the most overlooked CoD game out there. The choices made by Treyarch for World at War are unmatched not only by CoD standards, but also by the FPS genre as a whole. There are many games that attempt to show the raw brutality of war, ranging from Far Cry 2 & Spec Ops: The Line to This War of Mine and Valiant Hearts. However, among all these shades of grey morality, i personally believe WaW stands out in a very different way from the rest. You often see World War 1 being approached by this bleak, raw look, while World War 2 is bathed in the direct or indirect light of heroism. And, while WaW still has some resemblance to this mentality with the soviet campaign, it's easy to see that what fuels Reznov, Petrenko and the Red Army is not the call of duty-- it's the desire for vengeance. I'll love to see what you have to say about this game!
My great uncle serves as a signalman on a U.S destroyer during the Normandy Landings. Their destroyer was tasked with recovering bodies that washed out to sea. I can't even imagine what that must have felt like to find body after body floating in ocean. Even now, he still doesn't talk about it.
What a beautiful essay you have put together for this game. As a kid, I was always interested in history, watching documentaries , reading a textbook or even sometimes watching a movie with my grandpa. I had played videogames such as COD2, BF1943, Medal of Honor, which always portrayed war as this heroic struggle that you mention, so World at War as the interactive medium it is as a videogame changed my perspective; that destruction, suffering and death wasn't just black and white footage of soldiers fighting, those pictures in books of people starving and hurt weren't just something that happened a long time ago to persons I didn't know, it was something horrible that really happened. Replaying the game as a teenager and adult really made me notice of these themes you talk about, with newfound apreciation. Thank you for the video!
I think the real reason why the Pacific theatre was chosen other than gameplay was for both theaters to show war at its worst. The Americans and Japanese, Soviets and Germans despised each other more than any other faction in WW2. It makes sense for WaW to have us play as U.S. Marines and Red Army Soldiers in 1944-45 at some of the darkest days of the war. From a U.S. Marine mocking a Japanese officer while shooting him repeatedly before finishing him off with a headshot to a Soviet shooting a German P.O.W. at point blank range.
A tiny detail I noticed at 50:31 - the soldier in this shot has a Golden Party Badge on his tie, those were only rewarded to a little over 20,000 men IRL. In-game this means he was a member of the NSDAP in 1933 and fought all the way through the war only to die alone in the Reichstag.
You sir, are an artist storyteller, an aesthet and a scholar. I wholeheartedly thank you for this erudite take on the videogames. This one was touching and it moved me. My condolences.
I’ve wanted to hear someone talk about how macabre this game was since the day it came out. This wasn’t like any CoD game that came before, it was a straight up horror game. I like that a lot of the darkness carried over to the first Black Ops.
1:03:19 That ghostly howl in this soundtrack will always stick with me. Just as the soundtrack that plays in the asylum will, where you can hear a faint scream of a woman echo off in the distance. It makes the world feel lived in and adds history to the area. It makes you instantly feel like war wasn't the worst thing to happen in that place. Like the atrocities that happened in that asylum before and during the Nazi's control of it were so horrifying it took the occupants misery and pain, then stained it into the very walls of the building. That scream bellows as If the torture was so horrifying that the collective pain released there was so powerful it became the darkness that fills every shadow in the building, only to be let out through the asylums destruction. As if the patients were so horribley tortured that there souls were trapped in the complex, requiring an equally horrific event, such as war tearing the building apart, to release them like a fly trapped in a glass bottle that had just been broken. I'd also like to say that I'm both very happy I found your channel and very sorry for your loss.
I've revisited the older CoD games recently and today I've finished World at War Throughout the campaign, all I could think back to was this video and how much I appreciate it and the game even more for it Suffice to say, I had to give it a rewatch
Two weeks ago my grandfather passed away due to Covid at the age of 88 years. I listened to so many stories from his youth days as a teenager in germany and his experiences in the war, as a young observer. At Christmas, when I was visiting my family I had the feeling that this could possibly be the last time I would talk to him and see him. When I drove away after new years I tried to remember as many stories from him as possible... but still thought that there were so many more I never knew about. It is sad that he is gone now and it is even more sad that I and everyone else from my family couldn't be by his side in his dying hours due to covid-regulations. I wonder what his last thoughts and feelings were. I felt that very much in the end, when you talked about your Grandfather that passed away. Thank you for this amazing video.
I finished that game maybe 4 or 5 times when I was younger, and even than it was kinda hard to watch how your enemy suffers, especially when they are dismembered or lit on fire, almost all the time I finished them with a bullet to the head, because I thought it was more merciful. And now your video just makes me almost cry because of how violent and gruesome those scenes are and how you inspect them
WaW really gave me a true look into how WW2 was. Especially thinking about how my grandpa did a ritual on a beach and used a raygun to storm the fronts. Honestly it’s a flawless game and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone that I talk to about games to play.
"But on a certain level WW2 was a clash of ideologies that asserted to be the final solution to the everlasting problem of the human future and ,what more, humanity's destiny itself. But the Nazi ideology had defined the groups of people that deserve or have the right to live and this ultimately made it a fight for the human as a unit of society. The carrier of prosperity and happiness promised by the ideology." Another masterful passage in this video.
To any still wondering how to get each of Chernov's quotes on Downfall here is a quick tutorial "Good" Quote Step one: In Vendetta, when you reach the sniping position to kill general Amsel, give away your position before he leaves his building, Reznov will say something like "You idiot! they will still die and they know our position!" Step two: In Their Land, Their Blood don't kill the germans that are bleeding inside the house on the beginning of the level Step three: In Eviction mercy-kill the soldiers surrendering on the metro (Just don't kill them with molotovs) "Neutral" Quote Do just one of the steps above "Bad" Quote Step one: Don't give away your position in Vendetta while waiting Amsel to leave his building Step two: Kill the germans that are bleeding on the start of Their Land, Their Blood Step Three: Let the surrendering germans get burned by your comrades in Eviction
I always liked his neutral quote more then the rest, it works so well for the story of the characters, while Reznov is wrath and Chernov is mercy, petrenko is somewhere in between
The most unapologetic portrayal of WW2 released so far. Amongst the occasional recognition of heroism, World at War breathed life into the universal predicament of war itself that ultimately transcends flag and language, a credo we all agree upon but seem to get comparatively very little of in later titles: War is *Hell.* Very excited to see this video!
I mean the trailer that ended with the American soldier sweeping with a flamethrower to reveal the title card was enough to tell me the game wasn't holding back, pretty sure I was only 11 when the game came out so besides SPR, this was the most visceral depiction of the war that I'd experienced up to that point
Red Orchestra comes pretty close when it is not up to scripted events to tell a story, but the same gore filled battlefield on a more "authentic" (to not use "realistic") gameplay base in a multiplayer match. The death animations there ... well, they are on another level, some are as drawn out as 40 seconds if I recall correctly. Imagine taking over a foxhole in close combat and you get pinned down there. You proceed to spend nearly a full minute ducking for cover while and hearing the enemy soldier (controlled by another player up to few seconds ago) just gargle blood or frantically call for his mother in his native language mere meters away from you.
Your final message of your grandfather passing and his memories he had carried with him fading away, and how you wish you couldve stayed and heard more to retain them, drove me to make the decision to fly out to see my own this very winter break. I need to hear these memories and feel his humanity before he inevitably passes as we all do. Never think your videos dont have impact, as your writing and storytelling always will. The importance of these videos to convey thoughts are very well shown, just as important as the memories that we all carry do. So thank you for this.
My great grandfather never did tell us about the war. Or if he did, I was either too young to remember, or the memories are lost. He was a Marine. He fought in the Pacific Theater of WW2, I don't know anything about what he did other than that he was sniper - according to my father - and his Springfield M1903 is somewhere with my distant family out west. I never got to see him much. The last of my great grandparents that I've saw was my great grandmother on the day of his funeral about 5 years back. Sadly she had passed away just 2 short years later, and none of my family had known about it until we saw the obituaries. If there is a heaven... may they both be up there, having the best time that anyone could have.
This game was my childhood, and you making a full on documentary about this game’s true meaning is truly amazing. This is one of the best videos I’ve ever watched. The amount of effort put into this video is phenomenal. Thank you so much. Good luck with all your future uploads!
Your interpretation of this game is great and every teacher would be proud of it. I played that game at the age of ~13-14 (yes I had the permission from my parents) and back then I was already interested in military history, but that game fired my interest of WW2 to the max until today. Back when, after i played it a couple of times, I started to gather Storys from my Family of the time. As German it was already a strange feeling in my stomach to see the execution of POWs, although I had no problem killing fighting forces. But one thing changed after my grandfather told me his Story: 1944 he got drafted and after his "training" he got assigned to the Volkssturm. He was one who had to defend Berlin, at the age of 16. In the battle of Berlin he got lucky, that the Soviets saw, they there facing only children, so they yelled to them:" The war is over, throw your guns away and go home!" So he did how they told him. Then he approached them to pass them by, one of the Soldiers put his hand on his Shoulder and gave him some food (he was really skinny at that time). After that story the missions in Berlin had for me a extra dark feeling. I dont know why, but I had always the feeling behind the next corner, building or street he could stand there. Everytime in the scene of three Soldiers executing the german in the apartment, that had could be him and then I wouldn't sit here. That story changed my personal experience of the game and that was just one Story from one of my ancestors. Sorry that my English is far from perfect, but I hope the message still finds it's way.
No, your delivery was perfect and the story was beautiful, sometimes I wish we had a game exactly like this that depicted the perspective from the Germans, and in the words of Face full of eyes himself, to depict the full complexity of their psychology.
The entire feeling of this video is so different compared to the other ones that I have seen from you, with raw emotion paired with a foreign voice talking about horrors incomprehensible. I can’t wait to see what other pieces of excellence you create
@@damndanielrealass8004 All the more reason his analysis would be good to have. I'd love to see a video on that game that isn't just jerking it off like everyone else has.
I don’t understand why everyone is saying spec ops the line, the only scene that really showed the horrors of war was the white phosphorus scene. The rest of the game was mediocre
That's one of the things that scares the shit out of me. My experiences and memories being forgotten along with myself. Just the fear that I know I will be forgotten is just wild.
My great grandfather who had immigrated from Yugoslavia served in the Us army or marines in ww2, I still don’t know which. He fought in the pacific front, I never got to meet him but I remember everything I was told about him by my grandma before she died. The most interesting story to me was his last day in the war. She always emphasized that he had no ammo left except for in his pistol. Anyway with his back turned a Japanese solider stabbed him in the right shoulder with his bayonet. My grand father reached for his pistol which was still easy to reach do to his left handed ness and shot three times, twice in his chest and once in his head. I remember being so enamored by this man I had never met that I always re-enacted this moment when I played. I remember as playing call of duty 3 as a child and while it was ending. I shot all my bullets so i too would leave the battlefield with no ammo. I don’t even know his name, it’s been so long since my grandma died, I was maybe 8 or 9. But that story always stuck with me, and I’m sure it will never leave me.
similarly, my grandfather fought in the war. as part of the 82nd airborne, he was one of the first dozen americans to land on the european mainland, parachuting into france the night before D-Day. He fought in nearly every major battle on the way to berlin, including operation market garden. when it came to speaking of the war, he had no romanticism of it. he barely spoke about it, except with other veterans. he didn't care about his bronze stars or purple hearts. he was proud of his medal of good conduct, the only award that involved no bloodshed. when he returned to texas, still barely more than a teenager, haunted by the memory of killing boys younger than himself, one one occasion with a knife (as is so glorified in video games), of delivering rations to the starving children in the newly liberated camps, he brought all of this memory home to texas. at the first parade for veterans he attended, he was arrested for loitering: a mexican in the white side of town. so it was on the european front: the desegregated units like his, full of young brown draftees, and like the tank divisions his brothers served in, did the heavy fighting, and were then followed by the whites only divisions with officers and enlisted men. On one day, while standing guard at a meeting of generals, the legendary George S. Patton interrupted his work to personally spit on my grandfather and call him a wetback. this is the america my grandfather fought for and returned home to. only later was he fashioned into a war hero, when it became politically expedient to do so. it's an image he indulged, for the sake of his comrades and his family, but never one that he fed into. he was knighted twice, by france and by norway, before ever being permitted medical funds from the VA to get a bullet removed from his shoulder. he carried that bullet for nearly 60 years, for the entire life of his children and grandchildren, being stopped at every metal detector he passed. he spoke rarely of the war, only late at night over a cup of black coffee. he slept 4 hours at a time, in short shifts in the early morning and the mid afternoon, and made sure that his children would enjoy the privilege of a middle school, high school, and college education- something which was impossible for him in Jim Crow texas. you could say that he saved the western world, but the western word saved nothing for him, and today, we still live in the glorified shadow of that war between imperialist powers, in which the children of the colonies were the most valuable resource in what was- ultimately- only another pathetic squabble between fading european empires, just another 7 years war, this time played out with industrial machinery and million man armies. he kept his ribbon of good conduct on his person until the day he died, just as pristinely golden as the day it was bestowed to him. he was buried in it, at a ceremony given in Latin, Spanish, English, and Tewa. May his memory outlive the nation he fought for.
that's a sad story, man. that part about being stopped at metal detectors for years after the war is particularly bizzare. and being arrested at a veterans parade by someone who perhaps wasn't even in the war, that's just horrible. i can't even imagine how difficult it must have been for your grandpa to endure all those injustices and discriminations after witnessing the horrors of war in europe. thank you for sharing this story. may your grandpa rest in peace.
He sure was a great man. My great grandma lived trough the Spanish civil war and had to suffer the horrors of it, where the nations that would later fight each other used Spain as a playground for the new machinery. She escaped to France where they were forced into concentration camps. Wish she lived longer to tell me her stories. Your grandfather fought for the freedom of people like my great-grandmother. It’s our job now to preach your grandfather message instead of idolizing meaningless hatred and violence, don’t let the wrong surrounding you tint your heart black, friend.
To me, one of the greatest and most immersive design choices WaW made was to not include in game cutscenes. All cutscenes in the game are made in between missions in the load screen. There are so many little things that happen in game that the player could miss if they arent looking at them. They arent cut scenes, and they arent triggered events. They happen whether you are witnessing them or not. It gives the player the feeling that the war is going on all around them, whether you are actively participating or not. Its so simple and yet such an incredible detail that needs to be brought back. Nowadays, nearly every important event in a game HAS to be a cutscene. It just destroys immersion and pace. Such a shame that this has become the industry norm
To me it's the lack of any subtitles for the enemy, you never know what they are saying, they are strangers to you yet here you both are forced to kill each other
Now I honestly wish I had asked my great grandfather more about life during the war. He was a steel mill worker in northern ohio if I remember right. He would eventually go on and serve in the Marine Corps during the years of 50-53 in Korea. Then again, I was less than 12 when he died of brain cancer. Should someone read this, do gather the thoughts of those willing to speak about their experiences of such conflicts whenever possible. My still alive grandfather served 1 tour in a base near Khe Sahn, and he tends to not discuss it. He most likely learned the hard way what war is. I can see it in his eyes when he does discuss the conflict.
Something that I myself noticed from a recent playthrough of the "Eviction" level, I noticed that the German soldier actually closes his eyes and clenches his teeth right before he's shot. It's a very human response, and it made it real to me.
![แฟนแนวใด๋ - ยูริ โตเกียวมิวสิค [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4_XVMuhhbsU/mqdefault.jpg)
![แกล้งสุ่มได้ผล KITSUNE ผู้เล่นใหม่ร้องขอผลกันระงม [Blox Fruits]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/C-32vx-vpJE/mqdefault.jpg)
Timestamps:
1. Adjusting to the Darkness - 0:00
2. Video game as an experience of war - 2:46
3. Themes - 6:53
4. Setting - 10:34
4.1. Locations - 15:11
4.2. Berlin - 17:43
5. Introduction to war - 19:30
6. Mission introductions - 24:04
6.1. Semper Fi - 24:54
6.2. Little Resistance - 27:00
6.3. Vendetta - 28:24
6.4. Their Land Their Blood - 29:39
6.5. Eviction - 31:03
6.6. Breaking Point - 31:56
6.7. Heart of the Reich - 32:31
6.8. Downfall - 33:15
7. Scripting the war - 33:55
8. Mechanics of brutality - 38:52
8.1. Gore - 39:55
8.1.1. Humanizing the enemy - 45:23
8.2. Fire - 47:49
8.3. Last stand and dying animations - 49:07
8.4. War of a different kind - 50:38
9. The hands that won - 52:20
10. The look of war - art style - 54:56
10.1. Colors - 55:45
10.2. Ash, Embers - 56:48
10.3. Fire as lighting - 57:40
10.4. Blinding sun - 58:25
11. Sounds of war - 59:34
12. Soundtrack to war - 1:00:28
13. Mercy at the heart of cruelty - 1:04:14
14. Roebuck's melancholic stoicism - 1:07:54
15. Aesthetic essence - 1:09:15
16. Legacy - 1:13:12
17. A living memory and the next best thing - 1:15:41
I wish, someone like you would look into the Suffering games... So much can be said about it and it's themes
As a young boy, having been suspected of (and eventually diagnosed as) having autism/asperger's...
This game and many interpretations of it's campaign helped me to truly accept how evil and indifferent life itself can and will be.
Treyarch went from RTCW, to making me feel disturbed when I blasted a german with a shotgun. I've been looking for an FPS anywhere near as brutal and visceral as this, and only One Unit Whole Blood has even been a close second. Perhaps the strengths of both titles could make a penultimate show and display of evil in a shooter?
@@emulation2369 I have been diagnosed with adhd as well and this game is what got me in to ww2. Even though it has been 12 years since it came out im still longing for a remaster. It was an honor to play as people who fought for good at the benefit of all people and those who had died just to be forgotten. This games ending was especially good because it showed you didn't need a cliché bad guy but just the symbolic feeling of tearing down the evil that was nazi Germany and its allies was the best feeling. I still play the games ending to this day. Maybe I'm biased because i had a great uncle who fought in ww2 but the point still stands. This is one of the greatest world war 2 shooters of all time.
Do some videos on Metal gear if you could
If you want dark videogames pushing the artform forward, I recoment Spec Ops: The Line.
I hate that I’ll never experience that genuine fear and confusion of completing campaign and being sent to zombies for the first time again.
I was too young to remember :^(
I was on kino on the Wii of black ops 1, I played with my mom and got jump scared so much times by round 4 when the zombies would sneak up behind you, then dogs came and I was like WHAT THE FUCK!then died, only recently have i gotten to round 100 on kino, like 2 years ago maybe now
It was truly a terrifying experience
I quitted on round 2
I feel ya man. I was 11. I remember being excited when the cutscene started, thinking there was a little more game. Then got scared by the strange way, that man was running towards the screen. When the title card "Nazi Zombies" Came, I turned off my ps3. Later turned out to be some of the most fun i've had in a video game.
@@casperfrederiksen2174 Why the fuck did you play a mature game when you were 11?
"It trusts the audience with the power of an automatic weapon, but it doubts their capacity to handle history."
So well said!
Honestly i just think they think we don't care thats why they don't do it in future cod games
@@subzu2733 It sells either way, so why should they? (From their perspective)
@@nobleradical2158 reason why people like modern warfare and black ops so much is because how over the top the campaign was i really done see a problem here
@@nobleradical2158 did modern warfare and black ops show the brutalitys of war of course not but if i wanted something showing the brutality of war i would watch a documentary not play a game
@@subzu2733 but a game is waaaaay better at giving someone the, as face full of eyes puts it, aesthetic experience of something. The game makes each interaction personalized, and reflect on your feelings.
"You actually begin the last US mission with no ammo, that's hilarious"
"The ammo you need NOW, is on the NEXT Supply Drop"
Dunno why but that mission always rings this quote in my head
Because *The bomb has been planted on our Ammo Supply*
It affected Roebuck and his Squad.
u can just use the enemy weapons tho
Wait, what? I didn’t know this.
The evident lack of ammo is probably the only thing that would kill Americans internally, besides ammo shortage.
Me before watching the video expecting that it would just bring up the positives of the game that hundreds have done already: "No one is going to watch this."
Me after watching the video realizing how unique it is to other World at War videos: "Someone should watch this..."
Face Full of Eyes, NOOOO!
Dude I hate how this guys videos get barely any views for the amount of effort he puts into these
@@chev3569 Oh yes, some hundred thousand views per video isn't really that much 😉
It is a relatively young channel, it needs time to grow. Maybe the new Far Cry 6 and the magical YT-algorithm will bring some newcomers over here.
The same expression that Reznov shows to Chernov
“When they scream in agony they speak most human of languages...”
Oh my god. Your videos have a lot of top-tier quotes it scares me 😳
Another one,
"Before man was, war waited for him"
what a one-liner
With that quote, it does seem like the only language in war is screams
@@Ghosty77HD Uh oh, did FFoE read Blood Meridian?
@@Ghosty77HD Sounds just like those in-game quotes you read after you die
@@Zacatito mostly because it is
Now this is the turning point where World at War turns from an underrated gem into a classic shooter.
It always was
For the longest time this was the CoD game I thought when I hear Call of Duty
I finished a Veteran playthrough a few years ago
When I first got a PS3 in 2010, I got black ops and played the shit out of it for several months. I got World at War after that and it was and still is my favorite war-themed shooter of all time, it was actually difficult to play blops after getting CoD 5. The atmosphere in world at war just captivated me from the beginning. As soon as I got my first PC I bought it again on steam lol and damn is it even more fun on PC, with all the zombies and campaign mods (and the MP40 isn't overpowered as fuck in PC multiplayer which is a plus).
I haven't bought a new CoD since black ops 2 and I'm glad for that. Transit ruined my interest in zombies and I honestly just wasn't a fan of the direction the series was going in. Honestly WaW might have the most realistic campaign of any call of duty
Much like Fallout New Vegas' recent Spotlight.
@@partialbullet2215 Semper Fi my friend. XD
@@partialbullet2215 World at War is the tragic CoD game that both solidified my love of the series, and set my standards for all subsequent games far higher than they could ever meet. I'd casually enjoyed the previous games; I fell in love with World at War. It was the definitive CoD. Unfortunately, it still is, years later, after many, many disappointments since.
If “Military Horror” was a video game genre, it’d look something like this game.
Honestly, from what I've seen and heard, Spec Ops: The Line seems better. Maybe a bit more psychological, but I've played WaW. Some of the shit in Spec Ops is just... Dark.
Metal gear to some extent too
My favorite track "Fight Parliament" i think best utilizes the grungy instruments. It uses the guitars to sound like gunfire & bombers, the drums like artillery. To me it feels like the most immersive track in the game.
@@Sernival Metal Gear series,WAW,Spec Ops are military horror games on philosophy,soldiers and the other many things.
if you want miltary horror check out the seminal film COME AND SEE
"Eviction" The best mission in the game that summarize the whole horror in the game
ayy it's you
This time it will be their land their blood
@@xxillusivemanxx1046 now it truly is
My favorite was ring of steel mainly for the commisar's speech screaming "CITIZENS OF BERLIN! A RING OF STEEL SURROUNDS YOUR ROTTEN CITY! ABANDON YOUR POSTS! ABANDON YOUR HOMES! ABANDON ALL HOPE!" fucking chilling
Little resistance is the most iconic most ww2 games dont cover the pacific let alone the bloodbath of Peleliu
You’re finale speech about your grandparents rings true to me. When the movie Dunkirk came out I went to the nearest theater to see it. Next to me sat an old man in his 90’s with his wife watching the movie, and he wore a hat that said “World War 2 veteran”. I spoke with him after the movie, and he explained to me how he read about Dunkirk in the papers as a teen, then later joined the Navy to fight in the pacific. That man might not even be alive anymore, but his story is through me.
Cool.
Amazing story! I love talking to all veterans. I was at a car show last week and spoke to many Vietnam veterans. It's such an honor to speak with them and shake their hands!
Cool.
those who die that we having meaningful interactions with - they survive through us by remaining in us like our blood. Never forget this man's stories.
Fuck... that's awesome!
I played the game in English when I didn't understand it. All the ambushes, calls for help, screams of agony and pleas for mercy felt more visceral to me. I didn't understand them but I knew what they meant. The fucking music made it all the more atmospheric and haunting.
"When they scream in agony they speak the most human of languages" in full effect.
when it comes to human suffering, i't is universal
When Reznov tells Chernov “No one will read this!” Chernov’s face of despair haunted me as a kid after he was killed:(
"Somebody should read this"
@@benjaminskytoker1155 :(
Even though he was a Soviet in Berlin, I still felt really sorry for him
Doesn't Reznov himself read from Chernov's diary in a later mission?
@@J-BiRTH yes and it changes depending on how you act
This is truly a" once in a generation" game. It was impactful when it first hit the market, and still holds up in terms of gameplay and aesthetic many years later. World at War was a product of the Call of Duty golden age and it shows. They really don't make 'em like they used to.
Battlefield 5 pretty much confirms that WaW was the best WW2 fps shooter game ever.
Sadly we will never see a game like this anymore.
Not just that but it’s still one of the best looking cod games from that era! That lighting hides its age well
In the US Army, at least, there is a concept that soldiers simply refer to as "the Shit". The Shit is not mere combat, soldiers know how to deal with combat. Rather, being in the Shit is to be in a place where the usual playbook isn't working, where command has even less clue than usual of what's going on, where the "quick" reaction force is an hour away, and the fear of death comes not from a stray bullet, but instead the distinct impression that the air is filled with more lead than oxygen.
To me, World at War is a recreation of how people remember the Shit. It's not a true-to-life depiction of war, both via its nature as a game and by its stylistic choices, but these inaccuracies of literal reality instead mirror the fallibility and selectivity of human memory; a highlight reel of carnage, the things that refused to be forgotten with age, churned by restless dreams into something even worse than the truth.
I think it does a good job of portraying the absolute chaos of it, how even the best "plan" can change in a moment because unforseen forces both intentional and accidental.
When my grandfather was in the war they where intent on setting up a position to stay for the next 3 to 4 months. They spent 2 weeks setting it up than had to leave immediately because the line collapsed to behind them
@@therideneverends1697 its like seeing ww2 through the mind of a soldier
The Many innaccuracys are the memory not remembering due to ptsd
@@hankjwimbleton6598 That’s very true it’s like seeing it through their mind and their memory but emphasis on memories. Each of us can remember the same event but very differently and ptsd definitely plays a role in how some things are exaggerated.
The first Black Ops game switched to dream like flashbacks that made the game way less realistic
I think this is an incredible take on this game to add another layer to its utter carnage.
Embrace the suck, because the suck isn’t going anywhere.
27:15
"In this game daylight only reveals more darkness, night at least obscures it"
Holy fuck..
Your statement is too woke dude
I swear this guy makes the most perfect quotes, all for one line out of 100 more in a video, that's true dedication
thats because of the eye rape bloom effect
Thts deep
I will never stop telling everyone how good of a experience WaW is.
They don't listen but we'll keep saying it. And that's how it'll always be
Yeah I had someone say to me that modern warfare was the darkest cod, and then I told them waw was darker for these reasons, they said "but most of the main character die" he was a dumb fuck
@@hazard4349 two different games portraying two different kinds of war. Comparing them doesn’t make much sense to me
We're still playing it on Xbox, come, join us again, comrade!
You know I think the absolute number 1 thing that makes this game so different, so good, so immersive is YOU ARE ACTUALLY *JUST A SOLDIER*. You know your own name and you know your squad mates but you are fighting in a an actual living war against actual living people who are just on the edge of being your friend. There is absolutely no bad guy, there's no ultimate villain, there is no one to hate specifically. You assassinate one person through the whole campaign, and it isn't fucking Hitler himself, it isn't some famous General (that I know of), it is just another high ranking German (I presume) who you hate all more than the other you thoughtlessly rip apart. The ultimate enemy is the Reich itself, an embodiment of ideology, a hive mind. You can't just shoot one person and it's over. Because it is war, real war, true war, and this is something all modern CODs don't have. I personally don't think it's a bad thing, COD is about story, it's about being a bad ass with bad ass squad mates and doing bad ass things. If you want a war game, you play something else. None the less, I couldn't be happier WaW exists. Thanks for coming to my BEDtalk , I'm sleepy, goodnight.
Have you played the second ever COD? Almost all of these can be applied to it to.
@@esssss8415 no funny enough I've played COD 1, the DLC to COD 1, and the COD 3 port for the Wii but not COD 2 yet lol
@@hermishmer I would definitely recommend.
@@esssss8415 I'll make sure to check it out
That's how CoD was, you are one man, not a one man army. Cod 1-WaW was that, but since mw2 they strayed away from their roots.
Highly recommend both Raycevick video on cod.
"World at War" did something that games didn't really do at that time:
it showed you all the bad parts of World War 2... and dared to give us the choice to look away.
WaW felt like the embodiment of that phrase "shooters are inherently anti-war". I came into the game after having played many games that came out after it and the game truly made me realize the disgusting reality of true warfare. I didn't feel like some badass that singlehandedly took down the enemy. I felt like I went through a meat grinder and was just happy to have made it out alive. I think it is because of games like this that I ended up becoming obsessed with history, I started realizing just how primordial human suffering is, how we are only in this era of luxury via the suffering of millions. Our comfort is built upon a throne of skulls. It is in realizing this that I truly grasped the fortune I was blessed with, no matter how bad the world gets I acknowledge that prosperity is inherently fleeting so I should never expect the status quo to continue. I have reached a kind of zen state in the last year, humanity will always be presented with situations in which we suffer, but we trudge on, every moment of happiness will equally give way to moments of abject sorrow, and the key to coping with all of this is to learn to appreciate it. You cherish your good memories and learn from the bad ones.
Good take!
Cherish the good, learn from the bad, and perhaps most importantly: sweep your sins under the rug.
I was relatively new to war shooters at the time (started with CoD4 one year prior) and WaW had me stop and look at a dead German soldier, lamenting the good life both of us could have had.
well, you have an anime avatar, you can swear you are lucky enough to live under this timeline and not before were weak people were truly oppressed and vulnerable.
@@mariano98ify true I can definitely see that point. Though I wasn't exactly weak growing up. I was a scrapper from a young age, getting into wrestling early on and getting into fights all the time with neighbor kids and my cousins. Though I was bullied to high hell all through school rofl, they just never got physical because they knew better. I am happy that other people that weren't as violent as I was when I was younger get to have the freedom to like what they want in this day and age.
I love how the closing cinematic cutscene in the game doesn't even give you a sense of triumph or optimism, it just reminds you that this was a very real event in human history. Every time I see the words "60 million people died as a result of World War II", I get goosebumps and a chill up my spine. I didn't just finish a game, I finished a depiction of a horrendous conflict actual human beings had to endure.
I got that same feeling from the ending of the Prairie Fire DLC for ARMA 3. After romping through the Vietnam jungle the game plays the actual "Prairie Fire!" radio audio. It was a sobering reminder that all that action and fun was based off of actual events that actual humans went though.
Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but it is still only imitation. It can be easy to forget that it is just that sometimes, and that when it comes to our escapism we often stand on the shoulders of giants.
It's even worse in the fact that statement is an underestimate.
Around 15,000,000 more people died.
All of that just for zombies to boot up out of nowhere
That combined with the bell tolling in the background, then you see the words "It was *the most* destructive and deadly conflict in human history." Then the credits just roll and it leaves you sitting there. No parades, no victory laps, no happy cutscene. Just footage of the Enola Gay flying and a nuclear bomb exploding. I wish there were more experiences in video games like this, no overall narrative besides the matter-of-fact nature of war history.
Mao Zedong killed as much people as in WWII.
Please never private or delete this video man, this is too good of a video essay. I've wanted to do a video essay on how to properly portray war in video games, but this is so much better than I could do. Honestly if I was a teacher for history, I'd show my students this video man.
Amazing job man
It's so hard coming back to this video after Vanguard, Vanguard completely destroyed every hope of ever treating World War 2 with respect, it's now a plaything to tell fantastical stories, not a brutal reminder of how cruel humans can be.
@@thechugg4372 fr, these games could portray proper PTSD and how the truama could effect these ppl but they just make another skinpack for AOT n make another 500'000$
The most underrated CoD of that era!
Not really underrated, great, but not underrated
The game wasn't the most well received by fans because of genre fatigue back in 2008, but it was heavily praised by critics and players alike. It certainly is overlooked-- hell, even Treyarch themselves barely acknowledge the game-- but the game is nowhere near underrated.
Overlooked but not underrated
I remember at that time (when cod5 went out), we all wanted a modern warfare 2, not a throwback to WWII
Exactly! Everyone talks about mw2/bo2 non stop but nobody talks about waw
Just as I was abandoning hope, this man comes out with a 1hr 18min analysis of my first and favourite FPS ever.
Damn, i just remembered that this was indeed my first FPS! Well, not exactly as it was WaW: final fronts, and that's a way more classic cod game. But it's definitely my fav COD.
I remember playing this as a kid, being scared at what the officer did to the American troop, I was horrified. I'm glad I got to play it all the way, this cod is my favorite out of all of them
@@Zacatito yeah it’s nice being introduced to Japanese war crimes at a ripe age
@@dankovac1609 Final fronts sucked... sure I owned it and found it fun at the time but it was not a good game by any means, especially compared to the main title lol
@@BananaPhoPhilly yeah definitely. Still it embedded the setting and the soundtrack into me at a young age. And i did then play the original at like, age 11 so i was more hyped for it knowing tge setting
One detail I always loved was the reload animation for the BAR in Call of Duty 3. You can see the characters' hands trembling, and his hand slips off the magazine while trying to eject it. It was the first time I'd ever seen something like that.
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest
models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."
To me, the soundtrack is one of the absolute best pieces of the game, riffs included. Because the way they built up in the level, matching the build up of violence the further you get in it, it's like the embodiment of your brain shutting off to deal with the horror and disparity.
when sua launch
@@balintlados6801 you guys were asking "when launch" so we launchedand you arent happy with unfinished early launched gamefunny how it works
I love the way they made the riffs sound like a mg42
The end credit ost always gets me hype.
@@nativeswagho5213 End credits had a lot of the really good ones.
_"Moreover, the aesthetics of Stalingrad's ruin.. wait, what is that?"_ - *clinking of a thousand grenades*
The introduction to Downfall is one of the most powerful moments in video game history. For all Reznov's scolding and harshness towards Chernov, after his death he shows how he cares. At the beginning of storming the Reichstag Reznov is reading to you from Chernov's diary. This genuinely brings me to tears still frequently when I witness it.
27:52
"Out of the mitallic safety of the ship's womb, you are cast into the world that holds so many possible varietions of death."
That is simply beautiful
I also like that one
2008 really was a special year for video games huh..
Metal gear, cod, fallout, battlefield, killzone. Ya
@@dapeepingreaper6266 far cry 2, dead space, gta 4, left 4 dead, burnout paradise, penguins arena sedna's world..
@@dapeepingreaper6266 Killzone 2, which I think you are referring to, did not come until a year later in 2009.
But I agree 2008 and the late 2000s in general had a lot of good games, despite how much people complained about it being "the dark, edgy, brown and grey" era.
Speaking of which I would like to hear Face Full of Eyes talk about Killzone 2 since it follows a lot of the themes that WAW did as a dark gritty war game but with a hard sci-fi bent.
The 360 and Ps3 era is still my favorite after the ps2 era. So many creative ideas. Xbox one and ps4 era was really boring for some exceptions.
Kind of a bad take. Everything after 2007 suffered HEAVILY of post CoD4-itis for the next couple years, where everything had to become a shoed-in multiplayer sepia toned michael bay shooter, including the following games in this very series. Even THIS game suffered, it would have been more grand in scale and more clear in vision but Activision forced Treyarch into making it more like another CoD4 because it sold so well, see an entirely scrapped british campaign as well as the original plans for the multiplayer and see what we got in the end, which ended up being a RAPID rework before launch to be more like CoD4 multiplayer. Love or hate CoD4, it kinda ruined the entire gaming industry for a few years, but that's what influential, successful, and pivotal works kinda do, don't they. You could compare this turning point in gaming to something like the release of Skyrim and Minecraft in 2011 where everything had to become open world games with half-baked skill trees and crafting systems that they somehow think qualify as "sandbox" games.
WOW. Never have I ever felt this much dread, been at a constant unease and had my heart pumping with anticipation before, especially starting from the "Gore" segment all the way to the finish line. Just like the game, this is a really special video, there's quite nothing like it.
And what a video it was. The wait was more than worth it and I can tell that it's going to be a good time finding all the little details in the multiple binges that are bound to happen in the months to come.
thank you, glad you've liked it :)
"It is good that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it" - Robert E. Lee. I feel the fact WaW shows that statement rather than than says it, means the brutal dread and horror of warfare is much more remembered but importantly, not idealised. Especially in a generation fortunate enough to not have to experience it and so ironically tend to imitate it through FPSs for the visceral imagery and adrenaline hit. Phenomenal video. Subbed
And even so people destroy the statue of that man
@@martinjugolin2087bro if Mussolini had a good quote and you put a posthumous statue of him somewhere someone would still, rightfully, think youre a fascist. Yes we shouldn't glorify white supremacists, and the statues of robert e lee that people like to remove were not built in his time. They were built, later, to celebrate white supremacy.
@@martinjugolin2087that's because its funny
The fact that you could play the campaign split screen with a friend was absolutely epic. Also Shuri Castle burned down last year which sucks.
Its roebuck's revenge
My friends copy had a bug that didn't allow you to save and come back. So we stayed up all night to finish the game in one go! It felt so good when we finished.
1:05:30 I never realized Chernov throws the flag to the side for it to avoid being burned.
wow...
Haven't had such a woeful feelings since was watching documentaries about WW2 at school events. The main difference is that in Waw you don't feel "Ours were good, theirs were evil" type of thing. You see people in dificult circumstances fighting for their lives, and for lives of their close ones. No romanticization, no glorifying of murders, only the pain all the humanity went though. The pain that affected every family in some way. Personally lost a great grandfather in 1943 by Kiev, and was even named after him. Heard a lot of good things about him from my dad, and i know for sure a lot of people can tell similar stories about their close ones they may have lost too. Thank you once again for reminding us all about this great game, and about the legacy it wants us to remember!
This video is fantastic. Also, I am sorry for your loss, I know the feeling of wishing you had taken the time to hear more stories, and holding on tighter to the ones you managed to get.
Thank you
Johnny, go watch more anime to make videos
wheres das finale 2 at?
Can y'all not?
You are alive lets go
It sounds like English isn't your first language yet your English speaking skills and vernacular are exquisite
As a native English speaker I can confidently say he has a better command on the way in college and much more advanced vocabulary and some people that speak it as a first language
The language *
Yeah, and as for me, English isn’t my fits that language too, but his speech is quite more understandable than speech of native English-speakers. That’s nice for such a long video-essay.
@@Bantorc your English is good too my friend
@@Bantorc much* would have been a better word than quite* to make that sentence mole grammatically sound though. Impressive nonetheless!
The best CoD campaign of the “Classic” era og games
Dark, gritty, authentic, and most importantly...it doesn’t hold back
I didn’t know it was og. Wouldn’t that be call of duty and call of duty: United offensive?
@@OuterHeaven210 not even close compared to waw
I would argue that’s it’s still better than the newer ones too
WAW isnt classic era, it's golden age era
@@dtxspeaks268 fair point but most people don't acknowledge the games before cod4 so classic makes sense to most
Man, that build-up to the Reichstag sequence wasn't a hallmark of visual storytelling, but it just felt so emotional. "Heart of the Reich" felt like a desperate tooth-and-nail fight for every yard of ground, a feeling that no other CoD game could even replicate. BlOps' city levels couldn't do the same as hard as they tried, and even the Washington DC setting of MW2 with all its sentiment didn't match the atmosphere. WaW rocked.
"War is Hell"
"War is war & Hell is hell, and Hell is probably alot better then War"
How am I gonna take this seriously with ur username like that😭
"There are no innocents in hell"
I doubt anybody in hell would argue war is worse
Gotta correct you there. ' War is war and Hell is Hell. And of the two war is a lot worse."
when a cod game is more anti-war than most of the hollywood movies.
More anti-war than hollywood movie is really low bar to clear to be honest.
@@CompagnonDeMisere25 what about "as anti-war as the music written during the vietnam war era"
@@MarioTheLiopleurodon That music wasn't very anti-war just anti-Vietnam war, it was overtly anti-war but written by people with no understanding of war. It was political and ideological, superficial. WAW is anti-war in a visceral and apolitical way, transcending any single conflict or era, it exposes the very core issues with war; its complex brutality and the indiscriminate suffering and destruction it brings. It doesn't tell you to hate war, doesn't push an agenda, it just shows you as best it can what war is like and forces the audience to decide how to feel about it. That is anti-war, it has a power some hippy nonsense about peace and love will never have.
“Go and watch” still the best anti-war movie
It's almost like the us military offers payment to use military bases, technology and etc in movies with the notion that they cannot be anti war
"Carnage and slaughterhouse seem too specific, and don't possess the implicational scale. Tragedy is too poetic, with its desperate reliance on catharsis.
Darkness is truly the most concrete and vaguest term at the same time to describe this horror. The extent of the savagery. The scale of its madness. The very light of hell."
One of many *masterful and profound* passages in this video.
Personally, I thought the guitar elements were meant to bridge between the times of the event and the viewer, to give a sense that, despite the potentially archaic appearance of the war, it was very modern. Further, the harsh and discordant instrumentation conveyed the cacophony of war as a mess of ideals clashing, rather than some cleaner concept of a battle.
The Russian music early on contains a motif of a balalaika being strummed. The heavy rock slowly replaces it, initially the same tune as the balalaika before it, but repetitive strumming takes it's place with occasional simple variations, the corruption of the original theme. By the time the tide has turned, the gentle balalaika rarely makes an appearance, and the other traditional Russian and classical instrumentation mostly follows the more guttural guitar.
The guitar in the American music only follows the American themes, putting it in greater contrast with the more traditional Japanese instrumentation which are often overlapping in the tracks, representative of the difference in philosophies of technological utilization.
That's a cool take on the music. I just think guitar riffs fit brutal warfare. I don't know why they would be "tonedeaf".
I one hundred percent agree, there’s a reason they put metal in the soundtrack aside from it just being a very Treyarch thing, it shows the clash of the western metal music and the traditional Japanese music
Every time I hear it, especially in the second to last mission I always think, “Wow you would not think electric guitar works in WWII, but damn it’s powerful.”
@@weehoo2 right now I’m arguing with Face full of eyes about that, he doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of it being Call of Duty and being action packed yet still having a good sense of realism
@@communism_is_wrong7167 Eh not worth arguing about
I had a grandfather who was drafted into the 70th Infantry division in 1943. Known by nickname as "The Trailblazers".
Rifle in hand, and a ragtag group of light and heavy armor providing constant support. His division fought through the carnage of South Saarbrücken, all the way to an ashen and broken Berlin. He was fortunate enough to bring a camera along to take photographs.
I was born long after he passed away in the late 1980s. But he left behind a scrapbook loaded with his photos and entries of the war, even his old uniform patches. Polaroids depicting fields and semi-urban landscapes that had been shelled into oblivion.
But amidst all the trinkets, I found some rather interesting photographs. Shock overwhelmed me when I realized they were German.
There were five of them in total, possibly given to him by Wehrmacht POWs. Though it's hard to know that for certain, as his cursive was sub par and faded from decades of being stored in a musty basement.
Most of the images were of shenanigans outside of the fight. Wehrmacht soldiers without kits smoking cigarettes, and enjoying the temporary peace. However. one of the pictures will be stuck in my mind until the grave. It's a picture of a Sturmgeschütz III tank destroyer with a short 75mm gun, parked in an open grassy hillside. In front of it, stands a crew of three tankers that look like they've been sent through a paper shredder. Their uniforms are raggedy and grease stained. The particularly dead faces they bear, almost come out of the Polaroid itself. Filling me with dread, and tiredness. Their Stug III had also seen better days. Scorch marks and dents for days, it was far from factory new at the time the photo was taken.
I can only guess how my grandfather obtained these. And at the time, I'm sure someone would call him a sympathizer for keeping such things from being lost. But it seems his point of view regarding the war, was one of victory against the enemy. And also sympathy for those who were crushed by it. The German tankers I saw in the photo are absolutely long gone. Burnt alive in the Steel machine that they were forced to call home. Or perhaps pumped full of lead and cast into a mass grave. I don't know their names, or their lives before the carnage. How such a catastrophic event simply erased them from history.
That alone, brings me to hope that such a war never happens again. But I'd be a fool to disregard basic human instinct.
Do you have anyway to share the photo? It’s ok if you don’t I’m just so intrigued by the way you explained it I’d love to see it.
tldr
These photos need to be digitized and archived online ASAP. There will only be less physical reminders of the war as time goes on, and these will be the only reminder that these events ever happened to these individuals. They are long dead, most likely anyone that was alive to hear their stories are dead too, and they live on only in the memories of us, who see these young men and remember their faces. We know them beyond just a mere statistic in Wehrmacht numbers. Soldier so-and-so assigned such-and-such men for production number whatever tank. Instead, they are captured forever in a single moment on the German countryside, unaware of where they will be in a year's time, if they'll be alive, and who will remember them if they're not.
Please post these somewhere
Funny how Treyarch developed this game who now makes the most over the top and cartoonish installments in the series
Pretty much all the black ops games (not counting the original) and cold war.
im an onion mason
@Angel Balanzar I mean, Blops 2 took place because a man's little sister was killed by a grenade and you have to rescue Woods from a shipping container filled with dead bodies from African militia troops right after you help a warlord who lets a man burn alive inside an APC. Pretty serious topics in just the first few missions of Black Ops 2, but sure, cartoonish.
@@sporter527That one is just an obscure and archaic synonym for "expert" lol. God knows why the writers used it, probably knew no one would get it and thought it'd be funny
As an informative video game, this title delivers what Elem Klimov's "Come and See" (1985) managed to describe as a poetic movie. It just leaves no room to grasp for you. You have to think about every death and movement in your own head.
Accurate, though that movie stands on its own pedestal...disturbing. visceral. but very good.
@@nativeswagho5213 is there a movie like Come and See but set in the Pacific?
@@DakotaofRaptors Not really set in the pacific but ‘City of life and death’. about the invasion of nanking is equally unforgiving
WaW is the most underrated CoD ever, we'll probably never see a game like it again
How can an iconic game seriously be underrated, dude? Most people say it's the best CoD :)
@@cinemaspire7258 idk in my experience it's often overlooked and whenever there's a list of top tier CoDs nobody puts it in the top 10 games, for me it's probably the best cod
@Manek Iridius you're full of sh*t and you dont know it. So Big Red One, COD 4, MW2, BO1, BO2, and MW 2019 are bad?
@@dtxspeaks268 mw2019 and cold war aka camping sim
@@hankjwimbleton6598 people camped in the Golden Age and Dark Age CODs too. You cant blame a game for shitty players who ruin a match.
"It's not that you shouldn't fight them even more. Its not that they don't deserve death when standing to protect such vile visions of the future. But when they scream in agony, they speak the most human of languages."
💯💯💯
From someone who values aesthetics over anything in games, I gotta say, the attention to the smallest details you pointed out surprised me. Well done, video quality is super.
I especially like the detail of the battle-weary background soldier in Stalingrad
Something about being in the reichstag and fighting the nazis while der koniggratzer is playing quietly in the background and a german soldier is giving a speech it's a weird feeling i can't describe
The speech is from hitler
@@lilrobi45xxx42 is it? I know some multiplayer maps have hitler speeches and the guy in the mission sounds different but i don't know
It's eerie and it makes you sad and depressed when you entered those maps on empty servers. That's why I loved WaW and the Original black ops. Those games managed to capture the depressing nature of war. If you ever entered those maps on an empty server you would feel as if the ghosts of those slain solders were always staring. It didn't help that if you would stay for a long time on those empty servers you would hear literal voices, screams, moans, random radio static and you would swear you would see demonic things in the distance. The maps were full of blood, death and destruction, which captured perfectly what war was. I always felt that black ops 2 was the true decline of Call of Duty. The game just looked goofy. It was too colorful and it felt as if it was marketed for children. It didn't help that at the end of the game there was a dance party for all the characters of the series.
@@AsiaMinor12 WAW was a masterpiece the maps felt depressing and creepy in a way, was really disappointed with WW2 it was still fun for me but hopefully this years ww2 game is something but i doubt it because of SJW'S because once again they trust us with the usage of automatic weapons but not history and how brutal ww2 was, waw was just scratching the surface
Damn , dude.
When you said "It's far from desensitizing, but more so sickening" That really resonated with me.
I think one of the most horrifying animations has to be the one shown when you burst someone's chest open and they're left on the ground, trying to hold their intestines in while breathing their last breaths.
Honestly, I've always found the guitar riffs in the soundtrack to be very fitting. It's still a modern retelling of the war and I think they really add to the gritty feeling
Plus it helps sell that unnatural vibe to the "war horror" aspects of the game. The Pacific campaign sounds frantic and chaotic while the Eastern campaign is mangled and depressing. Black ops did something similar by using all of the above in order to help capture the dark and ambiguous world of soldiers fighting a war that wouldn't make it in the history books during a time period where ideology and private interests blurred the line between right and wrong.
"..the war is an unprecedently destructive event, sweeping away human lives in its blindness.."
Holy shit, i love this quote! TH-cam Algorithm please do your magic and give this lad more subs!
Oh yeah, the king is back and covering the most overlooked CoD game out there. The choices made by Treyarch for World at War are unmatched not only by CoD standards, but also by the FPS genre as a whole. There are many games that attempt to show the raw brutality of war, ranging from Far Cry 2 & Spec Ops: The Line to This War of Mine and Valiant Hearts. However, among all these shades of grey morality, i personally believe WaW stands out in a very different way from the rest.
You often see World War 1 being approached by this bleak, raw look, while World War 2 is bathed in the direct or indirect light of heroism. And, while WaW still has some resemblance to this mentality with the soviet campaign, it's easy to see that what fuels Reznov, Petrenko and the Red Army is not the call of duty-- it's the desire for vengeance.
I'll love to see what you have to say about this game!
When you die ur character screams "why" but it's kinda hard to make out cause it's so fast and it sounds like it's in pure agony
My great uncle serves as a signalman on a U.S destroyer during the Normandy Landings. Their destroyer was tasked with recovering bodies that washed out to sea. I can't even imagine what that must have felt like to find body after body floating in ocean. Even now, he still doesn't talk about it.
Yooo he's back and I was wondering where he was after re watching for the hundredth time the Far Cry 2 vid, this is gonna be good
Lol I rewatched that video so many times, probably going to rewatch this one a bunch of times too
you aint lyin
L
What a beautiful essay you have put together for this game. As a kid, I was always interested in history, watching documentaries , reading a textbook or even sometimes watching a movie with my grandpa. I had played videogames such as COD2, BF1943, Medal of Honor, which always portrayed war as this heroic struggle that you mention, so World at War as the interactive medium it is as a videogame changed my perspective; that destruction, suffering and death wasn't just black and white footage of soldiers fighting, those pictures in books of people starving and hurt weren't just something that happened a long time ago to persons I didn't know, it was something horrible that really happened.
Replaying the game as a teenager and adult really made me notice of these themes you talk about, with newfound apreciation. Thank you for the video!
I think the real reason why the Pacific theatre was chosen other than gameplay was for both theaters to show war at its worst. The Americans and Japanese, Soviets and Germans despised each other more than any other faction in WW2. It makes sense for WaW to have us play as U.S. Marines and Red Army Soldiers in 1944-45 at some of the darkest days of the war. From a U.S. Marine mocking a Japanese officer while shooting him repeatedly before finishing him off with a headshot to a Soviet shooting a German P.O.W. at point blank range.
A tiny detail I noticed at 50:31 - the soldier in this shot has a Golden Party Badge on his tie, those were only rewarded to a little over 20,000 men IRL. In-game this means he was a member of the NSDAP in 1933 and fought all the way through the war only to die alone in the Reichstag.
oh damn, that’s actually really crazy
@@ZanzibarWizard i thought so too, just such a small detail for the devs to include but i really appreciate that they did
That's kinda sad in a way. Nazi or no, this soldier, like many humans, had the potential to do great things. But alas, war has squandered it...
@@DakotaofRaptorsdude lived a life of his choice and it led him to watch his city burn and him die above it
The one and only COD with a living breathing soul full of life and energy burning bright amongst the darkness within it.
@Pengz - no just my opinion
The quality of this guy's content is on par with Ahoy
EXACTLY what I was thinking. These guys aren't related are they?
@@Nova7_the_insane Haha I wish.
I remember watching ahoy when he used to make black ops and mw2 weapon guides. Boy how far has he come.
You sir, are an artist storyteller, an aesthet and a scholar. I wholeheartedly thank you for this erudite take on the videogames. This one was touching and it moved me. My condolences.
thank you
The Roebuck's face part is very profound.
"This is the scarred and mangled face of war he's supposed to come back to his wife and kids with"
1:02:12 "an angelic intro to hell". That line is very poetic.
I’ve wanted to hear someone talk about how macabre this game was since the day it came out. This wasn’t like any CoD game that came before, it was a straight up horror game. I like that a lot of the darkness carried over to the first Black Ops.
One thing that stuck with me regarding the first Black Ops was towards the end of the boat section, when the "kid" died.
41:00 - "...Anyone not willing to accept simplified versions of it (history) will eventually have to go through it"
great quote
1:03:19 That ghostly howl in this soundtrack will always stick with me. Just as the soundtrack that plays in the asylum will, where you can hear a faint scream of a woman echo off in the distance. It makes the world feel lived in and adds history to the area. It makes you instantly feel like war wasn't the worst thing to happen in that place. Like the atrocities that happened in that asylum before and during the Nazi's control of it were so horrifying it took the occupants misery and pain, then stained it into the very walls of the building. That scream bellows as If the torture was so horrifying that the collective pain released there was so powerful it became the darkness that fills every shadow in the building, only to be let out through the asylums destruction. As if the patients were so horribley tortured that there souls were trapped in the complex, requiring an equally horrific event, such as war tearing the building apart, to release them like a fly trapped in a glass bottle that had just been broken. I'd also like to say that I'm both very happy I found your channel and very sorry for your loss.
Thank you
So sorry to hear of your grandpa, so glad their memory lives on with you. Cheers
thank you
The music in this game is amazing, Grim, dark, overwhelming and heavy
I love the music, Black cats have to be my favorite.
I've revisited the older CoD games recently and today I've finished World at War
Throughout the campaign, all I could think back to was this video and how much I appreciate it and the game even more for it
Suffice to say, I had to give it a rewatch
Two weeks ago my grandfather passed away due to Covid at the age of 88 years. I listened to so many stories from his youth days as a teenager in germany and his experiences in the war, as a young observer.
At Christmas, when I was visiting my family I had the feeling that this could possibly be the last time I would talk to him and see him. When I drove away after new years I tried to remember as many stories from him as possible... but still thought that there were so many more I never knew about.
It is sad that he is gone now and it is even more sad that I and everyone else from my family couldn't be by his side in his dying hours due to covid-regulations. I wonder what his last thoughts and feelings were.
I felt that very much in the end, when you talked about your Grandfather that passed away.
Thank you for this amazing video.
I finished that game maybe 4 or 5 times when I was younger, and even than it was kinda hard to watch how your enemy suffers, especially when they are dismembered or lit on fire, almost all the time I finished them with a bullet to the head, because I thought it was more merciful. And now your video just makes me almost cry because of how violent and gruesome those scenes are and how you inspect them
WAKE UP BABE
FACE FULL OF EYES UPPLOADED AGAIN YO
I've been waiting forever.
This video is a piece of art
this is a fucking masterpiece
WaW really gave me a true look into how WW2 was. Especially thinking about how my grandpa did a ritual on a beach and used a raygun to storm the fronts. Honestly it’s a flawless game and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone that I talk to about games to play.
The atmosphere in this game and later Black Ops is impeccable, it really makes it feel like everyone just collectively lost their minds for 5 years.
"But on a certain level WW2 was a clash of ideologies that asserted to be the final solution to the everlasting problem of the human future and ,what more, humanity's destiny itself.
But the Nazi ideology had defined the groups of people that deserve or have the right to live and this ultimately made it a fight for the human as a unit of society. The carrier of prosperity and happiness promised by the ideology."
Another masterful passage in this video.
To any still wondering how to get each of Chernov's quotes on Downfall here is a quick tutorial
"Good" Quote
Step one: In Vendetta, when you reach the sniping position to kill general Amsel, give away your position before he leaves his building, Reznov will say something like "You idiot! they will still die and they know our position!"
Step two: In Their Land, Their Blood don't kill the germans that are bleeding inside the house on the beginning of the level
Step three: In Eviction mercy-kill the soldiers surrendering on the metro (Just don't kill them with molotovs)
"Neutral" Quote
Do just one of the steps above
"Bad" Quote
Step one: Don't give away your position in Vendetta while waiting Amsel to leave his building
Step two: Kill the germans that are bleeding on the start of Their Land, Their Blood
Step Three: Let the surrendering germans get burned by your comrades in Eviction
I always liked his neutral quote more then the rest, it works so well for the story of the characters, while Reznov is wrath and Chernov is mercy, petrenko is somewhere in between
@@polkka7797 Yeah, i also prefer the neutral one, makes more sense
Yes, comrade!!! Let us all comment to worship the youtube algorithm. Your contents deserve more views.
The dude has the production value of someone with 1 million subs but he has 30k. He deserves to do very well on this platform.
URRRAAAAA!!
Filthy commies
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URA!
URA !
The most unapologetic portrayal of WW2 released so far. Amongst the occasional recognition of heroism, World at War breathed life into the universal predicament of war itself that ultimately transcends flag and language, a credo we all agree upon but seem to get comparatively very little of in later titles: War is *Hell.*
Very excited to see this video!
I mean the trailer that ended with the American soldier sweeping with a flamethrower to reveal the title card was enough to tell me the game wasn't holding back, pretty sure I was only 11 when the game came out so besides SPR, this was the most visceral depiction of the war that I'd experienced up to that point
@@mattwillerton6775 whats SPR
@@mrfootfxtish9430 Saving Private Ryan, sorry, couldn't be bothered typing it in full in the initial reply lol
It’s rare war ever gets depicted this honestly in a game. It needs to happen more often.
Red Orchestra comes pretty close when it is not up to scripted events to tell a story, but the same gore filled battlefield on a more "authentic" (to not use "realistic") gameplay base in a multiplayer match. The death animations there ... well, they are on another level, some are as drawn out as 40 seconds if I recall correctly.
Imagine taking over a foxhole in close combat and you get pinned down there. You proceed to spend nearly a full minute ducking for cover while and hearing the enemy soldier (controlled by another player up to few seconds ago) just gargle blood or frantically call for his mother in his native language mere meters away from you.
Your final message of your grandfather passing and his memories he had carried with him fading away, and how you wish you couldve stayed and heard more to retain them, drove me to make the decision to fly out to see my own this very winter break. I need to hear these memories and feel his humanity before he inevitably passes as we all do. Never think your videos dont have impact, as your writing and storytelling always will. The importance of these videos to convey thoughts are very well shown, just as important as the memories that we all carry do. So thank you for this.
Thank you very much for this. It means a lot to me. I'm glad those words had that effect on you.
I always felt like there was something special about WAW. You articulate it in a magnificently poetic and effective style.
My great grandfather never did tell us about the war. Or if he did, I was either too young to remember, or the memories are lost. He was a Marine. He fought in the Pacific Theater of WW2, I don't know anything about what he did other than that he was sniper - according to my father - and his Springfield M1903 is somewhere with my distant family out west. I never got to see him much. The last of my great grandparents that I've saw was my great grandmother on the day of his funeral about 5 years back. Sadly she had passed away just 2 short years later, and none of my family had known about it until we saw the obituaries. If there is a heaven... may they both be up there, having the best time that anyone could have.
I imagine he hated the Japanese with every fiber of his being.
The amount of people defending the metal soundtrack makes me happy
I like the synth part that plays when walking through the woods/trenches in Their Land, Their Blood. It always gives me chills when it plays
I always saw the music as the turning of an age, a transition between old traditional and new industrial.
Black cats soundtrack still fucking holds up
If you don't like the soundtrack, you have no taste lol
I love the parts that fit for a horror game.
This game was my childhood, and you making a full on documentary about this game’s true meaning is truly amazing. This is one of the best videos I’ve ever watched. The amount of effort put into this video is phenomenal. Thank you so much. Good luck with all your future uploads!
thank you!
Your interpretation of this game is great and every teacher would be proud of it.
I played that game at the age of ~13-14 (yes I had the permission from my parents) and back then I was already interested in military history, but that game fired my interest of WW2 to the max until today. Back when, after i played it a couple of times, I started to gather Storys from my Family of the time. As German it was already a strange feeling in my stomach to see the execution of POWs, although I had no problem killing fighting forces. But one thing changed after my grandfather told me his Story: 1944 he got drafted and after his "training" he got assigned to the Volkssturm. He was one who had to defend Berlin, at the age of 16. In the battle of Berlin he got lucky, that the Soviets saw, they there facing only children, so they yelled to them:" The war is over, throw your guns away and go home!" So he did how they told him. Then he approached them to pass them by, one of the Soldiers put his hand on his Shoulder and gave him some food (he was really skinny at that time). After that story the missions in Berlin had for me a extra dark feeling. I dont know why, but I had always the feeling behind the next corner, building or street he could stand there. Everytime in the scene of three Soldiers executing the german in the apartment, that had could be him and then I wouldn't sit here. That story changed my personal experience of the game and that was just one Story from one of my ancestors.
Sorry that my English is far from perfect, but I hope the message still finds it's way.
No, your delivery was perfect and the story was beautiful, sometimes I wish we had a game exactly like this that depicted the perspective from the Germans, and in the words of Face full of eyes himself, to depict the full complexity of their psychology.
The entire feeling of this video is so different compared to the other ones that I have seen from you, with raw emotion paired with a foreign voice talking about horrors incomprehensible. I can’t wait to see what other pieces of excellence you create
Your level of detail and philosophical insight would be perfect for Spec Ops: The Line
I hope so too, it’s such a brilliant game
@@damndanielrealass8004 All the more reason his analysis would be good to have. I'd love to see a video on that game that isn't just jerking it off like everyone else has.
It was an okay game
I don’t understand why everyone is saying spec ops the line, the only scene that really showed the horrors of war was the white phosphorus scene. The rest of the game was mediocre
@@billlbilsontonling7773 What about when you gun down civilians?
That's one of the things that scares the shit out of me. My experiences and memories being forgotten along with myself. Just the fear that I know I will be forgotten is just wild.
Same! Death doesn't phase me too much, but the thought of being forgotten definitely does.
My great grandfather who had immigrated from Yugoslavia served in the Us army or marines in ww2, I still don’t know which. He fought in the pacific front, I never got to meet him but I remember everything I was told about him by my grandma before she died. The most interesting story to me was his last day in the war. She always emphasized that he had no ammo left except for in his pistol. Anyway with his back turned a Japanese solider stabbed him in the right shoulder with his bayonet. My grand father reached for his pistol which was still easy to reach do to his left handed ness and shot three times, twice in his chest and once in his head. I remember being so enamored by this man I had never met that I always re-enacted this moment when I played. I remember as playing call of duty 3 as a child and while it was ending. I shot all my bullets so i too would leave the battlefield with no ammo. I don’t even know his name, it’s been so long since my grandma died, I was maybe 8 or 9. But that story always stuck with me, and I’m sure it will never leave me.
*This is exactly what I've been waiting for.*
similarly, my grandfather fought in the war. as part of the 82nd airborne, he was one of the first dozen americans to land on the european mainland, parachuting into france the night before D-Day. He fought in nearly every major battle on the way to berlin, including operation market garden. when it came to speaking of the war, he had no romanticism of it. he barely spoke about it, except with other veterans. he didn't care about his bronze stars or purple hearts. he was proud of his medal of good conduct, the only award that involved no bloodshed. when he returned to texas, still barely more than a teenager, haunted by the memory of killing boys younger than himself, one one occasion with a knife (as is so glorified in video games), of delivering rations to the starving children in the newly liberated camps, he brought all of this memory home to texas. at the first parade for veterans he attended, he was arrested for loitering: a mexican in the white side of town. so it was on the european front: the desegregated units like his, full of young brown draftees, and like the tank divisions his brothers served in, did the heavy fighting, and were then followed by the whites only divisions with officers and enlisted men. On one day, while standing guard at a meeting of generals, the legendary George S. Patton interrupted his work to personally spit on my grandfather and call him a wetback. this is the america my grandfather fought for and returned home to. only later was he fashioned into a war hero, when it became politically expedient to do so. it's an image he indulged, for the sake of his comrades and his family, but never one that he fed into. he was knighted twice, by france and by norway, before ever being permitted medical funds from the VA to get a bullet removed from his shoulder. he carried that bullet for nearly 60 years, for the entire life of his children and grandchildren, being stopped at every metal detector he passed. he spoke rarely of the war, only late at night over a cup of black coffee. he slept 4 hours at a time, in short shifts in the early morning and the mid afternoon, and made sure that his children would enjoy the privilege of a middle school, high school, and college education- something which was impossible for him in Jim Crow texas. you could say that he saved the western world, but the western word saved nothing for him, and today, we still live in the glorified shadow of that war between imperialist powers, in which the children of the colonies were the most valuable resource in what was- ultimately- only another pathetic squabble between fading european empires, just another 7 years war, this time played out with industrial machinery and million man armies. he kept his ribbon of good conduct on his person until the day he died, just as pristinely golden as the day it was bestowed to him. he was buried in it, at a ceremony given in Latin, Spanish, English, and Tewa. May his memory outlive the nation he fought for.
that's a sad story, man. that part about being stopped at metal detectors for years after the war is particularly bizzare. and being arrested at a veterans parade by someone who perhaps wasn't even in the war, that's just horrible. i can't even imagine how difficult it must have been for your grandpa to endure all those injustices and discriminations after witnessing the horrors of war in europe. thank you for sharing this story. may your grandpa rest in peace.
What was his name?
He sure was a great man. My great grandma lived trough the Spanish civil war and had to suffer the horrors of it, where the nations that would later fight each other used Spain as a playground for the new machinery. She escaped to France where they were forced into concentration camps. Wish she lived longer to tell me her stories. Your grandfather fought for the freedom of people like my great-grandmother. It’s our job now to preach your grandfather message instead of idolizing meaningless hatred and violence, don’t let the wrong surrounding you tint your heart black, friend.
God bless your grandfather, hope he lived peacefully after the war
Your grandfather sounds like an incredibly strong man to make it through the war and the adversity he faced back home, may he Rest In Peace.
To me, one of the greatest and most immersive design choices WaW made was to not include in game cutscenes. All cutscenes in the game are made in between missions in the load screen.
There are so many little things that happen in game that the player could miss if they arent looking at them. They arent cut scenes, and they arent triggered events. They happen whether you are witnessing them or not.
It gives the player the feeling that the war is going on all around them, whether you are actively participating or not. Its so simple and yet such an incredible detail that needs to be brought back.
Nowadays, nearly every important event in a game HAS to be a cutscene. It just destroys immersion and pace. Such a shame that this has become the industry norm
To me it's the lack of any subtitles for the enemy, you never know what they are saying, they are strangers to you yet here you both are forced to kill each other
This game made me realize how war is really hell and how movies and other video games have desensitized us and made us emotionless to things like this
Yeah you think war is ok until you play this, it shows you the horrors of it
Now I honestly wish I had asked my great grandfather more about life during the war. He was a steel mill worker in northern ohio if I remember right. He would eventually go on and serve in the Marine Corps during the years of 50-53 in Korea.
Then again, I was less than 12 when he died of brain cancer. Should someone read this, do gather the thoughts of those willing to speak about their experiences of such conflicts whenever possible. My still alive grandfather served 1 tour in a base near Khe Sahn, and he tends to not discuss it.
He most likely learned the hard way what war is. I can see it in his eyes when he does discuss the conflict.
This really makes me want to play world at war for first time again
Something that I myself noticed from a recent playthrough of the "Eviction" level, I noticed that the German soldier actually closes his eyes and clenches his teeth right before he's shot. It's a very human response, and it made it real to me.