It’s hard to imagine that Sledgehammer knew its game would be so timely when the developer started work on Call of Duty: WWII three years ago. Still, maybe the developers felt it, at least on some level: the storm clouds of nationalism and racism rising in America and Europe, causing more than one uneasy comparison to the 1930s. World War 2 is a setting that’s long offered a historical remove for games and movies alike, giving developers a comfortable moral clarity ever since we first fought a mecha-Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D. But suddenly a game about killing Nazis feels anything but easy.
Most of Call of Duty: WWII’s reveal trailer shows us more or less what we expect: gruff-voiced men confronting explosions and becoming angry, ears ringing after explosions and so on. But there are hints that we’re getting a darker look at the European theater than what we’ve seen before: arguments about civilian casualties, some glimpses of gore, the choice to call the First Infantry Division “The Bloody First” rather than the somewhat cleaner “Big Red One” moniker the franchise used back in 2005. Early developer interviews are full of words like “mature,” and “dark,” echoing a sentiment that’s pretty common in games these days but hasn’t often been applied to a World War 2 setting. According to a Mashable article, the game will even deal with the Holocaust, at least on some level: something always somewhat understood to be present in World War 2 games but almost never explicitly addressed. It’s tough territory for a series not known for subtlety.
It’s not entirely surprising, however. Despite devolving into jingoism at some point, Call of Duty is no stranger to gray areas. It’s hard to forget the Ac-130 mission in Modern Warfare, raining dispassionate death on black and white little blips for a distinctly uncomfortable fifteen minutes. But it was the following year’s World at War — the last game in the franchise set in World War 2 — that felt like it was intentionally diving into the moral murk, tasking players to clear out Japanese bunkers with flamethrowers and pointing the camera squarely at both Allied and Axis brutality even in what were meant to be heroic moments. Limbs went flying, soldiers screamed: it was a hard “M” rating. You can watch the ending of that game here. It’s not particularly pretty. In that game, moral clarity was reserved only for Zombies.
Since then, Call of Duty gave us a dose of full-fledged patriotism in Modern Warfare 3, reserving muddy morality for far-future scenarios with ever-decreasing relevance. There were hints of a more complicated look at American military might in Black Ops 1 and 2, but coupled with enough sci-fi that they never quite landed. But it feels somewhat appropriate that the game could return to more mature themes by taking us back to its roots. The main question critics could ask of a franchise returning to well-worn territory would be: “how it could possibly be fresh again?” Again, the political climate offers some guidance. Visions of World War 2 just aren’t the same as they were a decade ago, and the game looks to reflect that.
World War 2 was a comfortable place for videogame developers to work as culture warriors decried an industry poisoning our youth: who can get angry about killing Nazis, after all?