Call of Duty WWII: Vanguard - What we would like in ...

Call of Duty WWII

The new Call of Duty will only be announced in several months, but some news on the possible scenarios have already leaked. At least in terms of rumors, therefore to be considered with due caution, despite the fact that they come from well-known and reliable insiders. Like those who see the new chapter set during the Second World War entitled Call of Duty WWII: Vanguard, and be developed by Sledgehammer Games, which in fact would return with the typical rotation of Activision's internal teams. Among other things, returning to the Second World War, and in general to real and historical settings, even modern ones, for the publisher proved to be a winning move to relaunch the Call of Duty series.

This is why we too believe that, regardless of everything, behind certain rumors there may be a minimum of credibility. At the bottom of stories to tell, from the western front, from the African one or from the Pacific one, there are many and you can take advantage of different settings, as well as different points of view of the same war event or of a single battle. But if so, what scenarios can we expect and above all, which ones would we like to find in this eventual Call of Duty WWII: Vanguard?

What we would like in ... is a monthly column dedicated to the most anticipated games from the public. But compared to traditional previews, it treats the topic more widely, imagining what a title might look like, or how you'd like it to be, rather than what it will be like.

A story from the point of view of the "bad guys"?

It is useless to go around it too much: beyond the fact that generally the campaigns in Call of Duty are unfortunately almost always extremely short, it is undeniable that on the other hand they are highly spectacular to play, with their cinematic cut and their well-orchestrated stories. Well, from this point of view, in addition to hoping for the umpteenth course in a change of course in terms of longevity, in the next chapter we hope to find a highly emotional and engaging story, told as usual with that great film style of war we mentioned earlier.

Obviously, to make everything interesting it is essential to build the narration on fascinating scenarios and therefore charismatic characters. At the plot level, one could therefore try to make even a certainly complicated effort, for a whole series of "moral" and ideological implications, but which would offer the player something really different from the usual. To date, rightly so, the Call of Duty set during the Second World War have offered us the stories of those who fought to defend themselves from the Nazi occupation or the Axis, and to free the world from their threat. But wanting to propose something more original, regardless, we reiterate it, from the political implications and controversies that certainly a game of this kind would arouse, one could also think of a title that would show war from the point of view of the soldiers of the historical enemy, the Germany.

Mind you, we are not talking about playing some squalid and fanatic monster of the Gestapo or the SS, but a simple German soldier, one of those belonging to the regular Germanic army. At that point one could then think of scenarios like Stalingrad, not new in the Call of Duty universe, but revised from the perspective of some soldier of the Wehrmacht 6th Army, who was surprised and surrounded by the Red Army on November 23, 1942, after having failed the final offensive launched to conquer the last Soviet strongholds. A setting that would lend itself well, among other things, to a type of gameplay made up of furious door-to-door clashes, between dilapidated buildings and carcasses of cars, plus the problem of lack of supplies, and that of the terrifying weather conditions of the place. .

Realism and variety of approach

Another interesting scenario could be that of the North African countryside, which we have seen in Call of Duty 2 from the point of view of the British. Here, too, the events could be relived from another perspective, up to the battles of El Halamain, which saw the forces of the German-Italian armored army commanded by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the British Eighth Army of General Bernard Law Montgomery face off against each other. of the most famous and important characters of the conflict. In this scenario made up of a thousand clashes, one could tell in particular the story of a group of Italian soldiers at a certain point committed to resisting, as then happened in reality, the British offensive called Operation Lightfoot.

But many examples could be given, from Kefalonia to Warsaw or, passing again to the point of view of the Allies, Dunkirk and the battle of Cassino, with the famous climb towards the remains of the abbey of Montecassino at inside a heavy clash that involved a long valley, blocking the entire contingent commanded by General Clark for five months. Moving on to another topic, namely the gameplay and the various elements present in the game, as always we do not ask for upheavals, but a lot of substance and maybe some "sensible" tweaks to tested modes and mechanics, which in principle have worked in the recent past and which therefore do not deserve noticeable changes.

So we would like to find a gameplay clearly based on contextual realism to the setting and to the weapons supplied, with the latter capable of returning the right feeling depending on the type. In turn, the structure of the maps and general playability should be balanced properly and perhaps offer a certain variety in the approach to missions. In short, the elements to add substantial innovations to the usual scripted and cinematic gameplay of Call of Duty are not lacking, it is up to the developers to find the right way and ideas to insert them in the usual tested game mechanics.

Zone of war

As for the battle royale, the ties with Warzone seem to be not yet well defined and therefore there is also the possibility that a Vanguard themed map can be integrated later, after the release of the game, and be a minor scenario. In all cases we would like the mode to offer all-out survival combat, with varied maps full of weapons, vehicles and equipment dedicated to each type of scenario, so as to offer even in this war context many ideas for developers to design different types of situations and approaches to missions, perhaps conditioned by weather conditions.

The variations of the weather, of course, would constitute a very interesting element of the game, since the mud generated by the rain, or the frost of the snow would cause difficulties in movement for the soldiers, but also the malfunction of the weapons, which under certain conditions they jam easily and require continuous maintenance. One could also think of ad hoc missions of exploration and infiltration: on the other hand, the title Vanguard, "avant-garde", if true, could suggest that the protagonists of the game are part of a formation that explores the terrain before the rest of the army.

The important thing is that there are no too invasive micro transactions, but only as a plus for those videogamers who rightly love to customize their characters with some particular skins and so on. We'll see. According to the latest rumors, reported by the well-known leaker Tom Henderson on Twitter Call of Duty WWII: Vanguard, at the current stage of development it would be a "fucking disaster". But our hope is that things will be a little different or, if so, that they can settle down quickly, so that we can dive back into the biggest military confrontation in history as soon as possible.

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