Valiant Hearts: The Great War
Producer: Ubisoft
Release Date: June 25, 2014
Platform: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, PC
Rating: Teen
Genre: Puzzle/Adventure
War Never Changes
Written by Josh Schilling
The Great War, the “War to End All Wars”, or the name that it is most commonly known as, World War I, is a time in history that has rarely been shown in video games. On the surface, it doesn’t have the same weight as the subsequent World War II. Most people couldn’t name any of the major figures, battles or even the nations involved. World War I isn’t as intriguing with its smaller scale and inferior technology, so the entertainment world has naturally turned to the more exciting alternative. Nazi’s are incredibly easy to vilify, and the weapons, tactics, and vehicles used in World War II are much more tangible and interesting. If you hear names like Churchill, Roosevelt, or Hitler, you have an ingrained notion of who they are and what they stood for. If you hear places like Stalingrad, Normandy, or Pearl Harbor, you already have a sense of the terrible events that occurred there. Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a game that digs deep into World War I and manages to slug you in the gut while simultaneously putting a smile on your face. It does what the best examples of great media sometimes do in that it entertains at the same time that it educates, and is steeped in irony just like the oxymoron in the second clause of its title.
Valiant Hearts is pretty simple, mechanically speaking. If you want to break it down practically, it’s a two-dimensional, fetch-quest puzzler. You find stuff you need to continue the narrative, and you sometimes perform actions like throwing objects or driving a car to break up the monotony. If all you want from games is gameplay, then this might not be the game for you. While the developers of this game do a good job of keeping the gameplay interesting and fun, that is not what this game is about. This is a heartfelt tale of simple people caught in this massive machine and how their lives are strewn about. There are five main characters that you play: four humans and one dog. The overall story brings these characters together, pushes them apart, and immerses you into individual areas of the Western Front where the main armies of Germany, France, and Great Britain have stalled in the mud. Miraculously, the overall object of this game is not about killing. You don’t wander about with a rifle looking for spikey-helmeted enemies to snipe, instead you focus on the survival of your friends and family. You quickly learn that valor is found in battlefields, but it does not need to be measured in kill/death ratios.
The cartoony, Castle-Crasher-esque art style of this game might seem weird considering the weighty content you encounter, but like the intentions of a good chef preparing a great meal, this game is both sweet and salty. The contrast of what you see and what you feel is striking, and heightens the overall horror of battle along with the beauty of the characters’ intentions. There is no language spoken in this game except the occasional one-syllable affirmation, instead the story is conveyed with narration, and the characters communicate with Sims-like pictogram word balloons. It’s another in a line of odd artistic choices in this game that works perfectly in contrast to what you would expect in a war saga. This game turns out to be a creative force, and it contains many different aspects that can satisfy even the most hardened gamer. It should leave you with a new appreciation of this war in general, along with a sympathy for those who had to endure it.