Though in recent years the Call of Duty series has been entangled from one controversy to the next, there’s no doubt that when it comes to the action, war genre, it is definitely a staple next to Battlefield.
Before the unveiling of the highly anticipated reboot (Or sequel?) Of the infamous Modern Warfare arc, Call of Duty’s road path was heading from historical themes of the World Wars, to the modern day, and with Advanced Warfare - downright futuristic and as a result entirely fictional. Still, a lot of us still remember the old Call of Duty of the past.
In the process of making these games, the developers had done their fair share of research. In fact, it may even surprise you just how true to life the earlier Call of Duty were. Here are five things that are completely true historically in the Call of Duty series … and five things that aren’t.
The Regiments - Accurate
A war-theme game will be nothing without military language and jargons. But worry not, they are entirely accurate. Numerous regiments and units appearing in the games through the years were real. Including the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, and the 29th Infantry Division were all actual combat groups in the past.
It would be silly to think that a series as renowned as Call of Duty would go as far as inventing their own regiments and units when there are plenty of heroic stories to tell about the men of the past. Even then, it’s pretty amusing to know that they actually adhere to history as it is.
Full Auto - Inaccurate
From the original game to the vacuum of space in contemporary rendition of Call of Duty, you just need to hold down your left mouse button in less than five seconds and an entire magazine is expended. In real life, this is completely bogus. Yes, it is completely possible, however, no soldier in their right mind would try and do this. If they did, there would be a lot of yelling, insulting, and flying punches.
Ask any soldier, and they would tell you that full auto fire is almost never used, and it is the perfect way not to kill anyone, but to waste perfectly fine ammunition. Full auto fire is only used in very specific conditions. While from a gaming perspective, it’d be more entertaining to shower your enemies in a storm of lead. The reality is that there would be no way for you to be Rambo with a rifle in full auto on the battlefield. You’d be huddling in cover and pray, instead.
The Battles - Accurate
This probably wouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone: The battles in the earlier Call of Duty were all actual battles. Monumental battles in history like Operation Overlord (D-Day), Battle of Stalingrad, Battle of the Bulge e.t.c. are all real. And all three of them had been covered extensively through the years by movies, books, and certainly, games.
There are certainly more battles that we have ‘taken part’ in through the years: The Battle of Moscow, Second Battle of El Alamein, Battle of Hue, Battle of Khe Sanh, e.t.c. These moments in history were recreated into an immersive, moving experience through your computer screen.
How cool’s that?
No Swastikas - Inaccurate
One of the thing that Sledgehammer - the chosen developer of Call of Duty: WWII promised when they unveiled the game that the game would be ‘historically accurate’. In no time, the community slammed back when they found out that swastika - the infamous symbology of Nazi Germany - was not present in the multiplayer. There were two main reasons why players did not like this move: For one, they think that it is unwise to hide from history. And second, players were thinking that the game was too ‘soft’ to keep up the profits.
But the reasoning behind the move was quite complex.
Michael Condrey, the co-founder of Sledgehammer, said that he wanted multiplayer mode to be accessible to everyone. Having Nazi symbols in the game, according to him: “… wouldn’t bring honour, nor be appropriate, without the rich history of a WWII story to ground their context in multiplayer.”
The second thing is more legal-related. Germany prohibited any medias that carry Nazi imageries. Doing this would make Germans able to enjoy the game legally.
Female Soldiers In the Red Army - Accurate
Women indeed make extensive appearance within the lines of the Red Army during WWII. All in all, about 800,000 to two million female soldiers were present for duty in the Red Army. Their roles were incredibly diverse, from being medics, to engineers, communicators, and manning anti-aircraft batteries. Many women also saw the front line and actually partook in it. An example would be Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a sniper with 309 confirmed kills under her belt: The deadliest female sniper in recorded history.
Though this number maybe quite small in comparison to the track record of male’s sniper: Finnish Second Lieutenant Simo Häyhä of the Infantry Regiment 34 who scored 505 confirmed kill during the Winter War of 1939-1940. Even then, it is foolish to think that females are out of place on the gritty front line of the Second World War.
Grenades - Inaccurate
A well known feature in Call of Duty is the ability to pick up a grenade thrown by the enemy and tossed them right back before the fuse expired. When a grenade is sailing your way in Call of Duty, you have plenty of time to run the opposite direction and escape the blast in tact. Unfortunately, that’s how real life grenades work.
It’s not just a pitiful blast, real life grenades will throw shrapnels in all directions like a shotgun. Five feet wouldn’t cut it at all. It is understandable why the developers put it this way, since it would make grenades too powerful for the game to be enjoyable. But it is still quite a grave insult to real life grenades thinking that you could escape it by leaping five feet the opposite direction.
Black Soldiers in German Armed Forces - Accurate
The lack of swastikas was only one of the complaints about Call of Duty: WWII. The image of black soldiers on the German side was also something that was criticised by history buffs. Unfortunately for them, the argument doesn’t work: There are evidences that suggest, indeed, there were black people wearing German uniforms. There was a number of black people in the line of the Hitler Youth, and they did make appearance in the Wehrmacht - the land force of Nazi Germany.
Most of them were concentrated in the Legion Freies Arabien - Free Arabian Legion, a branch of the Wehrmacht composed primarily of volunteers in the Arabian regions. Although they were not everywhere as the video game depicted, they certainly existed.
Events - Inaccurate
While the battles are real, yes, the events depicted in them are far from reality and were mostly made up to serve a story to the player. All of the characters in the games were all fictional, and their capabilities were all quite unrealistic (Charging into the line of machine gun fire and came out unscathed, for example).
Some other events within the campaigns were sanitised and quickened in order to make it a more entertaining experience for the player. It’s pretty unreasonable to expect complete realism from a war video game, so we gladly place the creative license to the developers to spin the plot however they want. But that doesn’t mean a totally realistic re-visualisation of those battles wouldn’t be great to experience, however.
The Movements - Accurate
Though Modern Warfare and earlier games’ events may not be real, they still take place in this dimension, and that means abiding (Slightly) reality. Infinity Ward - the developer behind the Modern Warfare series - invited real U.S. Marines into the studio to aid with the development process. Mostly in ensuring that the emotions, attitudes, and expressions of the soldiers in the game are correct in the middle of front line, modern combat.
The Marines were also critical to designing the artificial intelligence and NPC in the game. They were also the supervisors behind the motion capture sessions that create the animations of characters in-game. This mean the actions, movements, thinking of the characters within the game are as true to life as can be, save for a couple exaggeration.
The Weapons - Inaccurate
Over the years, the Internet has dissected to Hell and back the weapons and how they’re represented in-game. By now, the faults that they have found had become a litany. For example, the rate of fire and magazine capacity of quite a lot of weapons in the game were grossly exaggerated. Some extended magazines didn’t even exist.
FG42’s firing rate was inaccurate in Call of Duty: WWII, the Breda M1935 PG did not exist in combat (It was a prototype, and never made it out of the prototype phase). The same fault was found in the Sterling - a prototype, never widely produced and distributed. The Volkssturmgewehr was far from the fully automatic beast that the developers have shown, it was in fact a semi-automatic rifle. Though most players wouldn’t really notice, the gun nuts who stumble upon the game would probably have a heart palpitation.