There's been a lot of hooha's about the upcoming game from our dearest Luc Bernard, in the podtoid our beloved community leaders talked about the subject for a moment and Jim mentioned that he had once envisioned a nazi-simulator ( while being on the john ) and later on he mentioned a game called Mengelomania, a puzzlegame, check out the podtoid for more on these...

Now before I go any further, I just want to make some stuff clear to every reader of this post...

I absolutely loath Nazi's and just racists in general, my godchild is born of a black father ( he's my uncle of course ), I went to India to do volunteerswork and I've been a supporter of various goodwill project of different assortments over the course of my life... I simply came up with the idea of this game due to the general implication that there is no way you can make a nazi-game and make it 'acceptable', however, I believe that this notion is based upon the notion that all nazi soldiers in the war were a bunch of grade-a-assholes, while I know for a fact that this was not true ( a cousin of my grandfather was caught by the germans and was going to be transported off to Auschwitz, but one of the German soldiers sent him through a door that led straight out of the station so he could get away and live out the rest of his life...).

I believe that a game that shows the true horrors of nazi germany can be made without offending anyone in particular and still involve and engage the gamer, both into something that he likes ( an intriguing game ) and something that teaches him some more about the suffering that a lot of these nazi-soldiers went through. You see, lots of these guys were 'forced' into doing what they were doing... please allow me to paint you a picture of "my game"...

Please read to the end before flaming me as the real 'pointe' of the game will only become clear towards the end...

note to moderators: if this is to offensive, just send me a message and I'll get it off! It's not meant to be offensive, just a tought-exercise

Welcome to:

Call Of Nazi Germany

We start off in the 1930's, Germany is at the brink of bankruptcy, unemployment rates are at an alltime high. The intro-movie shows a factory being closed down, we follow a man looking very depressed, his shoulders hanging down, this man is in trouble, he has no way to provide for his wife and 3 children, we see him coming home, his youngest child is in bed with fever but he has no way to pay for a docter, after having suffered through several paycuts in the last couple of months and the rent- and foodprices rising, he was really waiting for his paycheck, it would've come next friday, just 2 days from now, but now he'll never get it, a whole month of work for free... He has no chance of finding another job, his company is the 6th in just the last year that has closed down in his neighbourhood, there simply are no available jobs...



the next day, as it was god himself working the handles behind the scenes comes the great news, the president has rejected the Treaty of Versailles and has decided to once again arm our beloved country! The army offers great pay, 3 meals a day and best of all there's a fee when you sign in! The fee would be enough to pay his rent for the next month and feed his family until his first paycheck ( in 2 weeks already ) would come in... It's 1935 and no real semblance of big problems seem ahead, the offer is just too good to reject! He has simply no other choice, like all the men in his neighbourhood, the next morning he sets of in the opposite direction as the day before, just as they walked in and out of the factory all these years before, he joined his neighbours and friends as they all went to sign up, basicly it was joining the army or dying of poverty...

as part of his military training, he must read that dreaded book:

in it he learns that his poverty is caused by the Jews, basicly it was a book about a conspiracy theory, in which the jews were secretly manipulating financial institutions to make the German people poor...

Please note that I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS but in the game it must be clear that we have the benefit of hindsight, in 50 years, people will probably be laughing at most of the popular conspiracy theories too, most people who read this book in those days had absolutely no reason to doubt its content, also note that in the book there is not a single mentioning of the genocide that was later to ensue since that idea would be brought forth by Himler, while the book was written in 1925 when Hitler was in prison and the title actually means "My Struggle" as in "My inner Struggle" not "My Camp" as is a common misconception



Here we can insert the bootcamp-training that is required in virtually any FPS ( although I would like to point out that this would be a rather RPG-oriented story with loads of different storylines and possibilities of endings). After the training we can skip forward a few months, while inserting lettres from home about how great things are turning our for his family 'back home' thanks to his valiant work in the army ( allthough he has not seen any action yet luckily enough and so far it has been easy money ) We also show the propaganda that these soldiers were fed during their stay at the army, about the whole of Germany and how great is had been doing since Hitler got the power ( most of this is due to the fact that he jumpstarted one of the largest examples of military arming in human history, off course this gave a lot of people jobs, not just in the army but also in the 'supply-chain' )

We forward the timeline to 1938, 2 months before his resignation, ( he's already got a job planned out to go to ), Hitler sends his army-division to Austria to bring the old Reich back to its former grandeur and glory, on the way to the dropoff point, his sergeant is explaining to him how Austria was always a part of Germany, since the beginning of the German Empire, so it is only just that they take it again! AGAIN NOT MY IDEAS!

As its only the first real level, and true to the course of History, resistance is minimal, there's a couple of small skirmishes and some nice snipershots on mountainguards :-)

After the campaign however, the news breaks that the president has decided to prolong all enlistments with 2 years! Well that sucks, but since our character has made it up to "Leutnant" due to his heroic saving of one of his fellow soldiers in the previous mission, that's actually good news, because he's earning a LOT more then he would at the new job and soldier families are getting free food-supplies, plus he rather enjoyed that first taste of fighting for the greater glory of his fatherland! Also, it was justified, Austria was theirs to begin with...



Then comes the invasion of Poland, just as the soldiers from back then there's no clear why, we just know that we have to form a front against the onslaught of the Russian Empire that has invaded Poland from the other side... There's some fierce fighting in these levels, but the player ( just as the soldier ) has no choice but to continue what he is doing since not following the orders would make him a deserter, a crime punishable by death, his family would also starve to death eventually as the shame that would be thrust upon them would make them outcasts of society... sadly this was very true, families of deserters sometimes even got thrown out of their homes simply because their father choose to do the right thing...

We continue onward in the game, reluctantly the soldier ( and thus the player ) accepts his situation, there is no way out now, luckily their valiant president will most surely lead them to victory, in a few years time they had been successful on many fronts already and as we play through the whole Blitzkrieg, the soldiers faith in the justness of the cause rises as the German Empire is growing like crazy, and according to the propaganda, most 'conquered' people are really happy that they are now a part of the Great German Empire...

Basicly at this moment in time, the soldier has no reason to want to leave the army other then the danger of being in the same place as a bullet at the wrong time, but he's made it through this far already, why leave a well paying job that is supporting his whole family easily, his contract has been prolonged again anyway, so leaving would once again mean desertion, a choice he simply cannot make...

Then comes the turning point in his "career" or at least a possible turning point, as I feel the player should be free to choose what to do in the situations that will befall him as the battle dies down and he's sent to Amsterdam, for some reason a lot of military personnel is being moved to the big city centres all over Europe. Like most of his contemporaries, he has no idea of what is going to happen...

This is the point of the game where the RPG-elements will become visible, since from now on every mission shall force the player to make difficult and hard choices that will have serious consequences over the course of the rest of the game. Some choices will seem good and righteous but the consequences can be dire...

We start of with one of the first missions, its all pretty innocent at the beginning, the soldier is ordered to escort a truck from the SS that looks like an airtight holding-truck with only 1 vent at the top. Like his commander has told him they're going to arrest some people that are suspected of serious crimes, there's no need for them to know the crimes judged his commander, and he was probably right thought the soldier...

They drive into the centre of town, the soldier being the driver of the SS-truck as the SS-officers couldn't be bothered driving their own truck, behind them is a truck full of his mates, they're all ready to grab these fucking criminals! The SS-officers guide them to a stately home in the centre of town, its a beautiful old house, shining with riches... "Must be some serious criminals" mutters one of the soldiers as he passes by, everybody gets ready to storm the house...

No resistance is met while storming the house, and the soldier can grab some familymembers (Jews logically) that are trying to get away ( its up to the player if he brings them in dead or alive... ) The surviving familymembers are stowed in the containment truck and the player is ordered to drive to the next raid-location...

On the road we see a few friends from our hometime on a chariot:

seeing them gives the soldier a happy memory ( possibly a movie should be shown now of a happy family moment from during one of his holidays at home ) which gets abrubtly broken off when the SS-officer yells at him for almost driving into a similar truck that is crossing their path... also with another truck full of soldiers behind it, as the truck passes the soldier hears a faint banging on the doors of the truck that passes and suddenly realises that his 'passengers' have stopped their banging, "Must've given up"

As we arrive at the next location, on of the SS-Officers opens the doors of the truck and the little daughter of the family ( that the soldier aprehended ) just tumbles out of the truck, the rest of the family lies dead in the truck, the soldier then sees the horrible truth, the exhaust of the truck has been fed directly into the holdingcompartment... A few soldiers are forced to unload the truck ( one refuses and gets shot in the head on the spot ) while the soldier looses his meal that he ate a few hours before on the street... He was driving... he brought in the little girl... That's why the bumping stopped...


The next raid begins, this time the soldiers sees most of the family members being caught by his fellow soldiers, however as he's doing a sweep of the attic, he finds a little girl, now what does the player do? Does he bring her in? Does he hide her, while running the chance of being caught doing it? Does he just walk away? And if he walks away, what will he answer when asked about it?

If the player hides her and gets caught, he is executed on the spot.
If the player says he didn't see anyone and his colleague goes in there, they will doubt his integrity, and its just been shown that that is not a good idea...
Then again, if nobody goes up there again, the girl is saved...

Like this the game goes on...

One situation after another, with each time a choice at the end between his life and that of somebody else's, but every time he makes a decision to save somebody else's life, he runs the risk of detection and thus execution, the question that drives this game is, how far are you willing to go to save your own life and that of your family?

Every time the player gets away with saving a life, his superiors and friends will become more suspicious of him and keep better track of him, making it harder and harder to 'do the right thing', also at regular intervals we'll 'remind' the player what the other option is...

I would make the game rise to a high point, where each mission makes the decision harder and more valuable, with in the end the player, working guard in Auschwitz discovering an escape tunnel in one of the barracks... Will the player save his own ass and family at the cost of 100's of people? Because if he's gotten this far, the player will allready have sacrificed quite a lot of innocent lives to save his own...



The end will be determined by how the player faces the problems laid before him, every victim saved is a witness that will testify in his favour at the trials and judgements that lay before him at the end of the war... It could even go as far as that when the allies come to set Auschwitz free, the player could be rescued by the people in the barrack with the tunnel since he's been helping them allready for quite some time or if the player ratted them out, the player dies at the hands of the allies...

Off course, during the course of the game, every time the player sacrifices somebody else, he sould be a witness to the horror that he has caused by staying alive...

Should the player survive all this, he still has to go home and face his nightmares of the evils that he DID commit, but the more people the player can save during his career, the happier the ending will be, but it will be a lot harder to achieve, since it would also involve killing some of your closest friends in the army when they discover what you've been up to, once again at those moments is simply him or the player....

THE END?



Ok, I do realise this is an insane amount of text... I've added a few pictures to lighten it up a bit, What do you guys think? How far would you go into the game before you sacrifice your family and yourself to save the life of somebody else?

Please note that I'm not trying to excuse anything these bastards did, but in the interest of the game I needed to create a character that has at least the possibility of being good, but at a cost!