“War is not fun” This shooting video game is the anti Call of Duty par excellence: it’s a documentary!

Thursday 26th September 2024 01:10 AM

Game news “War is not fun” This shooting video game is the anti Call of Duty par excellence: it’s a documentary!

Published on 09/25/2024 at 4:00 p.m.

Gamescom 2024 was recently the theater of operations for the entire video game industry. The majority of major publishers and studios in the 10th Art met at the Koelnmesse in Cologne to present the future of video games. On the sidelines, more modest but certainly talented creators are trying to make a place for themselves in an increasingly competitive market. Announced in the 2000s, Six Days in Fallujah was finally parachuted onto Steam in June 2023. This video game centered on the second battle of Fallujah, far from advocating war, presents itself as an “anti Call of Duty”.

A controversial development

Making a film about recent historical events is no easy task. Clint Eastwood can attest to this with “The 15:17 to Paris”. Developing a video game about a battle that profoundly changed the world is even more complex. The simple fact that players embody the fighters heightens the immersion and with it the controversy. The development of Six Days in Fallujah began in 2007, three years after the events. Faced with the controversies that hit this FPS (for First Person Shooter), the Japanese publisher Konami decided two years later to withdraw from the project and leave Atomic Games alone.

The problems continued for the American studios, who were unable to find a new publisher. Even Sony Interactive Entertainment, which had been interested in the title for a while, eventually pulled out. Despite the closure of Atomic Games in 2011, its president Peter Tamte declared that Six Days in Fallujah was not cancelled. Six years later, he reiterated his words even though the FPS was still in the making. Hope returned in February 2021. Victura, a company founded by P. Tamte, is relaunching the project and entrusting it to Highwire Games, a studio made up of former Bungie employees (Halo, Destiny). Six Days in Fallujah finally releases on June 22, 2023 in Early Access on PC (Steam).

A video game documentary

Six Days in Fallujah is not yet another first-person shooter video game promoting (or even propagandizing) the US military. On the contrary, The vision of this FPS developed by Highwire Games is diametrically opposed to that of the masters of the genre, Call of Duty in the lead. It’s not about saving the world, alone against everyone, facing hordes of enemies with questionable motivations and going through a story that is essentially Manichean. This video game documentary – that’s how the teams describe the project – has as its main objective to reveal war in its most real and terrible form.

This vision defended by Highwire Games is based on three pillars which form the foundation on which rests a gaming experience that is desired to be realistic in every sense of the term. Six Days in Fallujah was born from the imagination of a Marine eager to expose his experiences on the front lines to a wide audience without any bombast or misplaced heroism. This FPS places players in the shoes of a US soldier, an Iraqi father and an Iraqi soldier. Like the documentary it aims to be, it multiplies the points of view on the events and punctuates the missions with real testimonies. More than 70 people confided in the Highwire Games “microphone” in order to depict a battle that changed the face of the world forever.

Six Days in Fallujah is a video game, which means giving players control. Far from offering a Reagan experience shot with adrenaline and gunpowder, this shooter intends to be the “greatest war simulation ever made”. The personal actions of “Call of Duty” fade away in favor of a squad shooter playable alone (Story Mode) with AI and in cooperation alongside real humans (Co-op Mode). The artificial intelligence of your comrades in arms has been the subject of considerable work to be credible on the front. It is possible, and strongly recommended, to guide them and apply real military maneuvers to ensure their survival, although they know perfectly well how to defend themselves.

Six Days in Fallujah is not about being fun, but about conveying emotions to players that are as close to reality as possible. This is achieved through a restrictive injury system, sporadic and highly lethal encounters, and procedural generation of environments. Highwire Games wants to strike fear into the hearts of gamers, and there’s nothing like plunging virtual soldiers into the unknown to achieve their goals. Finally, developed under Unreal Engine 4, the FPS from Highwire Games is draped in photorealistic visuals which contribute to its documentary dimension.

Still in Early Access, Six Days in Fallujah will offer the first two missions of its story mode on PC from November 2024 before a future release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.