Valiant Hearts: The Great War Review

“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

                     - Martin Luther King, Jr.

There’s no way around it: war is hell.  Countless dead soldiers and bloodstained battlefields can attest to this a thousand times over.  I think we can all agree with that, at least to some extent, as have literature, films, paintings and other mediums in their countless attempts to capture the mind-numbing brutality of this necessary evil.  Obviously, video games are not ones to shy away from this topic, especially considering the popularity of the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises.  But if you take a second to really examine these games, you’ll find that most of them typically put forth little effort to showcase the full impact of war, outside of its affects to the combatants.  Nine times out of ten, these games will focus on either delivering intense, visceral combat or taking control of entire armies and leading them into battle. 

Either way, games that hope to reveal the true face of war, that being its mental, emotional and psychological toll for both soldiers and civilians, are unfortunately few and far between.  Granted, this concept may not be the most glamorous idea to advertise, but a truth such as this is one that still needs to be shown to the public, and Valiant Hearts: The Great War is more than up to the task.  Based around the eponymous “Great War”, Ubisoft Montpellier’s depiction of the First World War does not seek to be the next great FPS or produce another glorified game of chess.  Rather, it aims to construct a far more humble experience, utilizing puzzles as its primary gameplay component and allowing for us to divert our attention more so to our surroundings, giving us time to develop a greater recognition of just what war is capable of.  It may have its share of minor flaws, such as narrative quirks and ambiguous objectives, and its art style is undeniably unorthodox, but Valiant Hearts certainly succeeds at its principal goal: teaching us one of life’s most callous lessons, whether we want to listen or not.

                This lessons all starts with the graphics and sound of Valiant Hearts.  Naturally, it goes for a very drab, depressing style, but it oddly enough also captures the characters and their surroundings in a relatively cartoonish, almost caricature-esque fashion, albeit with a more reserved, realistic take on their gesticulations.  Houses and hilltops alike either bear the scars of war or at least have their color scheme dulled, but are also shown in a very sketchy style, with pencil markings apparent on many surfaces.  That is not to say that all locations have this macabre appearance, such as earlier stages set across the rather vibrant and lively France, but when the game needs to capture the horrors of war, it does not hold back.

And the same can be said for the game’s heavily piano-based soundtrack.  Each song appropriately matches its pertaining level, perfectly capturing every type of emotion that needs to be conveyed, from a slow, heart-string tugging piece when tending to wounded soldiers to far more intense, pulse-pounding segments when rushing through trenches and enemy machine gun fire.  There are even some tributes to more popular orchestra piece, like Flight of the Bumblebee, during certain sections of the game to deliver a more light-hearted tone (more on that later).  It’s nothing that we’ll remember years from now, but the music still performs its duties well enough to keep us transfixed on the game.

But why the cartoonish art style?  Personally, I have no strong feelings about the general visual appeal of the graphics, if only because they feel somewhat out of place.  They do their job perfectly fine, but their impact comes less from the graphics alone and more from how they meld together with the rest of the game.  However, I can commend the art style on what I assume it was utilized for.  As I’ve said before and will no doubt say many times after this, war is a violent spectacle that can cause even the most hardened of veterans to wince.  Not everyone is up to the task of seeing the bloodshed up close; even those who are simply learning about its history.  Utilizing less realistic graphics, while still implementing dramatic storytelling and portraying the bellicose turmoil that the war begets, as we’ll see later, allows the player to be able to stomach the tragedy while still understanding it and its impact, even if the later stages can really push the envelope on illustrating the brutality.  I’m not the hugest fan of the art style, but I can at least understand its purpose.

As for the gameplay, as I mentioned before, Valiant Hearts falls away from the cliché war game styles and prefers to create a puzzle-based experience which, although it is not unheard of, manages to explore each element of war quite successfully.  The player controls one of several characters throughout the game, typically traversing various 2D plains in order to accomplish the current objective, whether it be trying to cross a series of trenches in order to push back enemy forces or exploring a small town and trading various items in order to get a new wheel for your car.  The former sequences are quite fast paced and typically have the player dodging mortar fire and machine guns, as well as cutting away the occasional barbed wire or digging through specified patches of dirt.  The latter are more laid back, allowing the player to analyze their surrounding and piece together what item needs to go where in order to spark a chain of events that leads the player to the item required to end the mission.

You are also given a throwing mechanic that shows the trajectory of whatever you are throwing, typically a grenade to destroy an obstacle, and are occasionally accompanied by a Doberman Pinscher named Walt who can retrieve various items that the player cannot reach or act as a second player to activate various switches and levers when the player is occupied.  Generally, these levels function quite nicely, giving the player a clear objective and understanding of how certain puzzles function.    However, although it is rare, some levels can suffer from a sense of ambiguousness surrounding objectives (the P.O.W. camp) or even what certain items are supposed to be, but this occurs so sparsely that it’s not something worth losing sleep over. Some puzzles can be also quite challenging, but neither the dodging of mortars, nor the more relaxed puzzle sequences, ever feel cheap or downright impossible to figure out without a guide; a bit of common sense and critical thinking can go a long way. 

On top of this, Valiant Hearts spices things up here and there with vehicle segments and healing mini-games.  A few of the former segments feature the player driving tanks across battlefields in order to break through enemy lines more swiftly, albeit while dealing with enemy machine guns and fighter planes.  As for the rest of the segments, this is where Valiant Hearts takes a strange, but none the less humorous, turn.  Trying to experiment with some comic relief for these parts, which I’ll be delving into later, these sections have the player driving an old (and I mean OOOOLLLLD) car along a road with the camera facing towards them, giving us a behind view similar to the boulder segments in Crash Bandicoot.  The segments will task the player with dodging a variety of obstacles, such as mortars, other cars, barrels and the like, depending on the current scenario, all attacking the player in sync with an accompanying well-known music piece, essentially turning the segment into a music mini-game.

Like the issues I brought up with the art style before, I have nothing bad to say about these mini-game by themselves, as they function well enough and can be quite exhilarating at time.  But, like the art style, they just feel totally out of place.  Chase sequences would have been fine, but turning them into musical mini-games, particularly when you take the game’s focus into account, makes the sequences unnecessarily awkward.  The healing mini-games, on the other hand, feel right at home with the themes at hand.  Whenever you encounter an injured NPC, you can sometimes initiate a healing segment which boils down to timed button prompts as you go about performing the necessary steps towards treating them, such as dulling the pain with a swig of whiskey or removing a bullet.  What makes these segments stand out is the emotion tied to them  Not only do you hear every scream and groan of pain from the victim, but you also run the risk of killing them if you cannot perform the button prompts correctly, which does get trickier in later levels.  When taking these factors into account, these segments can get downright hair-raising.

But going back to the bulk of the game, the puzzle sequences can offer far more than the occasional brain teaser.  For example, most levels have various historical relics scattered across them.  Upon collecting them, the player gains access to little factoids that explain the significance behind what they just collected, be it a letter written by a homesick soldier, sterilizing solutions used to purify water or the various weapons used during the conflict.  They don’t add much depth to the game, but they at least help the player grasp what occurred during the war.

There are also some odd little quirks and glitches that occur throughout that don’t exactly ruin the mood, but can certainly leave the player laughing inadvertently or scratching their head at what they just witnessed.  Characters will occasionally moon-walk after returning from a cutscene and the enemy guards can be downright robotic at time.  Granted, I understand that we’re dealing with a puzzle game and not Splinter Cell, but how many times am I expected to accept the idea that the German soldiers wouldn’t find a random dog walking past them, snatching up various supplies and running off with them just a tad queer?  So, yes, these moments can lead to some rather odd moments in Valiant Hearts, but all of that pales in comparison to what the gameplay is truly capable of. 

What’s really alluring about making a puzzle game based around World War I is just how humbling the experience is when compared to your average war game.  When the very term “war game” is mentioned, how can you not immediately think of Call of Duty, of a nameless warrior barreling down a corridor and blowing away anything with a pulse?  To be fair, this type of gameplay does show us the intensity of war and how death can emerge from behind any corner, but practically every other aspect of war is completely overshadowed by the sometimes mindless FPS mechanics.

With Valiant Hearts, it becomes readily apparent that your characters are not killing machines.  They can’t perform amazing acrobatic feats, pull off headshots from 300 yards away or take down a platoon of soldiers single handedly.  They’re all working-class folks that just feel human, having to work past their limitations and use their brains instead of a wide array of weapons.  Because of this, you don’t get to shoot all your troubles away.  You have to face them head-on, whether they are emotional or tangible, and it is here that the game truly prospers.

Perhaps I should have brought this up first, but I always feel like the most important element of a game deserves to be brought up last.  Writing etiquette aside, Valiant Hearts starts at the very beginning of the First World War, wherein a German-born farmer named Karl is deported back to Germany while he lives in France with his wife Marie, his son Victor and his father-in-law Emile.  Karl is drafted into the German army, while Emile is soon drafted into the French army, leaving Marie to fend for herself and Victor.  Along the way, Emile comes across an American soldier named Freddie, who joined the war as a means of revenge against the German military, a high-ranking officer named Baron von Dorf in particular, because of one of their bombing runs that killed his wife shortly after their wedding in France, as well as Anna, a Belgian medic who throws herself into the war effort, primarily helping injured soldiers on the front line.  Together, they both delve into their own personal missions and work side-by-side in order to face down everything that the war can throw at them, although some characters end up having more success than others.

I could spend hours upon hours deconstructing this story from beginning to end, but just take my word for it when I say this it is a pure emotional roller coaster that very few games can match, at least in my opinion, and it all starts with the general structure of the narrative.  Each chapter is paced perfectly, both in action and narrative delivery.  Once you’ve completed an action sequence, it will typically be followed by a more relaxed, albeit occasionally stressful, sequence that lets the player absorb everything that happened previously.  Better yet, no one’s story every feels rushed.  Whether characters are working together or independently, as soon as someone gets some screen time, the next person will get an ample amount.  And that’s before we even get into the meat of the narrative.

Valiant Hearts’s uses a very minimalistic script, with actual voice acting only being used for narration, occasionally from Marie or Emile as they write letters, but mostly from Dave Pettitt, who serves as the nameless narrator.  Pettitt’s performance is nothing short of haunting throughout the game and you get the sense that his voice was made to talk about this subject.  Every utterance from him makes it feel like he was there in person to witness the violence, and even when he speaks of lighter news, his voice still has a depressing tone that simply won’t allow us to forget what has transpired around us.  Surprisingly, however, the seemingly mute characters are just as, if not more, adept at emoting as the story unfolds.

Most of the characters do speak through quick journal entries found in the menu, but most of the time, they and the NPCs that comprise this world speak in a relatively unintelligible imitation of their native language, spouting it in a fashion that doesn’t sound too distant from Simlish.  Even when a character needs to specify something, such as a destination, they will instead show a speech bubble that is filled with symbols of what they are trying to discuss.  This all goes back to the cartoonish art style of the game, but it also allows for the player to ignore what these individuals are saying and focus on their actions.  We don’t find ourselves transfixed on what one statement might have meant and prefer to focus on how Emile is helping Freddie through a particular mission to overthrow a German weapon manufacturer or how Anna is assisting various civilians in a war-torn portion of France.  This lack of speech allows the player to make their own judgment call on these characters and ultimately allowed me to gain a greater connection with these characters than any script could.

But that’s not to say that the narrative is perfect.  Its accomplishments still help it to stand head and shoulders above many games of its kind, but, much like the gameplay, it will have its baffling moments that are sure to raise a few eyebrows.  First of all, certain plot points feel relatively hastened through, missing key details that would keep the plot flowing smoothly or simply not giving a segment enough time to adhere to the player’s psyche and make any sort of impact.  I look to Karl’s attempt at escaping a P.O.W. camp with a fellow soldier as the shining example of this flaw.  Upon being surrounded by French forces in an abandoned barn and with the other soldier dead and sprawled on the ground, Karl manages to escape capture only by hiding behind a bale of hay and swapping his dog tag with his dead comrade, somehow convincing the French to leave the area and end their search.  So, I guess were just gonna forget about the fact that they were looking for TWO men, not just one, not to mention that switching dog tags will just make the soldiers think that you’re the other man that they’re looking for.  Moments like this don’t exactly shatter Valiant Heart’s immersion, but strengthening said immersion isn’t one of their strong points either.

The other big problem stems from the game’s attempt at comic relief.  With the amount of death and destruction facing the player in nearly every mission, it comes as no surprise that the developers would want to try and lighten the mood periodically.  And I’m more than willing to acknowledge that the humor can be very effective in its own right.  Baron Von Dorf actively acts like a comically over-the-top villain during your encounters with him, German soldiers are just a step away from using flappy jaw animations when they speak and even the musical driving mini-games, as out of place as they are, still manage to deliver a few laughs, if only because of how outright ridiculous they can get. 

The problem is not that the humor isn’t effective, but rather that there is a lack of synergy between it and the dramatic elements of the game.  We’re not exactly dealing with a black comedy in Valiant Hearts, so any attempt at humor will naturally feel inappropriate.  But, it doesn’t even seem like the humor is stemming from simply trying to cut loose a little bit and crack a joke in order to cope with the violence, as can be expected from soldiers during their down time.  Every attempt at humor can be attributed to the games attempts at being cartoonish, which simply does not blend well with a narrative that wants us to understand just how dark war can be.  It feels like we’re dealing with two separate scripts that someone tried to meld into one, albeit with most of the script being on the more serious side.  Comedy can be effective when referencing war, but only if that is the main goal of your story.  Otherwise, it’s just going to seem like the developers can’t decide on what they even want to produce.

Thankfully, like many of this game’s flaws, problems like this don’t do much to harm this game’s image, especially because of its sheer emotional appeal, arguably its strongest asset.  What Valiant Hearts gets better than anything else is its ability to help us truly understand what war is like; not just combat, but EVERYTHING that war can beget.  Mission structure can be rather simplistic, but it is the variety of subjects that are tackled that attribute to this.  You get to see the successful battles, rally the troops and standing victorious as the Central Powers retreat, and the major defeats, with the Allies recuperating as they tend to their wounded and honor their dead.  You get to see French forces reveling in their successes and partying to old-timey music and you get to see them in their darker hours, their uniforms covered in patches and the scars of war beginning to materialize.  One second, you’ll be exploring a relatively peaceful city in France, and the next, you’ll be rummaging through the ruins of that same city after a bombing run, doing your best to save and assist as many civilians as you can.

The Allied forces won't be the only one see the destruction of war firsthand.

 And even the moods set by these missions feel fitting.  You feel like you can take a breather and relax during more peaceful sequences, with the sun shining down upon you and light musical pieces playing in the background.  But as soon as the bombs drop or someone is at death’s door, your fight-or-flight instincts are guaranteed to start kicking up, with the skies darkened by smoke and fire and explosion constantly attempting to overload your senses as you try to maneuver past each challenge.

And then there’s the human aspect.  War can have a great psychological impact on individuals, as you’ll no doubt see and feel.  However, Valiant Hearts goes further than this and serves as a reminder that whether you want to acknowledge it or not, you’re still fighting fellow human beings.  Outside of the combat, you’ll play through a number of instances where you’ll either see the war through the eyes of the Germans, be it when they are celebrating and carrying on after having taken a French base or maintaining a miserable existence inside of the P.O.W. camp, or actually interact with and assist them in some way, like how Emile encounters a German soldier trapped in an underground tunnel system and helps him escape, only for the French generals to order the German tunnels blown up, killing Emile’s German acquaintance and effectively rendering Emile disillusioned about the war.  Taking all this into account, we still find ourselves wondering why governments love to throw out propaganda during wars, painting the enemy as bloodthirsty monsters and godless heathens, as if it weren’t blatantly obvious.  It’s a hell of a lot easier to kill someone when you think they embody evil, instead of recognizing them as a man like yourself who’s fighting for his country the same way that you’re fighting for yours.

And even the little details can drive home just war is capable of.  The key to creating either a captivating story or an immersive world in a video game all comes down to details.  Ironically enough, if you can’t nail down the seemingly minute stuff in your game, many of your strengths will be all for naught, as they all need a foundation to be built upon.  Without it, the strengths now seem pointless and without direction.  It is through these small details that Valiant Hearts truly captures the look and feel of Europe during World War I.  During healing mini-games, you hear the victim’s heartbeat as they moan in pain, trying their damnedest to withstand having a broken bone being set in place or having a bullet removed from their side.  Corpses are scattered across the battlefields as you push forward to the next turret emplacement.  Civilians and soldiers alike will scream in fear and agony as every structure around them turns to rubble in the face of continuous mortar bombardments. 

And then there’s the Nivelle Offensive.  Noted for being one of the most devastating Allied losses in the entire war, the offensive lead to over 200,000 soldiers losing their lives and the developers wasted no effort in reminding you of this.  The moment you start this mission late into the game, you’ll be controlling Emile, being told by his commanding officer to scrounge up any soldiers he can find for the next push in the offensive, many of whom are either sick or already injured.  Before you even leave the camp, you’ll notice the background littered with bandaged, bloodied soldiers (this is one of the only levels that actually features blood, by the way) as medics pour into the camp with even more victims of the offensive, a grim reminder of what is to come for the next participants. 

I dare anybody to show me a picture that better displays the brutality of war than this.

The further you move into the battle, the worse things will get.  More and more of your already injured squad mates will be shot down; mortars will pour down like rain, making most segments ridiculously unnerving; the sounds around you will begin to blur into a dull ringing; Emile will literally be forced to climb hills of corpses and hide behind carts filled with dead French soldiers in order to advance.  And all of this will happen while a French officer pressures the squad forward at gunpoint, eventually trying to get them to run out into the sights of several machine gunners with no cover whatsoever to rely on.    Emile, much like ourselves, will have had enough and smacks the officer upside the head with his shovel, fracturing his skull and killing him instantly, causing Emile to be arrested and tried for mutiny. 

And even though the game has had its fair share of brutality up to this point, I feel that it is this mission that serves as a testament to what war can do to a person and how successful Valiant Hearts is at encapsulating this sensation.  Like Emile, I was utterly drained and jaded by the time the game ended.  I really found myself wondering if all of this mayhem was really worth it in the end; if all the dead soldiers and civilians were worth it; if the physical and psychological scars were worth it.  This is the power of Valiant Hearts: it doesn’t just give you an idea of what World War I was like.  It makes you truly perceive and understand why it is so detested and what kind of damage it can do.  And while it may stray from the path here and there and suffer from some minor flaws, there is no mistaking that it has captured the spirit of war and its awful power more effectively than even the most experienced war novelists could hope to.