But what is it in Empire?

I really don’t think that people would take a 20th Century Total War as a Hitler: Total War. The potential problem here isn’t taking over the world (that was the aim in Axis and Allies, and nobody complained about that), but the sensitivity of the Holocaust and other such atrocities. And the solution is simple. Don’t mention them. Despite the fact that the Holocaust happened in real life, if you don’t have the capability to perform it, and it doesn’t appear in a historical event notification window, and your faction leader’s name isn’t Hitler (or Stalin, for that matter), but instead some randomly picked name like it is in Empire…then it hasn’t happened in your game, and really nobody can complain, unless it’s that you DIDN’T include it.

I’m not convinced this is actually any kind of serious issue.

Of course, erm, Total War don’t have this option available to them without looking a bit unoriginal.

Lets fast forward to the modern era then, how would the game deal with the situation of the World Wars and coincidentally, Hitler; nuclear war and all the other horrendous atrocities we saw? Simple, they don’t have to happen. If the game starts in the late 1800’s when the major wars of that period (Crimean especially) then the game would start at a perfect place.

This was a time when the major powers started an arms race, namely Britain and Germany at the time, if we are inserted into the game here, then we have the chance to control our own destiny. Rather than escalate the situation which led towards World War One, we can take the peaceful approach and lead Europe into decades of peace; or take the continent into war again.

Take it a step further, regardless of what happens with a possible World War One, in 1917/1918 the first tanks become available to develop. So too at this time they could implement a Russian Civil War, though again that touches on dangerous territory with Stalin. In 1945 the nuclear bomb is created and such forth on in history.

In this way I think it would be simple enough to avoid the moral dilema posed by the 20th Century still being part of the recent past and firmly engrained on our memories. The one issue with taking the game in this direction and not necessarily having Hitler appear is that people would think that the game is skirting the issues.

That poses another massive problem, but that is best left for another long ramble.

What I often hate in many games is the bad kind of PC. The kind of PC that makes issues totally shallow by making it interchangeable and remove anything that could even be a slightly provocative. Like Assasins Creed does with the religion and Crusade stuff. I hate that stuff passionately.

Personally I’d love to see these issues being handled in a game, making people think about it, allow players to discover that history in different perspectives. Even with the slavery stuff in Empire Total War it could’ve been done.

I actually feel that I’d be fine playing a FPS as a German soldier. You are after all, but a cog in the machine, having been put into place and geared up by the Nazi propaganda machine. But I’m not really sure how you can honestly portray the administration of Nazi Germany, or indeed any of the nations of the period without making clear the fact that their affairs were often undertaken in the context of some horrific ideology. Remember, the main players outside of the Axis weren’t totally absolved of sins, being post-Imperial powers. After all, British planes strafing Iraqi villages in a desperate effort to keep “the locals” under sway is a very potent image in peoples minds and is a painful memory (and even more painfully re-lived today) to the people of the Middle East today. Conversly, I suppose you could argue that like slaves in Empire, they’ll be more or less “put to the side”, with the game focusing soley on Economic/Miltary/Administrative matters in the way the Hearts of Iron series does – which is probably the best comparison to a Total War game set in the modern age.
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The thing is I suppose, we are pretty much all connected to these horrific Imperial abominations in our own ways. While Empire is starting to include nations that have more or less stretched through to the present in one shape or form, I think we’ve long come to be able to distance ourselves from the Red Coats. We can however, still associate ourselves with the men and women who fought and died in wars past and present. We totally understand that wars in earlier periods were undertaken by corrupt kings or governments – and we know that we should be wary of associating ourselves with them.
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It’s harder however telling someone to take control of say, the British at the turn of the century when they’re so directly associated with the government of today. But on the other hand – maybe we need teaching about who our ancestors really were? What they really did? What they still do. When I put it that way mind, perhaps I’d revel in the idea of teaching people the brutal reality of British Imperial rule as late as the 1960s for a change…