Call Of Duty: WWII: Not A Remaster, But It Might As Well Be

Time is a flat circle. 

- Hayden Dingman

Call of Duty: WWII isn’t a remaster, but it feels like one. As the gate crashed open on my landing craft and I sprinted desperately onto Omaha Beach, I half-expected to hear people yelling for Lieutenant Powell, star of 2002’s Medal of Honor: Allied Assault—the first game I remember doing the iconic D-Day opener.

This one stars a “Davis” instead, but that’s no big deal. 15 years on, Call of Duty: WWII is less “World War II as it actually existed” and more “World War II as it existed in video games between 1999 and 2008-ish,” a Greatest Hits Collection spanning from the original Medal of Honor through to Allied Assault, and eventually Call of Duty 1, 2, and 3.

It was the decade where everyone got sick of World War II games, but absence does indeed make the heart grow at least a little fonder.

ROAD TO BERLIN

“Everything in moderation” is not the games industry’s strong suit, which I guess is why we tend to get ideas in waves. We do sci-fi to death in the ‘90s so everyone moves on to World War II. Then we do World War II to death so we move on to modern war. That gets stale, we return to science fiction. And voila, 15 or 20 years later we’re reloading our M1 Garands.

And if Call of Duty: WWII is the start of a World War II renaissance, it’s about the safest bet you could make. Dredging up the ol’ D-Day (go.pcworld.com/dday) to VE-Day (go.pcworld.com/vedy) storyline once again, from June of 1944 through to April of 1945, it’s the same Band of Brothers/Saving Private Ryan story video games love to focus on. We’ve seen it in Allied Assault, in multiple Call of Duty games, in Gearbox’s underrated Brothers in Arms series, and so on.