For the last few days the Templin Institute has been undercover across the battlefields of 2042.
Sometimes fighting for the Russians, other times, for the Americans. As interdimensional
investigators it’s imported we’re impartial. But the entire time, something’s felt a little off to
me. Previously the Templin Institute talked about the world of 2042 and we approached this alternate
version of the future the same we typically do. We discussed the big picture; the structure of
governments, the movement of geopolitical power, the rationale for war, the types of
things a general or world leader might focus on. But while I don’t think the world of 2042 was
very compelling from this top down perspective, after getting some boots on the ground experience,
I also don’t think it's very interesting from the perspective of a soldier either.
And no, it’s not because of all the wacky shenanigans
in what is supposed to be a serious war, or the fact that the same 10 people seem
to be fighting each other as part of some kind of clone army, although this certainly doesn’t help.
Instead, I want to focus on what the Templin Institute usually is forced to gloss over in
the interest of time, all the little details. These aren’t the elements that are going to
single-handedly destroy or cement the plausibility of the larger world but just small opportunities
to add something to the overall experience. Well, 2042 has plenty of these opportunities,
and unfortunately in most cases, it decided to avoid doing anything interesting with them.
But before we start complaining about things most people aren’t going to care
about or even notice, let’s start with some of the bigger, or at least medium
sized issues. The first has to do with the war between the United States and Russia and where
its actually taking place. For a conflict that has been described as all out-warfare,
it doesn’t really feel that way, more like a bunch of isolated skirmishes where the opposing sides
just happened to run into each other. And that has a lot to do with what’s being fought over.
In a lot of wars, where the battles take place can tell you a lot about the strategic situation.
The closer the Soviets are to Berlin, the worse the Germans are doing.
If Americans are landing in Shanghai, things aren’t going great for the Chinese.
But the major battles in 2042 seem to occur at random places across the world,
with no explanation of how each side got there,
what they’re hoping to achieve, or how it fits into the greater strategic situation.
I think there was an opportunity here to subtly indicate how the war was progressing, to track
the progress of each side by looking at where the battlefields were placed within a larger front.
Instead, trying to make sense of how these fit into a wider conflict is just kinda frustrating.
What makes it worse I think though, is that even the people commanding these
operations don’t seem to know what's going on. Here’s what one American
commander had to say before launching an operation against the Russians in India.
“Russians have been nosing around a ship recycling facility in Alang India. And now
one of our subs is tracking a substantial naval force converging on it. We don’t know exactly what
the Russians want, but they aren’t going to get it. You’re being deployed to secure the facility.
First of all, the American military probably shouldn’t be telling some random mercenary
working for them that they have a submarine tracking a Russian naval force. That’s the
sort of thing you’d want to compartmentalize to maintain information security. But hey,
at least they’re telling me something. The rest of the briefing basically boils down to “the Russians
are here and we don’t know why but they must be stopped”. And this is about as detailed as
it gets. And I don’t know, doesn’t that just seem kind of lame? Why should I care what the Russians
are doing in a scrapyard, nothing particularly important seems to be at stake. If the Russians
were invading New York, or breaking through the Fulda Gap, well that’s a different story.
Ignoring for the moment that a shipbreaking yard doesn't seem to be of any strategic significance,
just as an experiment, what if that commander had said something like this.
“Russian forces have broken through the Bhavnagar perimeter
and are racing towards Alang from the west. If they reach the coast, they’ll have encircled three
American divisions and cut off our last beachhead for 90 miles. This can’t be allowed to happen.”
It’s not perfect I know, but I think it provides just enough details to be interesting
and provide at least some kind of stakes. These mission briefings were another opportunity to
sell me on the importance of these battles, but instead, it all seems kinda half hearted.
Well what about the equipment then. If nothing else it’s cool to see what
tanks and helicopters the Americans and Russians are using in the near future.
And there are some interesting details here. The current M1 Abrams seems to have been updated
to include some additional sloped armor on the turret, and is now going by the M1A5 designation,
the Russians meanwhile are using the T-28, a new iteration of the modern T14 Armata.
The Russians are also using updated versions of the KA-50 helicopter and the Superhind, the
Americans have a new Warchief Apache and a successor to the V-22 Osprey called the Condor,
all pretty good. But the rest of the inventory seems a little strange.
Both sides use the same scout helicopter, the American made MD540 Nightbird.
Why are the Russians using an American helicopter? It’s not like they don’t have their own comparable
designs. Where it gets even stranger is that both the Americans and Russians are using the Wildcat,
an anti-air vehicle based on the modern Jaguar,
produced by France. Now it’s not impossible that both sides would import foreign designs,
but for the Russians especially this doesn’t seem necessary, and again, just seems kinda lame.
Even the vehicle camouflage is shared between both sides. Which
just seems like another missed opportunity. There are a lot of cool schemes out there,
usually specific to one nation or another, but they’re ignored in favor of the same
generic patterns with the same generic names. What the hell is Tier 1 camouflage supposed
to be? What kind of army would decide this is a good way to camouflage a tank?
I think it would have been kind of cool to take a lesson from World War 2. In the years after the
conflict, the paint schemes used by each side were often identified by the battlefields and years
they were used in, so you had things like Soviet Pattern, Leningrad, Winter 1942. German Pattern.
Normandy, 1944. If the camouflage used in 2042 had been named in this same way, we might have gotten
some interesting insights. Italian Front, Winter 2039. North Korea, Summer 2041. I think it might
have been pretty unique if the camouflage patterns weren’t throwaway cosmetic details, but rather a
way in which those who cared to look could get a bit more detail into what's going on in the world.
There are so many little things, missed opportunities that just irk me a bit. How
the medals and awards given out seem to have come from Hot Topic, with neon camouflage. Campaign
ribbons from our modern world look really awesome, why couldn’t I have gotten one of those. Or how
commanding officers keep talking about how our side is “running out of resources” as if we don’t
have enough wood or gold to keep fighting. Or how sometimes the area we’re fighting over is referred
to as a “map”. I can’t imagine Patton ever saying that he was going to take over the map.
Of course, when the bullets are flying and you’re trying to avoid getting run over by a hovercraft,
all the details I’ve talked about become secondary pretty quick. And to be clear, I
don’t think the World of 2042 is severely damaged or made less plausible by any of them alone. But
all these elements were opportunities to make the conflict between Russia and the United States
just a bit more interesting, to provide some cool information in a way that’s normally overlooked.
As it stands right now, the War of 2042 feels a lot like the White Team is fighting
the Black Team for control over Generica. And no matter how satisfying it is to blast apart
the enemy with my tank, I can’t imagine this conflict ever being very memorable.
But that of course is just my opinion. And even though I am the best tank commander in the entire
clone army, I’d like to hear your thoughts. Are all these details of no importance at all to you.
Do you love getting neon medals and fighting over meaningless scrap yards?
Let me know in the comments below, and until next time, this has been incoming.