Spontaneous Sunday: Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Welcome to Spontaneous Sunday week 7. This week I have played Valiant Hearts: The Great War (2014, Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft, Xbox One). This was one of the free games offered with Xbox Live's "Games With Gold" feature in October 2015 and had been sat unplayed on my hard-drive since then.

"Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a puzzle adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montpellier and published by Ubisoft. Valiant Hearts is a puzzle-based game which takes place across the course of World War I, the Great War, putting players in the role of four characters; the Frenchman Emile, his German son-in-law Karl, American soldier Freddie, and Belgian nurse Anna."

- Wikipedia on Valiant Hearts

What do I expect from the game?

Having downloaded the game for free with Games With Gold, I had a quick look at the screenshots and read the game's description and some user reviews before playing it today. I knew that it was a 2D puzzle game set in World War I but not much else, but I did have some expectations.

I expected it to involve a lot of combat, specifically shooting (but it turned out that is not the case and its much more puzzle-based than I expected). I expected it to be very story-driven, with multiple characters (which I was correct about). I didn't know whether I would actually be able to move the character or whether it would be a point-and-click, decision-based game. I expected it to be good because it has a lot of positive reviews on the xbox store and an average rating of 4.2/5 stars.

The art style is like nothing I had really seen before, so I was interested to see how it would look in motion. I was also somewhat curious of how the game would portray World War I, an often sensitive topic that must be approached with care, in a respectful way given its art style.

First Impressions - What did I think of the game in its first few minutes?

The game's front end shows one of the playable characters, Emile, standing amongst rubble with a dog, with the games logo shown and sombre, thoughtful music playing. It's simple but effective. I started a new game and a cutscene played, giving a short background on how WWI began and introducing some main characters; middle-aged French farmer and grandfather, Emile, his daughter, Marie and his German son-in-law Karl. As a German, Karl is deported from France and is enlisted into the German army. Emile is enlisted into the French army and the game begins with him arriving at the enlisting office. The cutscene is consistent with the games art style and is nicely animated. It also introduces the story and sets the mood well.

Following the cutscene, the player takes control of Emile and enters the enlistment office, coming out the other side in French army uniform, illustrating how rushed French conscription will have been in 1914. The game's tutorial level involves attacking training dummies with bayonets and grenades and the player is also shown how to climb objects. The player then raises the French flag to the sound of Le Marseillaise. It's representative of the morale, patriotism, optimism and bravado seen before first combat, and seems to be intended to contrast with the more grim mood seen later in this chapter of the game.

Emile arrives at the conscription office. This is the moment that
gameplay begins.

Training mission.

Raising the flag.

The player is then sent to a train station where they must solve a puzzle to stop some French soldiers hassling an African-American soldier, Freddie, who is a playable character and Emile's friend later in the game. The puzzle involves bribing an officer with wine, having a band play to get soldiers to dance and blasting some soldiers with smoke from a train. Through all of this, the player is only ever instructed through speech bubbles with pictures in them that appear over NPC's heads. It's all very charming and well-thought out.

A cutscene plays showing Emile's unit being deployed to battle at the Marne. The player has to charge an enemy position, using careful timing to dodge enemy fire and bombing, and I noticed at this point how unlikely a hero Emile is - as far as war games go, I am used to playing as battle-hardened, infinitely capable super-soldiers like those seen in CoD and other FPS games - while Emile is an aged farmer and essentially a civilian. He is eventually wounded at the end of the level, and captured. I was surprised at how sad this was considering I had only taken control of this character a few minutes earlier - there's something about the game's art style and the way it presents itself and delivers its story that makes you feel invested in and attached to the characters - a certain je ne sais quoi. 

What do I like about the game? What does it do well?

I played the game for about 3 hours and completed the first of 4 chapters that span the whole length of the war. The first positive thing that I noticed about the game, and surely one of its unique selling points, is its attractive, interesting art style. I've never really seen an art style quite like it. I was initially skeptical about how the game could pull off a cartoony/animated art style and still approach its subject matter respectfully, but I soon realised that it managed this very well, and in fact the game is endorsed by Mission Centenaire 14-18, as described on the game's website;

"Valiant Hearts: The Great War is endorsed by the Mission Centenaire 14-18, the French Commission in charge of the First Wold War commemorative program and creator of the "Centenary" certification which highlights the most innovative WW1-related projects. This endorsement certifies the accuracy of historical content in Valiant Hearts: The Great War"

...which is certainly an accolade that Battlefield 1 cannot claim! Valiant Hearts offers background on the events that it portrays and WWI life in general in a Historical Facts page in the pause menu, which I found to be fascinating and a valuable addition to the game. This page shows colourised real photographs which bridge the gap between the heavily-stylised game and the real world, grounding and contextualising the events on-screen.

The Historical Facts page.

There's also hidden items to find in each level such as British coins and Canadian dog-tags, all of which are accompanied with a bit of background information, so they encourage exploration, add replay value and educate the player all at the same time. The game also portrays and mentions the wide range of people and cultures involved in the war including British, French and Canadian forces and the Foreign Legion, Muslim soldiers and Indian soldiers. The developers approached the topic of WWI respectfully and with integrity and is education on a topic that is well worth knowing about.

The game's story is definitely a strong suit and the characters are interesting and charming. The story is emotional from the very beginning and engages the player in an emotional way that few games manage and attempt. The characters are likeable and easy to empathise with and root for. A particularly emotion moment occurs when Emile and Freddie meet again for the first time since the train station at the start of the game. The pair then free the dog from being trapped in barbed wire and make friends. This scene is accompanied by uplifting music, which brings me to the game's next strength: the audio.

Emile and Freddie free the dog.

The game uses audio incredibly well. The music is fitting and suits the game well. There are many changes of mood in the game, from the optimism of the tutorial level and the light-heartedness of band playing in the train station, to the sad moment when Emile is wounded and the suspense of stealthy sections, and the music keeps up with the mood at all times. There are also small musical flourishes that accompany puzzle-related actions, and they are a way of giving feedback to the player in that they sound positive when the player takes a step in the right direction, or negative if the player does the wrong thing. Another creative use of audio is in a car-chase scene where the characters are being attacked by planes and a zeppelin. The bombs and gunfire occur in time with the music. It took me a while to notice and I was really impressed with the developer's creativity in this feature. The ambient audio within levels is also well-done and sounds interesting and authentic.

Screenshot from the rhythm-based car chase section.

The gameplay itself is interesting and engaging. The puzzles are creative and the mechanics are nicely designed. One mechanic I enjoyed in particular is the dog, who you can command to interact with things in the environment to solve puzzles and access areas. He's also a charming character in his own right. I liked that the player is only ever instructed to solve puzzles through visuals (speech bubbles, things placed in the level etc.) and no text or vocal instructions are given, but its still clear what needs to be done. The developers pulled this off very well.

The first chapter concludes with a dramatic boss battle against
a German zeppelin.

What don't I like about the game?

Valiant Hearts is another of those Spontaneous Sunday titles that puts me in a tricky spot, because I fail to find anything seriously wrong with it! There wasn't really anything design-wise that detracted from the gameplay, though there was an instance where I broke a puzzle and caused a progression-stopping bug that forced me to restart the level and reminded me of my stint as a QA tester at Tt Fusion.

Another minor thing that I didn't like is that, while the voice acting was generally good, the characters didn't have accurate accents in the cutscenes. Emile's daughter, Marie, was voiced with a posh English accent rather than French.

Finally, there is the fact that the gameplay wasn't as I had expected. I expected it to involve more combat when in fact it was much more puzzle-based, and the gameplay was therefore a bit more slow paced than I had expected. The gameplay is fun but is not particularly thrilling, and the game's stand-out moments come in the form of plot-points rather than gameplay. When recommending the game to someone else, the gameplay wouldn't be the first thing that I think to tell them about; I would instead focus on the story and concept in general.

Final Thoughts

Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a unique, charming and well-executed game with an interesting concept and nice art style. The story is engaging and the historical facts feature appeals greatly to me. It's education and feels like a sensitive, well-executed portrayal of WWI. There should be more games like this, that seek to bring sensitive themes and knowledge to players in an entertaining but respectful way. Ubisoft Montpellier did a good job of this.

It has some interesting ideas such as the clever use of audio and the visual instructions for the puzzles. I think it is probably the most charming Spontaneous Sunday title yet and it has cemented its place on the list of games that I will be playing again soon.