I’ve been writing about Green Tree Games’ WW2 “leadership RPG” off and on for over seven years. Yesterday, I finally got to try it.
Available to all by the end of September, the demo currently occupying 9 GB of Ada’s roomy HD, consists of an extended interactive tutorial plus two brief scenarios. It begins with an audio message from lead designer Luke Hughes in which he warns of a learning curve – a learning curve capable of producing confusion and frustration.
That warning is justified. My first couple of hours with this revolutionary wargame wasn’t entirely pleasurable. While graphically BoC brings to mind TalonSoft’s classic Campaign series, unfamiliar mechanics communicated to new players via a slightly wordy and laboured tutorial, mean even experienced wargamers may struggle at first.
Luke & Co. deserve credit for providing authentic tuition (the tutorials simulate real training exercises). Less commendable, however, are the distracting video interjections and occasional repetitions. There were moments when I wondered if newcomers wouldn’t have been better off with nothing but the ‘BoCopedia’, a pithy in-game manual, for initial guidance.
While the four part tutorial tested my patience and dented my confidence, by the end of it I was reasonably au fait with the game’s reassuringly deep and plausible combat mechanics.
I’m pleased to say BoC’s fresh and engaging interactive fiction and RPG elements stand upon rock solid wargaming foundations. Naturally, morale, cover, LoS, and firepower, are influential during firefights. What takes more getting used to is the way individual platoon leaders drive and direct the action.
Turns consist of alternating friendly and enemy rounds. At the start of each friendly round the player chooses a specific ‘unspent’ platoon leader to activate, and this decision determines which squads get to expend APs during that round. The captain, a powerful figure who can, APs permitting, activate any unit on the map, provides a bit of extra flexibility, but tactical wargamers used to less restrictive systems will probably need time to adjust to the BoC way.
The genius of the BoC way is that it forces you to think hard about leadership. When, for example, are you going to activate the clever/eloquent Lieutenant Dearborn and, more importantly, how are you going to use him and his men once you do? Should you shift him to that hex on the edge of the wood so he can call in a mortar strike on the farmhouse? Should you hurry him across that exposed road so that he can bolster wavering 1 Squad? Should he risk his neck accompanying 2 Squad when they assault the suppressed krauts at the crossroads?
Should anything happen to a platoon leader, a replacement will automatically appear from the ranks of the relevant unit, but, chances are, the substitute won’t be as capable or as trusted, and the loss will play havoc with the morale/composure of the casualty’s squads. Does the sight of a wounded leader ever enrage troops rather than demotivate them? I’ve not seen Close Combat-style berserk actions yet, but I believe once last night I did witness a frustrated platoon leader take unsanctioned action because I’d neglected him for so long.
The game treats victory and defeat in a splendidly subtle and mature way. A couple of times I disappointed my superiors by failing to take objectives, but earned the respect and gratitude of my men because I’d refused to take pointless risks. Playing the full campaign, it will be interesting to see how often the top brass is willing to tolerate failure.
As well as putting my mind at rest vis-a-vis wargaming fundamentals, the demo has also sold me on the idea of interactive fiction within a battle sim. In the trial, the inter- and intra-mission writing is so redolent, powerful, and cliche-free, it’s impossible not to be drawn in. More than seven years after predicting that Burden of Command “could prove to be one of the most memorable and affecting war games ever” nothing in the demo causes me to rethink or rephrase that statement.
Looking forward to the demo of this long, very long, anticipated game, and I appreciated the overview.
Having had several memorable exchanges with Mr. Hughes some years ago, I am glad he and his group are almost finished (unless they incorporate my idea for DLCs). I am also heartened to hear that the game will deliver on its promise. Nice job Luke and Tim, thanks for verifying this title is worth the LONG wait. Great review as always, many thanks.
KSBearski
The demo is out on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/887490/Burden_of_Command/
Tim, what a thoughtful review.
I’ve always adnired how honestly you lay out pros and cons. You really take care of your audience. I am glad we survived your cons to end on a strong pro 🙂
The tutorials took insane number of playtesting cycles. The mechanics were just so different for non wargamers and to some extent for wargamers. I agree the videos can break flow but playtesting showed this was what finally got us over the top in comprehension with diverse type of folks interested in the game. So they have cons, but playtested heavily pros 😉
On a different note, Especially gratifying overall recently, was the recent comment of a former Ranger Officer and popular (178k subscribers) YTer Controlled Pairs who focuses on tac sims:
“ I’ve been playing an early version of @BurdenOfCommand . It’s a turn based tactics game set in WWII, but there’s a twist. The game is equal parts tactical decision making and leadership. BoC brands itself as a Tactical Leadership RPG and I think it nails it. I look forward to sharing it on the channel and using it as an opportunity to contrast gameplay with my own experiences as a commander.”
Luke (lead)
Hi Luke-
You made it buddy. Maybe you remember as HOA_KSOP. Glad to see you are almost over the finish line. Now about the DLC’s…LOL. Maybe pacific next?
Barry
This game made me think of FIeld Marshal Monty’s memoirs where a quotes a German general:
“I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.”
Which raises the question, are there good uses for the stupid and lazy officers in this game?
Excellent observation. A book I loved still read at Quantico apparently is “Battlefield Leadership” by Von Schell. Written in 1930s by guy who went on to be panzer Corps leader was led in WWI.
We do have different kinds of leaders in the long campaign you will find. But probably not simulated with as much subtlety as you advocate.
And I always thought it was Molke that made that quote! Which i quote a lot too LOL.
BTW “Generation Kill” had an Lt (or was it Sgt?) that embodied just that combo LOL. LOL only a distance. Would suck to serve with them.
Luke
It’s an interesting game dynamic and great to see the innovation.
What’s confusing me a little though is the imposed lack of autonomy. Great leaders have various types of leadership style but micromanagement is basically none of them. Surely all the ‘activatable’ units would continue to do their thing in the absence of orders to the contrary?
A game mode where you only have to pass commands to units to change what they’re doing would be nice. Unless I guess it’s the Russian army, in which case nothing will happen without specific orders.
Excellent point. I strongly considered autonomous leaders. But:
– AI -hard to do in a way that doesn’t make people scream at monitor LOL.
– loss of control -people HATE that. Only certain classes of players (wargamers studying war maybe 😉 ) get chaos. And we are trying to reach a broader audience so I decided to punt for that reason. We already get people frustrated with troops failing morale checks when asked to do dangerous things. That being said I will still like to get more kinds of chaos in long term.
So it was a game decision not a realism decision ;-/ We are already pushing most people quite hard with enforcing C&C and not 4Fs vs bang bang you’re dead. Trust me LOL
I got around to trying the demo last night.
I’m not an expert wargamer by any means, right now I prefer stuff on the easier side as kids mean I have little time and I game to relax and a bit of power fantasy never hurts. But I found the game relatively easy to pick up, once I got my head round the slightly occluded ui.
The combat has a big emphasis on uncontested assaults, shooting seems virtually useless at taking a position, merely in fixing and suppressing an enemy so you can work a squad round the side to assault. I’ve seen the 8,000 bullets to get a kill stat before and it must be mad or miscounting as it means a platoon doesn’t carry enough firepower to get a kill.
LoS and height is a bit strange. If they can see me I can see them is a fairly obvious rule that doesn’t apply here. That an MG on a hill dominates the approach is sensible. That no one it is shooting at can see it back less so. It really wasn’t clear what patch of scrub I was meant to get my officers into to sight it with my mortars. Once I did it was fairly easy to suppress it and move up, but I couldn’t tell if there was a tool to help me find the sweet spot.
Overall though, relatively understandable and not the giant learning curve the tutorial threatens!
A few ui suggestions would be:
Make it more obvious whether I have one or two stacked units selected. While you can figure this out, just, a white highlight around the unit card on the left would be helpful.
The other obvious one is to have more distinction between movement range and los. Use a different colour for los would make it clearer.
Lastly offer the chance to edit the lieutenant at the very start, rather than playing a few missions as lt unnamed! before this is explained. LT is also part of the name rather than a title so I can be a Col instead, and I’ll pass over how clunky the text editing actually was!
In terms of the videos and the flow of the demo. I like having the history videos included but they don’t feel at home where they are now, they are often quite random. The same can be said about the tutorial videos. These use a different scenario and so don’t always feel like they are teaching you the exact thing you need to do now, as well as being repetitive. There is one scene that just straight up repeats later (when they explain wego turns and chess) and another video where the narrator gets which leader phase it is wrong and the video titles mock him for it. Overall these feel like they were not deliberately designed for the demo/boot camp and instead stitch together from a different tutorial/structure to fit in. Lastly the fourth wall breaking nature of them takes the player out of the leadership rpg narrative of the officer and his men. In boot camp steaks are low but I hope this doesn’t continue later on. Have the veterans provide an historical archive commentary, or give longer views between missions rather than frequent short “interruptions “. If you keep boot camp in the full game, and you should, I’d recommend re-recording the videos based on the tutorial scenarios.
Overall though I think this remains an interesting concept; the company level and C2 provides tactical flexibility without becoming overwhelming; and I want to see how the relationships develop under fire. Will get when it comes out!
@Blastaz – I see you posted on Steam. Thank you. I have replied there. But will repeat here for this audience:
Glad it is going reasonably well. Now to your points:
– 1 -shooting and kills – According to “Brains and Bullets” now “War games” in Afghanistan it got up to like 70k bullets before a casualty . Because troops were hit by ambushes from cover and then ambushers would of course head out. Not a fair fight. That being said, casualties will definitely occur if you run in the open against unsuppresed enemies (though Vichy are sad morale wise so you never know, but Germans.. it will get ugly fast). Especially if you get surprised. This is typically when casualties did happen (moving in open, esp surprised). Also Artillery is a different category. And to some extent Heavy MGs. But it is very hard, we find, for many players to get past what most games teach ‘bang bang bang you’re dead.’ We reinforce every way we can think of in demo and yet sometimes folks will still keep pounding a heavily suppressed (red morale) unit that is just cowering behind walls (rocks are hard to shoot through!) and ripe for assaults. Hard to unlearn assumptions 🙂
– 2 -LOS – LOS is definitely two way in terms of checks. If one hex is in LOS of another hex the reverse is true. But that is not the same as SEEING the enemy. Example, I am in a house peeking through a peep hole. I see you and you see house I am in but you don’t see me 🙂 According to “The World of War” WWII soldiers were shocked by how often they were shot at yet could not spot the enemy. Not at all like the movies they had seen. Ironically we probably show enemies much more then they would readily be seen in combat (if in cover). And even ‘open’ ground often has a lot of ‘micro terrain’ (dips in ground) that can make things harder to spot then you would expect.
– -stacking GUI show – this is a really good suggestion (show selection on small portraits). It is now on my list to get to. But right we are dealing with the crashes that 1000+ players of demo reveal compared to 150 playtesters spread over a long period LOL.
– LOS and movement range visuals – your wish is my command! Already asking artist to prototype some variants!
– name character early – henh. Yeah we had many debates on this. But information overload and assumption violations (bang bang bang) is so high at start we just decided it had to wait, though damn we wanted it early for bonding/empathy etc. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t 🙂
– videos – yeah tricky. They interrupt etc. But we found that the learning curve was massively reduced for many people once these went in despite their interruptive nature. Over time this should shift as the interrupting videos go away . As for historical ones and relevance I will ping writer. Re-recording. Yeah you are right. But 1.25 programmer there are so many damn priorities(whine whine whine that’s all I do LOL) it is just hard to get to everything that is right to do. We just have to do a lot of triage ;-/
That last paragraph of yours is key. Please just see us as opening a door and beginning a journey of many iterations with you guys to get to what we all want. We don’t claim to be getting it right at start LOL. Though by God we’ve been trying! But just to open that door to a new way to experience the human face of war.
Love your constructive comments and positive mindsets. You did a Bolster sir — dare I say a Rally? – for this dev 🙂
Luke (lead)