[Snowman999]

With respect, I think you missed the point of my post, and -- again, with respect -- I know I'm missing yours.

S'OK. I understand why some folks like the opening. I do too if it's taken alone, apart from the topic. I just think it's engaging in "presentism" about events of 60+ years ago. I believe you said you were an English major; I was History, but I've got one novel published, so we both understand POV. POV is a problem with the game overall (witness the posts about feeling as if one is "being the boat" vice "being the CO".) I think the opening muddies the issue of whether we're 2007 folk playing a game set in 1941, or a CO IN 1941, with that time's beliefs and worldview.

Just my opinion, but I think the video actually underscores the sacrifices made by the "Great Generation" rather than minimizing them. But it is, after all, just a game video. To put it another way, I was pleasantly suprised to see the video take an even remotely serious approach, instead of a "run-and-gun" deal with loud guitars. If I have a complaint it's the "Wolves of the Pacific" subtitle as I don't think that's an accurate description. But that's a quibble.

I too have a quibble with the sub-title (I once engaged in a vicious little flame war on Usenet over games' ahistoric use of "wolfpack" for the coordinated groups we tried late-war), but it's a quibble.

I do think it somewhat demonstrates the Euro-centric view of the game necessary due to its dev team's origins. Europeans simply see WWII differently than Americans, now, and certainly then. We were isolationists hammered into a war we didn't start. I must confess that I saw the opening video through that lens, especially when I compared it to the treatment given the U-boats in SH3. Professionals doing their job versus, as I read Milton, saps sacrificed in an unworthy endeavor, with salvation as compensation. Thanks, but I prefer a long life. Milton's poem is anti-war. Europeans are generally anti-war. I'm generally anti-war. But WWII needed to be fought.

Would it have been better if they'd had someone playing "Sakura" on a koto instead?

No. I'd prefer an historical backdrop, with some newsreel, etc. The opening to the Matrix game "War in the Pacific" does an excellent job of setting the mood at a fraction of the budget. For just one example.

No hard feelings, here, I'm not looking for agreement so much as understanding where you're coming from. What, exactly, is "Milton's" sort of history? How is his poem "On Time" any less appropriate than "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori?"

It strikes me as defeatist. It strikes me as arguing that all sides in any war are morally equal. Just my reading of it. Pretty radical if that's what he meant, given that he was living through late-Reformation wars of religious bigotry, but artists are usually radicals for their time. And, as I said before, the poem argues that time smooths over events that seem so important at the time, but in th elong view really aren't. Again, as related to WWII, I don't buy that.

I DO accept that, as an intro, it's generated more heat than any I can remember. So if that was one of the devs' goals it has succeeded. I'd just prefer one of more nuts&bolts to reflect where the men of the time had their heads, and less presentism from this era of muddled war policy.