Anyone have the text to the poem in the opening movie?

[Mush Martin]

Originally Posted by Skubber

Yes, I think that's the point.

Am I the only one who actually likes the intro?

To my mind, the video footage is meant to be at odds with Milton's poem.

Think of the line "an individual kiss." (Right when the ship explodes in a fireball.)
Milton is talking here about the moment after death where we are greeted by the divine presence.

Kind of the ultimate post-modern juxtaposition.

What are we to make of a society, a world, a universe, where Christian values are somehow supposed to coexist with nazi death camps, or the Bataan death march?
(Milton was staunchly, though unconventionally, Christian.)

The poem is talking about the soul's triumph over all of this, even a triumph over time.
But I don't think Milton could have concieved of a time three hundred years in the future where we would so systematically set about destroying each other. What triumph could anyone see in this?

I like the intro's topsy-turvy comment on something no one can really make sense of.
What are we to make of a society were friends socialize over a simulation-game that relives this most savage period of our history?

Ours is a world of strange juxtapositions.
Kinda odd, isn't it?
Makes ya think.:hmm:

Well I love the dialogue in the intro as I love milton
but I find the reflective nature of the verse a bit
overwhelmed by supersonic clouds and fast scene cuts.
also did anyone else think the IJN Flag on that cruiser
looked a little stiff?

[jdski]

I think he's saying when were dead, we don't need to worry about wearing a watch anymore.

[Radtgaeb]

Yeah, I don't know why people complain about this intro, I, for one, love it.

The only beef I have is the visible crosshair when the deckgun is viewed at one point in the video (:rotfl. But other than that it's great.

John Milton is a wonderful poet. I'm still a Junior in high school (laugh at the young'n) but I'm in a college-level Advanced Placement literature class and did a month long unit on Milton. Also, Milton was a highly religious man (a puritain, to be exact, linked to Cromwell and the reformation) and being a "reformed" baptist as I am, I'm highly drawn to his works. I definately think he's talking about the final triumph passing of death into life due to holy salvation mentioned often in the Bible. Talk about it cynically if you want to...but it's a great poem nonetheless, and I share his views.

So yeah. WONDERFUL intro, UBI Romania!! I nearly passed a cat from sheer joy when I heard the poem after install.

[SteamWake]

The "creeps me out" was meant as a back handed compliment.

It (the intro) is very ... esoteric..

I just hope they dident put a ton of work into that instead of programming in imperal units

[DeepSix]

I think it's actually one of the best intro clips for a video game I've seen. It's a little dramatic at moments (my least favorite is the "Kiss me you big Yamato" moment), but overall the poem really works. Dunno - maybe it's the English major in me. Think about it another way: if they'd had someone reciting "cry havoc and loose the dogs of war," we'd all barf. Well, all of us except maybe Patrick Stewart. Anyway - point is, I think the video is a nice balance of eye candy and the fun of playing the game along with the serious aspects of what the game is about.

Just two cents, there....

[Snowman999]

Originally Posted by DeepSix

I think it's actually one of the best intro clips for a video game I've seen. It's a little dramatic at moments (my least favorite is the "Kiss me you big Yamato" moment), but overall the poem really works. Dunno - maybe it's the English major in me. Think about it another way: if they'd had someone reciting "cry havoc and loose the dogs of war," we'd all barf. Well, all of us except maybe Patrick Stewart. Anyway - point is, I think the video is a nice balance of eye candy and the fun of playing the game along with the serious aspects of what the game is about.

Just two cents, there....

Milton is fine, and English-accented readers are fine, and war-is-all-hell is fine, but not in this game. You want that put it in SH3's intro--those guys started the killing and they lost their gamble.

Historically, the intro does not work for me vis a vis the USN submarine service. We were attacked, brutally, without warning, during diplomatic negotiations. Our men in the boats weren't thinking about souls' redemption or immortal sacrifice or anything else in this poem. Take a look at the second picture from the left in the link below. It's the crew of my dad's boat near the end of the war, about the time we nuked the folks who ruined a fine Sunday morning in Hawaii. That banner IS history, but not Milton's sort.

http://home.flash.net/~stromain/BlueGill/ss-242.html

[Von Hinten]

For me it's the combination of the spoken words and the fact that it's all in-game footage. 9 out of 10 intros look fantastic but are pre-rendered ones in a quality that you'll miss as soon as you actually begin to play.

With this one the images simply make me want to play SHIV even more than before I clicked the icon on my desktop, knowing that I'll see exactly those beautiful images.

Very well done intro, I absolutely love it.

[Edit - Just read your reply Snowman999 and I can't help feeling just a little bit dim now, thinking just about my own personal bit of fun. Your comment hits the nail I guess, I'll now look at that intro in a completely different way. Thanks for your point of view m8.]

[LordHawke]

I was just reflecting on the poem on my way home from work. It struck me then that it captures the mood of someone gradually choking to death in a sinking steel tube miles down the sea with no hope of escape.

The poor man sees his mates drop off one by one, all around is darkness and silence. But there is a resigned, yet heroic, embrace of the approaching Death, knowing that God is waiting for him 'on the other side'.

It reminds us that the submarining business was not all about 'La Gloire', but that the brave men who served on those boats faced death, and all it terrors, all the time. Certainly something worth reflecting on as we play the game.

Kudos to the devs for a most untypical, yet appropriate, intro.

[Snowman999]

I was just reflecting on the poem on my way home from work. It struck me then that it captures the mood of someone gradually choking to death in a sinking steel tube miles down the sea with no hope of escape.

The poor man sees his mates drop off one by one, all around is darkness and silence. But there is a resigned, yet heroic, embrace of the approaching Death, knowing that God is waiting for him 'on the other side'.

Nice imagery, but complete bollocks. Sinking to collapse depth wasn't going to be this peaceful. Very loud, lots of screaming and frantic action.

And death? Well, a major think-tank in the 1970s did a modeling study about what would happen inside a pressure hull in the seconds between collapse and death of the crew. For you scientific types out there they figured that there would be a dismembering phase as metal moving past other pieces sliced and diced the crew, then a "dieseling" phase as the pressure spiked to cause the bodies to combust, probably while still conscious. But not to worry--the fires would soon be extinguished.

[nfitzsimmons]

Originally Posted by Snowman999

Nice imagery, but complete bollocks. Sinking to collapse depth wasn't going to be this peaceful. Very loud, lots of screaming and frantic action.

And death? Well, a major think-tank in the 1970s did a modeling study about what would happen inside a pressure hull in the seconds between collapse and death of the crew. For you scientific types out there they figured that there would be a dismembering phase as metal moving past other pieces sliced and diced the crew, then a "dieseling" phase as the pressure spiked to cause the bodies to combust, probably while still conscious. But not to worry--the fires would soon be extinguished.

On the other hand if you're sitting on the bottom at 200 feet with no power, batteries failing, flooded compartments on either side of you, and the CO2 building up you might tend to think that way.

[Snowman999]

[Edit - Just read your reply Snowman999 and I can't help feeling just a little bit dim now, thinking just about my own personal bit of fun. Your comment hits the nail I guess, I'll now look at that intro in a completely different way. Thanks for your point of view m8.]

Thanks.

I know I'm naive, in this hyper-PC corporate enviro we live in, but I'd hoped the game would take the opportunity to do even a modicum of historical education for the young people increasingly ignorant of these events. Some of the men in these boats hung out at our house in Hawaii, fifteen years older and wiser, and they weren't robotic killing machines, nor were they Milton-lovers. They were guys who grew up in the Depression and then, just as things looked a little better, got handed a s**t sandwich by foreign governments and forces that stole a lot of their youth.

They did a hard, nasty job and did it well. Yes, there was racism and hatred involved. That's war. (Talk to somebody just back from Iraq; some things never change.) But they knew they were doing the right thing and that faiilng to win would change the course of history in a bad, bad way.

Modern Americans don't viscerally understand that feeling any more. Maybe if 9/11 had been perpetrated by a naiton-state, one that was professing peace in direct negotiations in Washington that very day, our citizens would understand the rage that led to unrestricted submarine ops, machine-gnning surviving soldiers in the water, and, yes, the banner in that photo, three-plus years later.

I know it's too much to expect Ubi to teach history, but I hope, after seeing the mods from SH3, that someone can quickly gin up at least a USS Arizona model so I may render honors on my way out to sea . . .

[Von Hinten]

Originally Posted by Snowman999

I know it's too much to expect Ubi to teach history, but I hope, after seeing the mods from SH3, that someone can quickly gin up at least a USS Arizona model so I may render honors on my way out to sea . . .

I hear you m8, so here's another vote to resurrect that ship from history into this game.

[DeepSix]

Originally Posted by Snowman999

Milton is fine, and English-accented readers are fine, and war-is-all-hell is fine, but not in this game. You want that put it in SH3's intro--those guys started the killing and they lost their gamble.

Historically, the intro does not work for me vis a vis the USN submarine service. We were attacked, brutally, without warning, during diplomatic negotiations. Our men in the boats weren't thinking about souls' redemption or immortal sacrifice or anything else in this poem. Take a look at the second picture from the left in the link below. It's the crew of my dad's boat near the end of the war, about the time we nuked the folks who ruined a fine Sunday morning in Hawaii. That banner IS history, but not Milton's sort.

http://home.flash.net/~stromain/BlueGill/ss-242.html

With respect, I think you missed the point of my post, and -- again, with respect -- I know I'm missing yours. My grandfather survived the Battle of the Bulge so I think it's ok to say I know a thing or two about rich men's wars and poor men's fights.

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.

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

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?"

[Edit: Second (or third) to the suggestion to include Arizona. And West Virginia, and Oglala, and Downes, and so on. Currently, Pearl Harbor looks way too "untouched" for December 9-10.]

[joea]

Originally Posted by DeepSix

...
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?"

[Edit: Second (or third) to the suggestion to include Arizona. And West Virginia, and Oglala, and Downes, and so on. Currently, Pearl Harbor looks way too "untouched" for December 9-10.]

I see where you both are coming from, but nothing snowman99 wrote is in anyway an endorsment of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori at all. What Milton is saying is nothing about the physical part of death being peaceful but about the spiritual part of the hereafter...as was said he was a Christian.

[Safe-Keeper]

Am I the only one who actually likes the intro?

No. I agree with my fellow poster here:

I'm not sure what they want to say with the intro but I can say that I like it! It's refreshingly diffferent from the usual dumb effect-hammer-hero-super-action-intro.

My sentiments exactly. I like to use the Rome: Total War credits (the girl worried half to death for her boyfriend who's fighting with the Roman Army) as an example of another good move by developers who dare to try something else than the 'Hollywood approach' (and no, I didn't see the irony before now:p).