Among other things, video games find it so difficult in social discourse to be perceived as a cultural asset, because they usually have pure pleasure and economic interests over their own social relevance, e.g. B. in the form of a political attitude or the reflection of social contexts. Through the Darkest of Times illustrates why exceptions are rare, which gives you the task of practically witnessing German resistance in the Third Reich.
Hard tobacco. During the game, I often asked myself whether I would have acted in reality as I instruct my virtual resistance fighters. Would I have been exposed to the danger? Would I have defied the Nazis, the SS, the fellow travelers and duck houses of the Third Reich, called my fellow men to fight, hid myself underground? I dont know. Those who were economically dependent at the time, or even suffered the frustration of the late twenties, were at risk in several respects of neglecting the simplified Nazi answers to the prevailing crises.
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And then there was fear. Fear of being socially ostracized, beaten up, thrown into the kitten, even put on the wall in the worst case, untied or put in a concentration camp. These are not good excuses. They do not justify enduring injustice or looking away from what is obviously wrong. But they are understandable motivations. Cowardice is human.
At the time, it wasn't as simple and relaxed as I send my characters through Berlin in Through the Darkest of Times. It's just mouse clicks and decisions that I make based on logic and historical review. Strategic slide show on a simple, if not dry, surface that is more reminiscent of a man-annoy-you-not board than a typical video game interface.
A life as a mouse click rebel
I feel with my heroes, but I never put myself in danger. That's why it's easy for me to send them to risky actions on the Spartan city map. I let them take part in demonstrations, send them to workers to do persuasion with leaflets and verbatim arguments. I divide up donations, get the necessary equipment, try to make the best of a predicament.
How bad things are in Germany is revealed to me by regular newspaper headlines and short narrative sequences that detail the most important stages of the seizure of power, as well as the Nazi propaganda machine. The only strange thing is that events like the Reichstag fire or the enactment of the Enabling Act in my virtual timeline take place a few days later than was the case in reality.
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This could possibly be thanks to the actions of my resistance group, because the developers of Paintbucket Games claim that you can influence and change parts of the story. However, I never notice how big my influence is and what nuances I set because I don't get any feedback.
Did the leaflets that I had printed and distributed for expensive money convince your readers? Supposedly yes, if I believe the order report, but to what extent I am doing something socially with it, I do not know. I just sit in front of my city map and hand out tasks or read well-written, albeit depressing sequences of actions in cutscenes, where I always have a choice between two or three decisions. It is not uncommon for me to have moral questions to answer.
No matter how I choose, my actions always have an impact on the morale of my troops – the vital force of my little rebellion, so to speak. If she leans, the game is over. And finally, because there is neither a continue function nor the possibility to change the game later. A real Permadeath regulation that grants at least a little bit of excitement on the playful side.
I can only refresh morale by distraction, for example by visiting a secret jazz dance club or by small success milestones. As a rule, my troop loses a little morale after every move because the Nazis are involved everywhere and my volunteers are always in danger of being arrested. If only one of them ends up in jail or even in a concentration camp, the value is in free fall.
This is not only due to the increasing risk of unwanted treachery. Every hand is needed. Everyone in my literally thrown together troop is a win for the cause. Whether male or female, religious, fantastic or realist, they all cultivate useful talents. One is a skilful speaker and has a strong empathy, the other is good in secrecy and unobtrusiveness. And so I assign them to the tasks that best suit their talents. But their cooperation is not a matter of course; after all, they belong to groups that would not be politically green under normal circumstances.
Prior knowledge determines the depth
Conservative religious figures, academics, social democrats, socialists, anarchists: a multitude of politically outcasts, former thread pullers who were robbed of all their resources by the overthrow of the Nazis. But to understand this in all its complexity, you have to have a little idea of history and the political landscape at that time.
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Anarchists, for example, were part of the normal political environment at the time and had nothing to do with chaos punks or murder and homicide in an unregulated social structure. This is a cliché that was later confessed to them, because anarchists were only concerned with a decentralized, self-reliant form of society based on humanism. An overly optimistic fantasy, given human nature. And social democrats? They were realists, but at that time they had practically nothing to do with the moderate conservatives known today from the SPD. Today their socks are at most dusky pink, but at that time they were considered to be the influential red front of the democratic party landscape.
However, they were screaming because they had supported Germany's machinations in the First World War. A controversial bunch under the left. They still worked against the rest of the left in 1918 and, one year later, even killed once respected leaders from their own ranks (see the Spartacus League).
If you know such things, you won't be surprised at conflicts within the resistance group. For example, the attempt by some participants to exclude a Social Democrat from the group, although he is urgently needed. However, without context, such and similar actions are quite confusing. Through The Darkest of Times is historically very accurate, but rarely tries to fill gaps in knowledge that are not directly related to the Nazi misdeeds. And that is a shame, because it is precisely such circumstances that made the Nazis seizure of power possible in part and that could explain the game of today's generation.
Too optimistic
The question remains of course whether further context would not have overwhelmed the players. The Darkest of Times already spends more time reading than actually playing, and even measures planned in the long term, such as sabotage campaigns, which set themselves apart from the repetitive playful core, have the overall effect of shifting numbers.
In addition, optimism is a basic attitude of the game that one has more and more doubts about the longer the game lasts. Can so many centrally controlled measures by a rebel group fly under the radar of the authorities for so long? In spite of arrests, deaths, escaping into the underground and other tragic fates that game characters overtake, the game's designers far too often assume success. And that is exactly where the video game as an art form rubs against the political message. Of course, it is morally right and important to face an evil regime. But is it always possible to the extent shown?
Trailer for Through the Darkest of Times from E3 2019.
The desire to practice a realistic form of historical enlightenment contradicts the custom of many video games. The hero's invulnerability, her unbroken will to win, her ability to always get the resources she needs – all this is necessary to give the player a chance of success. You want to win the game.
You can't stop the Nazis in Through the Darkest of Times. You can't win, you can only survive. Nevertheless, the game is too optimistic, regardless of the dark tone in which text and graphics are kept. The chosen drawing style (new objectivity) as well as the coloring do not reach their goal, they only blur the boundaries between fiction and history. Because if one thing is clear, it is that evil reigned even in the sun. Even under the rule of the Nazis, the sky was a juicy blue – and this is actually much more frightening than an eternal darkness, as you would expect at most in Tolkien's Mordor.
