Valiant Hearts review
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It’s not often a game will take a subject as serious as the Great War and treat it with delicate respect without glorifying the chaos of one of our biggest faults and suffering of the human condition.
Valiant Hearts, using UbiArt’s Framework and coming from Ubisoft Montpellier studio, lives up to the visual expectations set by other UbiArt games, and it’s a charming, teasing and heart wrenching platformer that follows the story of three protagonists through the Great War.
We learn of Emile, Karl and Marie to begin with. Emile is a French farmer and lives on his farm with his daughter Marie and his German son-in-law Karl. Anticipating war, the French deport all Germans living in France. Karl is forced to leave his wife and new-born child behind. Not long after, Emile is drafted into the French army; leaving Marie with her newborn to fend for herself in an ever increasingly dangerous world.
The third character we meet is Freddie, an American volunteer who has his own backstory of love found and lost due to the war, which spurs him on to join the allies and fight for his vengeance. Emile meets Freddie at a train station with his squad who are waiting to move out to the front line, but Freddie is being harassed by some of his squad members. This is where the first puzzle really comes into play, and it’s here that sets up the whole premise of the game and how it works. You have to find ways of dispersing the soldiers, after which you and Freddie become friends. You don’t see Freddie after that for a while.
After Emile and his unit is wiped out on the front line, Emile is taken as a POW and is assigned to cook for the antagonist of the game, Baron Von Dorf; a mad and experimental German who forms the basis of all the boss battles and is the driver of the plot. You won’t know it yet, but Freddie is after the Baron, as is Anna; a Belgian medic (very Florence Nightingale-y) chasing down the Baron who’d kidnapped her genius scientist father and forced him into a life of creating horrific war machines including flame throwing zeppelins, tanks that could fire projectiles and other mad things.
It’s with a bit of luck, then, that Karl is part of the Baron’s company and he sees Emile on the camp. But it’s not long before they’re separated again and Emile, Freddie and Anna are on the heels of the Baron.
All the while Marie is writing to both her father and her husband, keeping them up to date with events back on the farm and pictures of her baby growing. It would be a few years before Karl would see his son again. Emile would not - that’s all I’m going to say, but it’s fair to say that it’s a heart wrenching story and I’m not ashamed to say I shed a few tears. But I won’t go anymore into the story, it’s worth playing and that’s all I have to say on the matter.
Each character has their own fighting attributes, and we’ve not even mentioned the dog that accompanies you. Emile is a digger, so can dig through the ground with his massive wooden spoon. Karl is a soldier so will melee attack. Freddie is a wire cutting, melee power house and Anna is a medic that heals wounded soldiers, German or allied, with quicktime events - or more rhythm gaming to be fair. All characters can pick up objects and projectiles in the world which will aid them on their specific quests.
The puzzles aren’t too difficult which makes things good, and if you do get stuck there is a three-tier hint system. It’s unlikely you’ll need to use this, but there are occasions when it’s not particularly clear what you have to do, once you’ve seen the first hint it usually becomes very clear. And don’t try to be too clever! There were a couple of occasions where you have to find safe combinations. It’s very simple really, you’ll have a number next to I II and III which indicate the order of the numbers for the safe. I tried multiplying, subtracting and even differentiating formulas to crack the code. It took me 20 minutes to realise that the Roman numerals were actually the order and had nothing to do with the actual combination key.
But this game isn’t about the puzzles really. It never was. It’s about the “valiant hearts” of the Great War. Those men who gave their lives, however old or young, to fight for their freedoms. It’s about personal loss, the deceptions of war. And don’t be fooled, although the game’s art-style is beautiful, it’s only a mask for the horrors of the war, especially the levels where you’re fighting in the trenches with machine gun bullets being spat at you like fiery rain. Or bombs exploding around you and taking out your comrades. Or the selfish orders being barked at you by cowardly commanding officers. This game won’t hide those horrors and it’s this subtle referencing that makes the human story so much more emotional. And it’s this that makes Valiant Hearts great. It’s not a shooter or beat ‘em up that pits you against the whole axis army and hails you as the hero of the war. It’s not a platformer where you run through the levels almost invincible and looking for combos and power-ups. This is a much more sombre affair.
You’re reminded, if you want, with the real issues through the diary entries which are accessible through the start menu. It’s here you can read the story, the real story, which the game uses as its backdrop.
Valiant Hearts isn’t going to change the world of gaming, but it does do something more spectacular than that. It redefines not only how we tell stories, but how we engage with stories. No more do you need big titles, huge budgets and exceptional voice acting and scripting to immerse a player in the gaming world. Valiant Hearts is a perfect example of this, with it’s charming art style, the stereotypical and amusing voice acting (if you can call it that - it’s just a collection of sounds and words that have been exaggerated for each race!) and simple sound track.
It’s a great game to remember all those who fought the first global war, the Great War 100 years ago. And it’s a fitting tribute and a sobering reminder of what we can do to each other and to our world.