I often find that there are waves of interest in different parts of history in popular culture. Right now, it seems that we’re having a slight uptick in interest in the Pacific theatre of WWII. I thought it’d be fun to point out a few of them that I’ve noticed recently including one that is right from IL-2 – let’s have a look!
Battlefield V: Chapter 5 “The Pacific”
When I’m not flying something like IL-2 or DCS World, I’m usually playing Battlefield V… flying. Battlefield V is no flight simulator but the series has historically be a very fun combined arms game featuring infantry, tanks, and yes… aircraft.
Battlefield V launched with a British versus Germany line-up featuring aircraft like the Bf109, Ju87, and Ju88 on the German side and the Spitfire, Mosquito and Blenhiem on the British side. Now, with the launch of Chapter 5 the series has had a change of scenery taking the battle to the Pacific theatre with two new maps, the Japanese and American armies, and two new aircraft: the F4U Corsair and the A6M Zero.
Note that I’m not being too specific about variants and versions as Battlefield takes accuracy only to a certain point and these aircraft are only representations rather than true historical recreations like we expect for IL-2, DCS and even War Thunder. Still, despite that they can be fun to fly with and I’ve had plenty of fun with the more casual yet very competitive gameplay.
Battlefield has also had a bit of a rough go of things in it’s first year with a producer that quit/was fired before release and a lot of bugs, performance problems, lack of content and so on. The release of Chapter 5 in the last few days seems to have changed the conversation with the team behind Battlefield, DICE Studios, bringing a laundry list of fixes and changes to the series along with the new theatre of war. Chapter 5: The Pacific has turned around the conversation on the title and seemingly given it a new lease on life.
Bottom line: flying the Zero and Corsair over the Pacific in Battlefield has been fun.
Midway (2019)
On November 8, a new Midway movie comes out. I was initially extremely skeptical about it but I’m starting to think that this may be a decent retelling of the Midway story. It’s not the classic 1976 movie but but as a modern re-telling it looks like the creators behind this movie have actually done their homework getting the aircraft looking right. SDB’s, A6M2’s and other aircraft appear and while there is some Hollywood overly dramatized moments in there… A lot of stuff looks right right down to the SBD’s release mechanism.
Will it be good or not? Hard to say without seeing the movie but the trailer is worth a watch.
A little Easter egg in IL-2
There’s a small Easter egg in IL-2 and it can be found on the QMB in the aircraft selector screen. If you have a look at the Axis Powers icon you can see that a representation of both Germany and Japan are located on that screen.
Less obvious is the nations list in the Full Mission Builder which now also includes countries such as Japan and Italy. Italy is less surprising as the MC.202 is already an aircraft in the set but Japan is slightly more surprising.
Does it portent the imminent announcement of a Pacific scenario? I wouldn’t get your hopes up just yet on that. Jason was quick to point out that this was something the artist for the GUI had done and it wasn’t especially indicative of anything.
Still, it’s a fun indication of what still might happen in the future either near or far.
Drydock Dream Games’ Task Force Admiral
Indie developer Drydock Dream Games is busy developing a carrier fleet command sim called Task Force Admiral vol.1: American Carrier Battles. The developer is intending to represent carrier battles from Coral Sea to Guadalcanal using a 3D interface and realistically portrayed operations.
Check out their pre-alpha demo reel to see what they are intending to do with the series. If you’re interested have a look at their website or follow them on Twitter.
Other mentions
I recently re-watched HBO’s The Pacific. The mini-series came out in 2010 and it was a spiritual successor to the highly acclaimed Band of Brothers. While I enjoyed Band of Brother’s significantly more, The Pacific was still grueling in its depiction of World War II in the Pacific as a brutal conflict.
I’m also reading The Pacific War: The Strategy, Politics, and Players that Won the War by William B. Hopkins. I’m only into the first few chapters but so far it’s a brilliant look at the behind the scenes of planning and politics that dominated the late 1930s and the lead-up to the war. Later the book gets directly into the conflict but this is one of the best setup’s to the actual conflict that I’ve read in quite some time.
Watched, read or played anything WWII Pacific recently? Give me a shout in the comments!
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