In New Zealand, some residents are furious about what Call of Duty: Vanguard is doing: Sledgehammer Games has modeled a New Zealand war hero as an Australian. This offends national pride.
What has Call of Duty done wrong? Call of Duty: Vanguard will revolve around 4 soldiers in the single-player campaign. Each character is “essentially” a fictional character, but all 4 are based on historical soldiers:
- The Russian sniper Polina Petrova is modeled after “Lyudmila Pavlichenko,” known as Lady Death.
- The British paratrooper Arthur Kingsley is inspired by Sidney Cornell: The first black soldier to land on D-Day.
- The American pilot Wade Jackson is based on the war hero Vernon Micheel.
- The Australian infantry soldier Lucas Riggs is apparently meant to resemble Charles Upham, the only man in history to receive two “Victoria Crosses”, the highest award for the armed forces of the United Kingdom and for some Commonwealth countries.
The problem is: Upham is from New Zealand, but his version in “Call of Duty: Vanguard” is an Australian.
While the other 3 fictional characters share the same nationality as their historical counterparts, this is not the case for Lucas Riggs.
Ignorance at best – Giant middle finger at worst
This is how a New Zealand site reacts: The New Zealand site Newshub writes:
“The significance of Charles Upham cannot be overstated. No other soldier has ever received two Victoria Crosses. This incredible achievement belongs to only one country, Aotearoa New Zealand.
This is like making Sir Edmund Hillary an Australian or Lorde or Jonah Lomu. It’s an insult. Ignorance at best, and at worst: A giant middle finger to all of us.”
History-inspired, not bound by it
This is how Call of Duty responds: They emphasized in a statement that they are telling their own story, which is inspired by history but not bound by it. They actually drew “a lot of inspiration” from Charles Upham for Lucas Riggs.
Why exactly they are making him an Australian is not revealed by Sledgehammer Games.
This is how it’s being discussed: In the reddit for Call of Duty, the complaint from New Zealanders is viewed sympathetically, but it seems some people have grievances with Call of Duty in general: One user adds that Call of Duty simply pinned a US war crime on the Russians. They don’t seem to take history too seriously. One can already see that Americans are always portrayed as the “good guys”.
But this is apparently not a problem that only Call of Duty has. A Brit complains, for example, that in movies, often all the heroic deeds of the Brits in the Second World War are attributed to Americans.
Others add: This is still better than having a physically disabled woman with a laser eye appear as in another “world war game”.
Which game he might be referring to, you’ll find out in this article:
The trailer for Battlefield 2042 already has twice as many likes as the hated trailer for BF5
