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Kyobanim
07-20-2004, 17:32
http://www.stripesonline.com/article.asp?section=104&article=22021&archive=true


N. Korea angered by new Tom Clancy game


By Jeremy Kirk, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Tuesday, June 22, 2004


YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea — An Apache helicopter zooms over a dusky Korean landscape while camouflaged soldiers use a temple as cover among a burning vehicle and enemy fire. In another scene, soldiers advance on an airport — labeled so in Korean — with a Russian MiG-style fighter plane in a hangar. It’s clear this is war against North Korea.

And by this fall, armchair warriors can lead the action.

“Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon 2,” a first-person shooter game from Red Storm Entertainment, part of France-based Ubisoft Entertainment, is due for a November release on Nintendo Game Cube and PCs.

It’s already attracted North Korea’s attention. In a curt review, one of its government newspapers called the game “proof” of U.S. warmongering.

“Through propaganda, entertainment and movies,” read a recent online commentary in the Tongil Newspaper, Americans “have shown everyone their hatred for us. This may be just a game to them now, but a war will not be a game for them later. In war, they will only face miserable defeat and gruesome deaths.”

The game debuted at the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show in Los Angeles last month, part of a lucrative series of games bearing the famous fiction author’s name.

The game’s scenario is somewhat rooted in real-world fact. But it quickly diverges: After a famine, a North Korean general diverts food aid to the military and slowly gains power.

In response, China cuts off weapons sales and North Korea turns to its old ally, Russia, for a secret alliance. Food riots begin in North Korea and the general takes control of the army. He blames China for the famine and launches an invasion.

Fearful of nuclear escalation with Russia, China tempers its response and seeks a multinational force to ease tensions on its border with North Korea. And that’s where the game player — part of the Special Forces “ghosts” — goes in. The mission: knock out the North Korean general and cripple the North Korean threat.

Although it’s true China has been somewhat irked lately about North Korea’s recalcitrance, it’s a far cry to say that North Korea would bite the hand that used to somewhat feed it, literally.

Although the North Korean aggression in the game is aimed in the wrong direction, the mission is not unlike what thousands of U.S. servicemembers train for every day in South Korea: a war against North Korea.

But the aggressive military tone of the game — and the sight of U.S. weapons systems against a distinctive Korean landscape — comes as the United States mulls how to deal with the communist country’s suspected nuclear weapons program.

Red Storm Entertainment creates games with believable but fictitious story lines, wrote Christian Allen, one of “Ghost Recon 2’s” designers, in response to questions from Stripes. China and North Korea offered a varied and exciting location for the game, he said. Past “Ghost Recon” settings have included the Georgian Republic, Ethiopia and Cuba, Allen wrote.

“When we developed the story background, we aimed at staying away from key current or specific events while still having a reasonable setting for a conflict,” Allen wrote. “Thus the idea of a famine that drives hard-line military members to start a conflict was chosen as our story line.”

For gamers, “Ghost Recon 2” is fast-paced, realistic slaughter-fest with the standard first-person shooter features. Players can select weapons such as grenades and machine guns, while working in tandem with a team of fighters to take an objective. Gun sights can be magnified for long-distance kills and the team weaves through military buildings, forests and other three-dimensional landscapes.

Level artists and designers do much research so that the locations look and feel authentic, Allen said. A Chinese-American consultant helped verify authenticity, and one of the game artists has a South Korean background, he said.

“Extra time was spent on the details, large and small, so that everything from the graffiti on a bridge to the spires on a pagoda will help immerse the player in the setting,” Allen wrote.

Asian faces are absent, at least in the limited screen shots and games sequences on the company’s Web site. The enemy — often a well-camouflaged, scurrying combatant in the distance — falls bloodlessly to the ground; flesh isn’t seen.

But enemy soldiers are North Korean with varied uniforms, Allen wrote; the “ghosts” are U.S. Special Forces troops from different races who fight beside French, German and British troops.

The game isn’t intended as a general slur against North Korea’s character and motives, Red Storm said.

“We are focusing the story on a splinter group in the North Korean military that sparks this conflict, not the entire country,” Allen wrote.

— Jennifer Kleckner contributed to this report.

NousDefionsDoc
07-20-2004, 17:49
They don't want to be pissin' off Ol Tom - He can predict the future...

Jack Moroney (RIP)
07-20-2004, 18:03
I can take some pride in saying, that although in the annals of military history this won't even register, that I was able to piss off a whole bunch of North Koreans. When the Battalion I was the S3 for got the mission to patrol the DMZ we were moved to a tent city adjacent to the Joint Security Area which housed the UN Joint Security Bn. They had some really neat facilities and I got myself invited to use their gym which was open 24 hours a day. So I routinely went over about 1900 every other day and worked out with the US and Korean soldiers that manned the area. One day while I was winding up doing some bench presses I got my hand caught on the bench rest and let out a few expletives. Up to this point in time the Korean soldiers had only been talking Korean but when they thought I was hurt they came over to assist and in perfect accent free English one said, "My God man, are you okay?."

The next day I had the job of taking some folks into Panmunjom within the DMZ to the truce talk building which straddles the border between North and South Korea for some talks and as is the custom the North Koreans have their guards scrutinize the US folks with binoculars while the South Koreans from the JSA provide a cordon from the vehicles to the building in which the talks are to be conducted. Now the South Korean soldiers are really sharp, stand at a rigid attention and are doing the I'm sharper than any of you slugs in the North Korean Army thing. But out of the corner of my eye I see the South Korean who had rushed over in the weight room the night before to lend me a hand. As a simple way of acknowleding that he knew me, he quickly moved both his hands from his sides up to his chest in a weight lifting motion. Now this was quick and he snapped back to attention. This move did not go un-noticed by the N. Koreans who were concentrating on everything we were doing and one of them with the binoculars suddenly raced back inside the Pagoda from which he was surveilling us and brought back his superior. He pointed to me and made the same weight lifting gesture that the S. Korean had just made. Then both dissappeared and you could see them through the Pagoda windows explaining this new hand and arm signal to other N. Koreans. Finally a small contingent of about 5 officers came into view with the one N. Korean who had reported the incident and was making wild gestures and pointing to me and the South Korean guard. Somewhere in some obscure intell report is a confusing discription of some secret hand and arm signal heretofore not found in US manuals that a North Korean analyst is probably still trying to figure out.:D

Kyobanim
07-20-2004, 18:17
You guys have the best stories. I love this place.

Roguish Lawyer
07-20-2004, 18:36
I copied the story into the Briefback forum for safekeeping. :)

Radar Rider
07-21-2004, 02:03
Maybe it would be better if everbody were pissing ON N. Korea. :D

The Reaper
07-21-2004, 05:41
Originally posted by Radar Rider
Maybe it would be better if everbody were pissing ON N. Korea. :D

Not even if they were on fire.

TR

VMI_Marine
07-21-2004, 06:33
Originally posted by Kyobanim
“Through propaganda, entertainment and movies,” read a recent online commentary in the Tongil Newspaper, Americans “have shown everyone their hatred for us. This may be just a game to them now, but a war will not be a game for them later. In war, they will only face miserable defeat and gruesome deaths.”

Not to trivialize the enemy, but I'll bet they thought something similar to that prior to September 1950.

Radar Rider
07-21-2004, 07:08
Originally posted by VMI_Marine
Not to trivialize the enemy, but I'll bet they thought something similar to that prior to September 1950. Actually, that's pretty much on the mark. The difference is that they had Joseph Stalin and his communist empire backing them up then.