It is too late in the day to be reviewing Killzone 2. This is a look at the things I took away from the single player game, primarily the execution of its story. As such it contains a few spoilers towards the end. Nothing drastic that will affect your enjoyment of the game but things to think about if you have or do.

Many reviews commented on the story’s short comings. A problem I believe was born from conflicted directions in the overall vision for the game and struggling to settle on an overarching theme. While the graphical tone and hopeless nature of the story are a persistent and suffocating through out, there seems to be disparity between some incidental scenes and the message it wants to convey at its culmination.

In some ways KZ2 tries to mimic the Call of Duty games by focusing not on your character but your squad during a single battle in a larger conflict. It is an undertaking in which developers Guerrilla succeed and fail at in near equal measure. For much of the game the focus is on those around you, keeping your character relatively faceless. This is often achieved remarkably successfully due to the fidelity of the graphics, but there are a few instances when the illusion is broken. Part of the problem are the occasions its pulls out into the third person. These establish a different dynamic between you and the character. It isn’t you any more. You are not witnessing this battle, it’s the protagonist you control (Sgt. Sevchenko) who while devoid of personality is no longer just a ball of clay for you to mould in your image.

During this shift something else happens, you lose the everyman feeling. This is in part because of the challenges that fall to you. You take on everything from siege machines to Generals and triumph. But Sev’s efficiency on the battle field renders the games attempts at making him unimportant and sensitive implausible. It loops back to the idea that there were two forces at work. One wanted a story which made the odds seem insurmountable while the other was the marketing department. A ‘Fuck yeah!’ here and a flying-machine-filled-with-fiery-electric-death there and pretty soon you end feel like Marcus Phoenix, with smaller shoes. So after managing to decimate more than half a world’s military forces single handed the emotional conflict they try to force on your character feels incongruous.

This fracture (which for the sake of argument I will define as between narrative and marketing) seems to run through the majority of the game. It seems one side of Guerrilla were trying to pass a commentary on the futility and duality of war by placing you as a lowly grunt trying to survive the orders of your superiors, watching the death around you. As they wrestled with the task though the other half of the company seemed hell-bent on trying to demonise the Helghast antagonists. Their Nazi appearance serves merely as a convenient touch stone to for what the story depicts them engaged in, their torture, jingoism and elitisms. It makes them seem like an enemy worthy of eradication. If this was just a summer blockbuster movie style of game then this depiction of the foe would function perfectly but there are constant hints of something else. An alternate plot that was maybe too unpalatable for the marketers and the mass audience they hoped to reach. In truth you are the invading army, the aggressors. Members of your squad become progressively more brutal, and in the end they too commit war crimes, but it all seems marginalised in the overall context of the game.

The possibilities for what was perhaps original intended are echoed in the ending. As after hearing the Helghast leader’s (Brian Cox) final poignant (and convincing) soliloquy you character walks outside and in the one moment which justifies the third person perspective, looks totally broken by everything he has seen. If the rest of the game had been more committed in the build up to this moment the story would have carried gravitas. It would have left meaningful questions about the characters and what is to happen to them. I could have left you reflecting on the implications of this tiny battle in the context of the war and wondering if the whole thing was futile. Rather than that though the only question it leaves us with is whether a sequel will be announced, which is only a disappoint because of what it could have been.