Sledgehammer Games lightly detailed how Call of Duty: WWII will approach racism and female soldiers in earlier this year, but a recent interview has shed more light on these two subjects.
Sledgehammer Games' co-founder Michael Condrey has revealed that swastikas will indeed be in the game, as it is a historically accurate surviving symbol of the Nazi regime from WWII and has detailed how female soldiers will be approached in the game.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Condrey detailed the presence of swastikas in Call of Duty: WWII. In short, swastikas will be in the campaign, but not in the multiplayer due to the developers looking to respect their userbase:
"In campaign, we need to balance the authenticity with the respect for the fact 100 million people died in the darkest days of humanity. So, you will see the swastika in the campaign, using our military historian to make sure it's authentic, tasteful and respectful.
"But in our global community of multiplayer and zombies players, we've chosen deliberately not to include that. We want the community to play together. We want to be respectful of local customs and laws around the world. And frankly, it's a dark symbol with a lot of emotion behind it – we don't feel matches our multiplayer experience."
As far as female soldiers go, in the campaign players will be playing as a French Resistance leader for a short while (which was known). In the multiplayer, players will be able to choose whether they want to be female or male, as well as choose between "any one of the multinational cast of characters" featured in the mode. Characters that players create to play in multiplayer will be available no matter which side of the war they are put in – even if it is not historically accurate.
Condrey noted that removing the swastikas in multiplayer, yet allowing non-historically accurate characters in multiplayer may be conflicting, it ultimately supports their goal of putting the player's decision first.
"We want this to be about you. We're not making a statement about the authenticity of the Axis force. We're making this about putting you in this social space and you into your soldier. And we want that to be rewarding and meaningful. I don't want it to be our decision to force you away from your character into playing a German soldier, just because we put you on the Axis team."
Call of Duty: WWII is set to release on November 3rd, 2017 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The game will have timed-exclusive DLC for the PS4 (30 days) and will get a beta on the PS4 first as well (pre-ordering will get you access to a private beta that will be at least three days long and on all available platforms). Other platforms will be getting the DLC and beta afterward.
