Many people believe that incompetent bastards are weeded out during the course of military training-- that it should be a point of pride that the Perisher has a 25 percent failure rate and that most recruits fail and sometimes die during SEAL training.
Heinlein appears to be one of those people.
The regiment had started with 2009 men; we graduated 187—of the others, fourteen were dead (one executed and his name struck) and the rest resigned, dropped, transferred, medical discharge, etc. Major Malloy made a short speech, we each got a certificate, we passed in review for the last time, and the regiment was disbanded, its colors to be cased until they would be needed (three weeks later) to tell another couple of thousand civilians that they were an outfit, not a mob.
The reality might be that this training selects for people who take drugs and cheat
Verhoeven is under no such illusions; the point of such stories is to create an esprit de corps. If the soldiers believe that they are the best of the best, they’ll be the best cannon fodder they can be.
I suspect by now someone’s at least imagined a game where you’re supposed to find the most effective way to cobble together war footage to make the most effective propaganda. Except I expect that it’s generally quite impossible to find the element of fun in the tedious task of editing.
Verhoeven’s talent is in landing everything right in the uncanny valley between realistic and grimdark, so we can tell it must be a joke even though nothing even remotely funny is happening
I could see a game where it’s vitally important to conduct proper funerary rites.
You could design a mechanism that would take the dead guy’s reknown or XP or expertise, and redistribute it among his mates-- with a side chance of really pissing them off.
After Peloa-2, there were funeral orations every few hours. Nine Hibiscus kept the old tradition of a Fleetwide broadcast on a seldom-used frequency, a recitation of the names of the dead. When the Tenth Legion wasn’t in active combat, it sang its way through a thousand years of previous casualties, cycling every week and a half from the most recent fallen soldier in the Legion to the very first Teixcalaanlitzlim who had died wearing this uniform. Nine Hibiscus couldn’t forget his name, or the low tone it was sung on during the litany—Two Cholla. A spear-name, all cactus needles, a name that would have sounded very fine with captain or ikantlos in front of it. Two Cholla had died a thousand years ago, at seventeen, before any titles or ranks could accrue around his name. There were a lot of names that came after his. During active combat, the funeral frequency stopped playing its endless loop of memory and broadcast actual funeral orations, however small and paltry they ended up being. A snatch of song, the sound of blood falling into a bowl, and on to the next.
Yeah, I had only heard about the strategy game, and not paid much attention, and briefly wondered if this was some alternate view for that. (Apparently not, the RTS is pretty conventional.) Funny that suddenly there’s multiple Starship Trooper (movie) games coming out now.
I wondered if this was a Left4Dead-alike, which would kind of work (constantly pushing forward in order to barely survive an infinite onslaught), but reading a bit elsewhere, it does fundamentally sound more like a wave shooter where things get constantly tougher, but you recover resources that allows you to build up weapons/defenses. So yeah, maybe some gameplay mechanics (at least) a little bit shoehorned into the IP…
I have heard some Left for Dead comparisons - maybe from Rob Zacny at Waypoint? Not sure, but the comparison has definitely been made. I could see that being interesting if they handle it well.
No word on how they are handling the fascism that I have seen yet
