Call of Duty: Vanguard Mislabels Kiwi War Hero Charles Upham as Aussie
The WWII shooter Call of Duty: Vanguard has come under criticism for not being historically accurate.
- CoD: Vanguard is criticized for a slip-up regarding one of the main characters;
- The character of Lucas Riggs, modelled on a New Zealand World War II hero, is an Australian in the game;
- This has caused an outrage in New Zealand media.
The release of Call of Duty: Vanguard is just over two months away, but there is no shortage of criticism aimed at it even now. This time, decisions regarding the story campaign have been taking flak. As a reminder, the latest installment of the popular FPS series will take us to the times of World War II (although it will present an alternative version of events), and we will be able to play as four different protagonists. Controversies concern one of them - Lucas Riggs.
Each of the four protagonists of Vanguard was modelled on real-life war heroes, e.g. the character of Russian sniper Polina Petrova was inspired by Lyudmila Pavlyuchenko, a sniper in the Red Army, who (according to Soviet accounts) scored 309 confirmed kills during the war. The character of Australian infantryman Lucas Riggs aroused such emotions because the prototype of this character, Charles Upham, was a distinguished war hero of... New Zealand. And although it might seem that it's only fiction and the character in the game doesn't have to correspond in one hundred percent to his prototype, New Zealanders felt very touched by this fact. Especially that Upham was the only soldier in the history of World War II to be awarded the Victoria Cross twice.
To quote New Zealand website Newshub:
"The importance of Charles Upham cannot be overstated. No other soldier has received two Victoria Crosses in all of history. This incredible achievement belongs exclusively to our country, New Zealand.
This is like making Sir Edmund Hillary an Australian, or Lorde, or Jonah Lomu. That is an insult. At best, it is ignorance; at worst, a giant middle finger to us all."
This solution satisfies no one historically. New Zealanders are not happy because their national hero is being made into an Australian (David Swenson of Sledgehammer Games admitted that Upham was the inspiration). But Australians also have nothing to be happy about, because if you wanted to emphasize the merits of the Australian military, it would have been appropriate to choose someone from its ranks. In this light, the developers' decision remains incomprehensible.
