The basic gunplay isn't much of a departure from previous games in the series. The tone and presentation are so oppressive that it's almost an afterthought that Shadow Fall's biggest problem is its deficit of fun. By the end of the game, I didn't actively want any one side to win or lose. But it also did an excellent job of murdering any investment I tried to place within the characters or the plot. If Guerrilla was trying to tell me that everyone in the conflict depicted across the Killzone series was irredeemable, then they succeeded. It didn't matter that Killzone: Shadow Fall's script was full of awful, overwrought dialogue, plot holes, or general stupidity, or that the voice acting was frequently painful. This literally does not stop - even as the credits roll, Killzone: Shadow Fall finds another parting shot to underscore the ultimate pointlessness of the Helghast/Vektan war. The Helghast violently arrest and murder anyone caught on their side of the giant demilitarized zone that separates the two societies, but the Vektan's ISA forces are also coming up with ways to wipe out the entire Helghast race.Įven as the credits roll, Killzone: Shadow Fall finds another parting shot to underscore the ultimate pointlessness of the Helghast/Vektan war Well sure, the Helghast are nightmarish neo-Fascists, but they evolved that way after being used as human chattel by the Vektans and abandoned on a merciless planet. Despite the beauty of Vekta and the extraordinary technical wizardry on display, the game does its absolute best to paint almost every character as an awful, irredeemable person engaging in an awful, hopeless cycle.Īs the story progresses, every offense by one side is one-upped by the other, further muddying the ugly history of the entire conflict even further. Killzone has always flirted and later actively courted an early-20th century sort of nihilism with regards to humanity's predilections to endless, aimless war. But more often than not, they're buried in muddy shades of grey. Somewhere in all of this, there must have been a story worth telling, and like shafts of light in a ruined building, these bits occasionally shine through.
There are also strong echoes of the post-WWII socialist/capitalist divide of East and West Germany during the '70s in the sorts of maneuvering and secret police actions of both the ISA and the Helghast. There's some grasping in Killzone: Shadow Fall's premise toward higher social commentary and exploration of real world political drama, particularly the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
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