Indeed, Vanguard devotes a significant amount of time to cutscenes and character development. The game is presented as a series of interrogations after the bad guys catch the heroes, and the team you play is matched by super-evil Nazis on the other side (Lord of the Rings’ Dominic Monaghan as a wormy Nazi nerd is particularly entertaining to dislike). Your special forces team is travelling to Berlin at the end of the war, hoping to get information on a secret programme before the Nazis bury it ahead of the Red Army’s arrival. The storey takes you through memories for each character, establishing why they’re the best, before allowing them to work together to hijack a Nazi train and destroy a Nazi base. The storey can be a little ludicrous at times-it feels like Call of Duty’s take on The Expendables, as it gathers together a squad of unkillable action heroes-but it’s also appropriate for a game in which you kill hundreds of enemies by yourself in each mission.
It places you in the shoes of four veteran heroes as they assemble the first modern special forces team. Vanguard returns to World War II, but this time in a dramatised and exaggerated form.