Developer Gallicia will take you to the bloodiest carnage of the Western Front in The Trench: 1916.
The Great War isn’t something that comes up often in gaming. Flight sims can make you a Knight of the Air, and occasionally Lovecraftian horror games use the setting to create gloomy tension, but actual trench combat is seldom simulated. French developer Gallicia hopes to change that with its first person shooter The Trench: 1916, and its trailer shows off the shell-blasted environment and some gameplay.
In The Trench you play as either a French or German soldier, three days before the siege of Verdun. The player gets a little time to prepare defences or assault plans, and then the attack begins in earnest. The developer promises deformable terrain, dynamic weather and day/night effects, stealth and vicious hand-to-hand combat, as well as traditional shooter-style game play.
Not for nothing was it called The Hell of Verdun; the Douaumont Ossuary contains the bodies of over 130,000 unidentified Verdun dead, killed on a battlefield less than 20 kilometers square. Verdun was the original mincing machine, into which generals flung their troops without much pause for thought. It’s an interesting subject for a French developer to tackle; “on ne passe pas [they shall not pass]” – as General Nivelle told his troops – seems an unusual motto for a first person shooter.
No release date for this PC title as yet.
Sources: Kotaku The Trench
