ConceptFiction

Introduction

You know how our artists will sit down and sketch a piece of concept art, to capture the look and feel of the game? Same idea. This is a concept fiction, a piece that aims to capture the tone and attitude of the world of Mercenaries.

You’ll notice that the concept fiction diverges from the tone of Mercs 1.0. Why? I feel that one of the great missed opportunities of the Mercs 1.0 fiction is that it refuses to take a stand. It presents all of this political “stuff” (I want to say intrigue, but it’s not really that intriguing) in a straightforward and earnest way, without making comment, or criticism, or satire.

Contrast this approach with the approach taken by Rockstar, in which every facet of the game, from the radio stations to the mission objectives, is a mercilessly funny critique of the banality of American life and culture.

Mercenaries, to put it simply, lacks an ATTITUDE.

I think there should be an attitude, and I think it should reflect the attitude of the characters. Are our playable heroes cynical about the motives of the US government? Or are they reliable patriots, fighting under a flag they believe in? Either way, the attitude should come across in every part of the presentation of the game: the shell, the briefings, the mission objectives.

My concept fiction presents the world of Mercs through the eyes of its heroes. In other words, this isn’t what Rob thinks of the world. This is what a mercenary thinks of the world. And given that Mercs takes place in a post 9/11 world, let’s just say the outlook ain’t exactly sunshine and roses. (I’m definitely leaning more towards XXX than Rambo in my attitude.)

And no, that doesn’t mean the game won’t have humor – I think there’s plenty of room for humor (mostly ironic and black in the GTA vein) here, but for us to make this game in this day and age means we have to create verisimilitude. Our game world has to be plausible and believable, and that means it has to honestly and truthfully reflect the current state of the real world (which if you haven’t noticed, is not so great.) If we ignore the real world, we lose verisimilitude. And without plausibility, the world of Mercs just doesn’t work.

So let’s begin.

Part I: US Army = Posers

Let’s get this out of the way: the United States military, to put it bluntly, sucks.

They’re a bunch of posers. Seriously, dude, this is not the same army that stormed the beaches at Normandy and kicked Hitler’s ass.

The second war in Iraq was a tech support nightmare. All the gadgets and toys that Mr. Rumsfeld demanded the military purchase at a premium (from defense contractors with well-paid lobbyists), insisting that they would streamline operational efficiency, didn’t work.

The Army ran out of Humvees, and was forced to rent soccer-mom minivans from Avis Baghdad. Soldiers who wanted to avoid getting lost in the desert had to rely on GPS units and radios they bought from Wal-Mart?. The Cisco switchers and routers that formed the backbone of the military’s Global Command and Control System (GCCS) were meant to be kept in dust-free air conditioned rooms; the Army stored them in sand-filled tents, at temperatures approaching 100 degrees. As for the GCCS itself, imagine an AOL chat room with hundreds of screen names typing at each other frantically. Suits who had never set foot in the desert were typing orders to soldiers with extensive combat time.

One soldier put it best: “If we run out of batteries, this war is screwed.”

Part II: War as Photo Op

And guess who paid for those batteries, often at an inflated cost? As a result of Rumsfeld’s Revolution in Military Affairs doctrine, taxpayers are saddled the costs of expensive and poorly conceived projects which have no demonstrated need or purpose on the battlefield: missile defense systems that can’t shoot down missiles, air bombers designed to penetrate the defenses of a nation that no longer exists, acoustic homing rockets that are extraordinarily effective at blowing up portable toilets.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the future of the United States military.

It’s about tech support. It’s about toys. It’s about making video games for bored recruits. It’s about welfare handouts for defense contractors. It’s about photo opportunities on aircraft carrier decks.

It’s not about soldiering.

And it’s certainly not about combat.

Modern governments, too easily swayed by newspaper headlines and public opinion polls, are too timid to commit ground forces anywhere. You see the pattern over and over again: random third world country erupts into civil war, first world governments do nothing, genocide and amputation for all. On the occasions that first world governments do dare to intervene, they usually wuss out: one helicopter gets shot down in Somalia, a few dozen men get killed, everyone immediately runs back to the apron strings of their mamas.

The soldiers of the first world sit on the sidelines, only willing to play ball if the game is already won and they can run up the score. They want the trophies and headlines and the photos ops; they just don’t want the blood. And as a result, the soldiers of the first world don’t see any real action.

Real action requires blood. Real action doesn’t photograph well.

Real action doesn’t happen in public.

Part III: Secret Wars, Secret Warriors

Hypothetical: let’s say that our government wanted to, you know, actually accomplish something somewhere. Obviously, committing ground troops would be out of the question. Too much bad press, too many outraged and self-serving speeches at the next meeting of the UN security council.

Might it be possible that our government would intervene in foreign affairs without the full knowledge of its citizens, not to mention foreign governments?

At the risk of inducing a heart attack in the gentle reader, I maintain that the answer is yes.

Here’s a secret: wars are happening all around you. Every single day. You just don’t know about them.

When the dictator of Haiti says he was forced to leave his own country by mysterious masked men, well, ahem, he probably was. When Afghan rebels previously armed with twigs and pebbles suddenly show up with state-of-the-art rocket launchers, chances are they didn’t just find them under their sofa cushions. When a mysterious automobile accident in Istanbul yields three dead Turkish government officials, a porn star, and a cache of incriminating documents, you gotta marvel at the serendipity.

So the question is: what kind of soldier does it take to pull off these kinds of jobs?

The answer is: a mercenary.

Part IV: Freaks and Geeks

Mercenaries are losers. They’re the freaks and geeks of the military world. Today’s military, with an army comprised primarily of public relations and marketing experts, has no use for them.

Mercenaries aren’t pretty enough to stand in front of CNN’s cameras while the army fakes a weapon test to convince Congress to spend another one hundred billion on the latest boondoggle.

You certainly wouldn’t call a mercenary for that job.

But let’s say you want to overthrow a third world government. And you’d like to deliver some old Soviet weapons to the rebels. Only problem is, the US has an official policy of non-intervention in this nation; giving AK-47s to the rebels would surely ignite a political firestorm.

What you need is plausible deniability. You need someone to secure end-user certificates for those weapons, proving that they will be used only by the good people of Switzerland, and not by third world rebels. You need that someone to purchase the weapons and hide them inside the food containers aboard a Carnival Cruise ship, thereby eluding the coast guard, or worse, pirates. Then you need that someone to sneak in behind UN peacekeeping forces in the dead of night, hit a ten by ten target with a cargo drop from a low flying helicopter moving at full speed. It’s the kind of stunt they don’t even pull off in the movies. The odds of success are laughable.

But who cares? The man for this job is completely expendable. If that someone gets caught, they’re just some random Soldier of Fortune wacko working for the rebels. That someone you’d call for the job has no “official” connection to the US government.

That someone never existed. That someone has no name.

That someone is a mercenary.

Part V: Where Mercenaries Come From

A lot of places, actually. Now that you can’t even jaywalk without someone declaring a jihad, it’s easy to pick up combat skills in just about any corner of the world.

In the old days before the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Army’s equipment mostly worked most of the time, mercenaries came from traditional military service. Mercs were usually retired special forces types, burnt out but still yearning for cash and adventure. The military forces of the UK, France, Israel, and South Africa, have also produced a lot of old-schoolers. These geezers are still around, although their numbers are dwindling. Ask them about today’s military forces, and they’ll most likely shake their canes and spit on the ground in disgust.

Nowadays, things are a bit different. Mercenaries aren’t quite so easy to spot anymore. The days of the romantic soldier of fortune in the Congo are long over. A modern-day mercenary is just as likely to be wearing a Prada suit as camo fatigues.

Mercenaries used to stand out. Now, more often than not, they blend in.

The governments of the world, at any given time, are running any number of secret “black” operations without the knowledge of their taxpayers (but with their money). Governments need THINGS DONE, and they need them done immediately, efficiently, and most importantly, covertly.

Mercenaries must do the outrageous and the impossible, and on top of that, they have to keep it a secret.

Part VI: The Fantasy of Being a Mercenary

Let me clarify and repeat what mercenaries do, because it’s important; it’s the FANTASY OF BEING A MERCENARY:

A mercenary does outrageous and impossible things, things SO outrageous and SO impossible that everyone else, in the interest of maintaining the illusion of order and political stability, has to pretend they never happened.

Let’s rewind: a mysterious automobile accident in Instanbul yields three dead Turkish government officials, a porn star, and a cache of incriminating documents. Sure, we might see a few curious headlines about it, but in the end, we’ll never really know what happened. It’s impossible, we say. Outrageous! But at the end of the day we’ll merely shake our heads, and say to ourself, “It’s just one of those things.”

But it wasn’t just one of those things. It was a mercenary.

The job of a mercenary is to make ridiculous things happen. And the job of the rest of the world is to pretend those things never happened.

Here’s an important point.

THE WORLD NEVER SEES A MERCENARY.

THE WORLD ONLY SEES THE AFTERMATH.

As I write this, mercenaries are operating in the darkness, running circles around traditional military outfits. They are instigating unthinkable occurrences, and making them look like improbable coincidences. And they are doing this right beneath everyone’s noses.

Mercenaries make weapons drops to rebels under the radar. They steal multimillion dollar freighters loaded with aluminum ingots. They negotiate ransoms for the lives of kidnapped oil company executives. They shut down raging oil-well fires in the middle of insurgent attacks on oil plants.

You would never learn how to do these things in the Army. But you would learn them flying for Air America, the CIA’s airline in Indochina during the 1960’s. Or working for AIG, one of the world’s largest industrial insurance companies. Or fighting fires for Coots and Boots, the top private fire-fighting outfit in the world. Or operating a piracy ring in East Asian waters.

Part VII: Character Biographies

Coming soon!