Quote from HourencesThat seems like a really short sited perspective to be honest. Really, there's only one single way to visually and narratively present a game set during WW2? Certainly most WW2 games take the beat path, I'll agree there, but to say that your art direction and narrative/story is completely done for you is non sense. There's virtually infinite number of directions you could take any time period both visually and narratively.
Of course you can try to be original with a WW2 game, but no matter what you do, it will always be a WW2 game, and you can only add those things that really were there in WW2. Sure you can give it a twist, but you can't change it. And that is the whole point. You cant possibly argue that there is a lot of freedom in creating a WW2 game.
Sci fi games can look like minority report, or like 5th element, or like something in between. Or it could have this typical 1950s ufo touch to it, or jakk and dexter like, or you it could take the matrix path. It could be about an alien invasion, genetic mutations, war against machines, massive human warfare, or even a space battle. It could be absolutely anything you can imagine. The guns could be huge and over the top, or simple. It could involve a mechnical arm grabbing helicopters in mid air, or some dude who breaths below water (waterworld alike sci fi), or perhaps it could be Mad Max or Fallout like, or perhaps like Tron.
Those are not just variations on a certain theme (sci fi), they are almost entire themes on themselves. That you can't do in WW2.
The whole point is that Sci fi is an overspanning genre/theme that actually enveloppes many different subgenres/themes, like for example 5th element vs matrix. WW2 is not an overspanning genre, it is subgenre in itself, and it belongs to the realistic and contemporary games. Now comparing contemporary games to sci fi games is a whole other discussion, but there is no way that a subgenre can offer at least as much as sci fi in general. And when any single subgenre becomes overexploited, it will become boring very quickly, exactly because a subgenre can only offer so much, and after a while you have basically just seen it all.
i think the whole point made here lies in abstraction. put it this way: sci fi is an abstractive genre with endless possibilities; whereas world war 2 is a more concrete genre, from the abstractive genre war. comparing them is like comparing a helicopter to a car, and asking why the car can't fly. the genre of world war 2 is very limited because it is so specific and limited (because it is an instance of war), where as sci fi holds freedom because there are no limits.