Valiant Hearts: Coming Home doesn't shy away from putting World War One’s ugliest moments under the spotlight

gamesradar.com:

Valiant Hearts always put human stories before actual warfare. There was never any shooting or combat to be found in Valiant Hearts: The Great War, but instead smaller, more personal tales of individuals and their close relations just trying to survive the most hellish war the world had ever seen at the time.

Almost a decade after The Great War, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home emerges with similar themes. The sequel to the 2014 original might have a new developer, and new additions to its cast of characters, but it’s still circling those same ideals of putting humans in a time of war under the microscope instead of the act of war and battle. 

Blanc saw my partner and I team up to help baby animals

Freddie and Anna are back again for Coming Home, the former a Black American enlisting with the French army, and the latter a Belgian battlefield nurse. They’re joined by James, Freddie’s brother, British pilot George, and reluctant German fighter Ernst. Valiant Hearts is up to its old tricks - drawing together a wide variety of characters for different points of view on the same conflict. 

Valiant Hearts’ strength was always its cast, and the same is true for Coming Home. Freddie is immediately empathetic as one of millions of Black Americans who sign up to fight for a country that largely despises them, only to be thrown to the wolves as part of the Harlem Hellfighters, while Ernst makes daring plays to save as many opposition lives as possible and keep his conscience clean. 

It’s through Freddie, James, and the Harlem Hellfighters that Valiant Hearts isn’t shying away from putting World War One’s ugliest moments under the spotlight. The Hellfighters, made entirely of Black American fighters, were routinely thrust into the