Call of Duty: WWII is an ode to the heroism of the Second World War, but not all of the heroes are familiar. In the name of showing the diversity of the conflict, Sledgehammer Games highlighted the role of Jewish Americans, African Americans, and female soldiers as well.
In the mission where you play a leader in the French Resistance, you play a role in liberating Paris. Your character is Rousseau, a woman who must first infiltrate a Nazi garrison, meet with a contact, obtain a bomb, deal with a Nazi leader, and then blow up the gates to enabled an Allied attack. I found the mission rather difficult, as staying in stealth wasn’t so easy. But it was a very different kind of Call of Duty mission, as it focused the tension on staying in stealth rather than going in with guns blazing.
Brett Robbins, senior creative director of Sledgehammer, said in an earlier interview that the team wanted to tell more stories than those that we already knew.
“In writing the story we were looking for opportunities to bring in a more diverse cast of characters,” Robbins said. “Featuring the French resistance and the resistance leader, Rousseau, a woman French operative, and being able to play as her for a portion of the story, that was really exciting to us. Later on in the game your path intersects with an African-American squad and you fight alongside them. Just trying to find those moments in history that are historically accurate and could give us more diversity in the game, that was really important.”
If that seems unreal, then so is history. One of the Resistance leaders was Simone Segouin, who became famous as a saboteur.