Valiant Hearts: Coming Homeis a point-and-click mobile adventure game launched byNetflix. It is set in World War One and follows the stories of five characters: the fighter pilot, George; the sailor, Ernst; the medic, Anna; the musician and infantryman James; and the French Foreign Legion engineer, Freddie.
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You switch between the five throughout the game, experiencing their individual and shared stories in several locations throughout Europe. From a gameplay perspective, the game is simple and just makes you run around collecting items. Occasionally there are minigames or stealth areas, but the game focuses more on being a visual story than anything else.
This article contains major spoilers for Valiant Hearts: Coming Home.
5George
A Britishpilot of questionable skill, George is one of the least involved characters in the game’s story. When you are first introduced to George, he has crashed his plane, and you’re tasked with finding parts to repair a new one. After that, George appears intermittently, coming off as more of a funny joke character that exists to give you a break from the darker, more serious stories the other characters experience.
Since he is more of a side character, George’s personal story is fairly lackluster. His only contributions to the overall plot of the game are scouting a German position for Freddie to hit with an artillery strike, taking a photo of a German convoy, and saving a wounded Freddie from the Meuse-Argonne battle. Even his post-war scene is uninteresting, as it just tells you that he became an official member of the British RAF.
4Ernst
Ernst is a German sailor who worked as a merchant at the beginning of the war. During this time he would scavenge shipwrecks in a deep-sea diving suit. He is pulled into the war when his boat gets caught up in a sea battle and ultimately destroyed, but manages to be rescued by the crew of the merchant submarine, The Germain. It is on this submarine that Ernst finds a place of belonging and eventually runs into James.
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After becoming friends with James, Ernst continues to travel with the crew of The Germain until they arecaught by the German navy. The entire crew is arrested apart from Ernst, who is a German national and is instead drafted. It’s heartbreaking because Ernst is forced to work in a place he had once shared with his friends, and at one point is even ordered to destroy a ship that James is on. Thankfully, Ernst decides to purposely miss the attack, but even after the war, Ernst is still made to suffer. He is held as a British POW and forced to work in a labor camp, with the only uplifting part of his ending being that he is reunited with James.
3Anna
A Belgian medic, you first meet Anna while she is working in a hospital. You run around helping injured soldiers until eventually, Freddie shows up with a convoy of trucks that have X-ray machines and other medical equipment. Anna is thrilled to see Freddie (they have known one another since the first game), and it is clear that her feelings toward Freddie are more than platonic. Their reunion is cut short when a nearby bomb factory is attacked, and Anna rushes off to aid the women working in the factory.
After Freddie is injured in the battle of Meuse-Argonne, Anna stays by his side while he recovers and the two eventually form a romantic relationship. They head back to the United States together, and you are given the impression that they will have a happy ending until the couple is confronted by racists who don’t approve of their interracial relationship. Freddie is stabbed and Anna desperately and unsuccessfully tries to save him. This leaves her all alone in a foreign country, her dreams of a happy life bleeding out on the street.
2James
Arguably the main character of the game, James is Freddie’s younger brother and a talented jazz musician. He plays the clarinet and his instrument is a core part of his story, used for arhythm mini-game. When he loses his clarinet in the Baltimore Harbor, Ernst gives him a replacement, which is how they become friends. Whenever his regiment has free time, you can find him playing with the rest of his jazz band. They become so popular that James and his friends are even invited to play in Paris!
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In the actual war, James’s regiment is put on the frontlines and suffers heavy casualties. He is forced to watch the majority of his bandmates die in battle, and he himself almost dies in an explosion. He only survives because Freddie pushes him out of the way, and while Freddie survives the explosion he is seriously wounded. James tries to stay with his brother but is forced to abandon him to continue the battle. After the war, things start to look up for James as he is going to head home soon, and he’ll be able to see Freddie and Anna — who have already made their way back to the United States. Unfortunately, even that ends in tragedy, as the last scene of the game is James reading a letter from Anna about Freddie’s murder.
1Freddie
Freddie is a burly, rugged-looking soldier who plays a major part in the game, though he is never a playable character. He is heavily involved in the stories of Anna and James, as he is Anna’s friend and love interest, and James’s older brother. He appeared in the previous game, Valiant Hearts: The Great War, in more depth — but even with less screentime here, Freddie drives the game’s story. He is present in every major battle and is often seen leading troops.
What makes Freddie’s story the most heart-wrenching of all the characters is what happens after the war. After saving James from an explosion, Freddie is injured and taken off the frontlines. During this time, Anna stays with him and helps him recover, and the two eventually become a couple. They head to the United States together, so they can put the war behind them, but when they’re out shopping for furniture for their new home, Freddie and Anna are harassed by some racists. Being a soldier and not willing to back down, Freddie stands up to the racists, which results in him being stabbed. The wound is fatal, and after his passing Anna sends his last letter to James. In it, Freddie talks about being in a homecoming parade for all the veterans, and how excited he is to walk in it with his little brother.
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