War Stories: Operation Aurora

The following post is an after-action summary of the first single player mission of the story campaign in Battlefield Bad Company 2 that takes place on October 6, 1944. Somewhere in the Sea of Japan a small group of US commandos are sent to extract a Japanese scientist from an island who has war-decisive information in his possession. The fate of the mission was kept from the public and all records destroyed, relegating it to the scrap heap of battlefield myths.

Two teams of commandos attempt to infiltrate the Japanese base by boat.

There are a couple of manufactured tense moments where the player is along for the cut scene ride.

Able Squad is cut down by machine gun fire, and our craft is engaged as well sending the team into the water.

Our squad reforms on the nearby beach and awaits a preplanned air strike designed to distract the enemy.

Once the strafing runs begin we move through the complex taking out guards where they are encountered.

Many of the enemy where simple pop-up targets that were easily eliminated.

After clearing the trenches we make it to a cliff face which we climb by a ladder.

This leads to one of several cut scenes interlaced within the mission where the player is given an idea of the force they are up against.

Combat eye candy as a plane falls from the sky but does not manage to kill anyone on my team.

We finally meet up with the Japanese scientist when an ominous sound startles everyone except the traitor who calls it the “Black Weapon”. He then proceeds to inform us that we are all dead men.

Moving forward with the high value target secured, we encounter an airfield under attack by allied planes and have to shoot our way to a getaway vehicle. This was perhaps the most challenging segment of the mission.

I am ordered to man the machinegun on this jeep as we try to make it to the extraction point.

This leads to one of the main staples of these types of games: the rail shooting segment. Here the AI driver weaves in and out of various enemies that I am tasked to dispatch without prejudice.

As part of the first mission tutorial aspect, I am given instructions on blowing the door to the submarine pen.

This part of the mission was actually pretty nice as it instantly reminded me of an Indiana Jones movie set.

This sequence is the second most challenging of the mission with various pop-up enemy targets and several that move about making themselves hard targets.

We bob and weave through several corridors before making it to the sub that was commandeered by an advance group.

The submarine gets underway with my team and the scientist.

At this point we hear the ominous noise from the Black Weapon again, then an explosion on land which sends a shock wave towards the submarine. Trapped on the deck we are all swept overboard and apparently drown as the game advances to present day for the next mission.

Post Mortem

I have been wanting to do a vignette styled series covering some popular single player game campaign missions (Battlefield, Call of Duty, etc.) and this in the first installment in that series which I am calling “War Stories”. This is a departure from my standard after-action reports that I do for wargames and is some content on the FPS side of war gaming.