Guest Post: The War Game to End All War Games

How Battlefield 1 Unflinchingly Portrays one of History’s Most Brutal Conflicts [A Historical and Game Design Analysis]

The following is a guest post from Joe Mayall, author of JoeWrote, a newsletter that features cultural, sports, and movie commentary from a leftist/socialist point-of-view. Check him out!

Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are solely our guest’s, and—as with all our guest posts—don’t necessarily reflect the opinion(s) or editorial stance(s) of Game & Word, its publisher, or other guest contributors.

When the Future Turns Out a Dud, Look to the Past!

Following the 2021 release of Battlefield 2042 (or 2042 for short), Battlefield servers swelled with players looking to relive their favorite action-packed franchise. But, these players didn’t go to fight in the future. The brand-new 2042 bombed due to buggy gameplay and missing longstanding features—such as the series’ patented class system, classic game modes, and an in-game scoreboard. As a result, Battlefield 1 (BF1), a 2016 release set during World War I, experienced a rebirth. An influx of players, eager for a classic Battlefield experience, dusted off their discs and re-entered this masterful digital adaptation of The Great War.

While 2042 had enough bugs to warrant calling the exterminator, BF1 offered something its successor could not: immersion. The game achieves this by adding unique gameplay that mirrors early 20th-century combat—such as equipping melee weapons alongside machine guns—as well as novel battlescapes. These locales, which include Italian mountains, German ballrooms, and French trenches, had never been experienced before, not even by the most seasoned of gamers.

Because of its unique mechanics and settings, BF1 makes the player feel like a participant, compared to other games that leave the player feeling like a spectator. And since WW1 remains largely forgotten, especially compared to the other major war that followed decades later, players often find immersion in the 20th Century’s first global conflict to be quite a shocking experience.

The Forgotten War

Overshadowed by World War II, “The War to End All Wars” has long been pushed to the cultural backburner. Not only in our movies, television shows, and video games but also in our collective remembrance. Even your most historically-illiterate friend could summarize the fight against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, but you’d be far-fetched to get any layperson to correctly explain the tangled web of alliances and treaties that sparked WWI.

This collective disinterest in “The Great War” stems from a few reasons.

First is the nature of the war’s combat. Trench warfare was dreadfully stale, with long stretches of boredom, only broken by bursts of unfathomable brutality. Men lived like rats, digging holes in the mud to hide from the death above. This doesn’t make for very romantic media—especially considering soldiers died far more from famine and disease than combat, even without counting those that the Spanish Flu killed!

But the soldiers’ banal yet squalid lives are just one challenge for would-be storytellers. Had the war’s causes been more compelling (like fighting against the Holocaust, or for the emancipation of enslaved people), we might now be paying greater attention to the years 1914-1918. 

But with the clarity that comes from a century’s worth of hindsight, we can see that WW1 was brought on by nothing more than imperial ambitions, feverish nationalism, and a convoluted network of treaties that resulted in Indians fighting against Nigerians on a battlefield in France.  

The prism of “Good vs. Evil” doesn’t fit nicely on “The Great War,” considering that undemocratic governments fought on both sides. The countries that once constituted the Allied Powers—the British Empire, France, the Russian Empire, and the United States—would be hard-pressed to claim the “defenders of freedom” mantle. At the start of the war, the U.S. still subjected African-Americans to Jim Crow apartheid, and the British crushed the independence rebellion of the now-established Irish state.

Alternatively, the Central Powers were arguably the aggressor—with Germany’s unprovoked invasion of France¹—and enabled Turkey’s genocide of Armenians. It’s no surprise no nation pats itself on the back for its role in the war, as no nation seems to want its actions or motivations under the historical microscope. And this is to say nothing of the harsh Treaty of Versailles, which sowed the soil for European fascism to sprout years later.²

Lastly, and perhaps the most depressing factor to consider, is that the war was—to a certain extent—futile. Fought between repressive empires and apartheid states over disputed borders and trivial notions of “national honor,” millions of working-class men and women died for nothing more than the false “glory” of nations and monarchs that evidently valued their pride over the lives of their citizens.

But despite its being a “forgotten” war, it is imperative that we remember the First World War and the devastation it brought. In a time when we are once again seeing rising nationalism and even an actual land war in Europe, the memory of a brutal conflict can serve as a useful bulwark against rushing to arms. If we collectively made a greater effort to remember World War 1, we might be less inclined to repeat the mistakes that led to its unnecessary bloodshed.

Gameplay

So how does BF1 draw players into WW1? In a nutshell, the game makes no attempt to hide the brutality and futility of this notoriously bloody war. In fact, it highlights these aspects!

The most important element of a first-person shooter (FPS) is its gunplay, which BF1 perfectly delivers. Combat in BF1 is abhorrent—but in a good way, if that makes sense. While seasoned gamers are used to the classic FPS arsenal of machine guns, rifles, shotguns, and hand grenades, BF1’s time period brings in a new—or rather, old—cadre of devilish weaponry.

Flamethrowers, poison gas, incendiary grenades, primitive melee weapons—like nails twisted into knives, and trench-made spiked clubs—and even fire-bullet assault rifles are all ready and waiting to be carried “over the top.”³

While some of these weapons may sound out of place, they all are historically accurate to the period. As the war stretched on, engineers developed horrible (and sometimes zany) weapons to break trench warfare’s neverending stalemate. Meanwhile, the resource-strapped soldiers in the trenches made do with whatever they had, hence the improvised grenades and crude hand-to-hand arsenal.

Through BF1’s gameplay, the player realizes why the soldiers charging into battle needed such terrible creations. When a concrete pillbox filled with enemy machine guns stands between you and your objective, sometimes the only way through its bulletproof defenses is with gas or fire. You’ll even hear the enemy soldiers’ screams as you run past their once-impenetrable fort.

Speaking of sound, BF1’s soundtrack is as real as I hope a game will ever be. Not only does the game feature climactic and inspirational background music, but the interpersonal chatter sounds so real, like I would imagine how men sound like in the heat of war. Soldiers scream in pain, beg for ammo, call out enemy tanks and planes, and—when employing the dreaded bayonet charge—yell with the raw fury only a warrior can muster. Sound isn’t often an FPS’ most alluring aspect, but with BF1, it’s a critical component that creates intensely enthralling moments that keep the player coming back for more. 

Another interesting mechanic is the suppression effect. When fired upon, bullets will crack and thud inches from your avatar. And while under sustained fire, your vision will blur, making aiming difficult. This adds an element of confusion—and yes, fear—as you crawl through the mud of the Somme or charge off a landing craft at Gallipoli. 

BF1 also does a great job at showcasing the conflict’s complex global dynamics in-game. Black soldiers, troops wearing Turbans, and even the occasional Russian woman all clash on the battlefield, seeking the same objectives.

Altogether, the game does a fantastic job of sucking you into the experience. With a climatic score playing, mud in your vision, bullets flying overhead, and the pounding heartbeat of a soldier an inch from death, BF1 brings the player as close as anyone would ever hope to get to the reality of First World War combat. And all, fortunately, from the comfort and safety of one’s own living room.

The Bigger View

Throughout this experience, BF1’s creators repeatedly illustrate how innocent lives were tossed into this brutal meatgrinder, for trivial gain. Whether you’re tackling the single-player missions (a collection of six “War Stories”) or one of the massive, multi-map multiplayer games (called “Operations”), BF1 weaves a clear narrative that this was a war without merit.

“Operations,” which first debuted in BF1, place the player in the midst of different historical battles. At the end of each match, the narrator states either what actually happened, or what could’ve happened—depending on whether the match ended in a Central or Allied victory.

But instead of heroic narratives of virtuous actions, brave rescues, honor, and loyalty told from other conflicts (like liberating a concentration camp in WW2), BF1’s battles mostly end in (usually small) patches of land passing from one nation to the other. There are no stories of mass liberation or emancipation, because those motives weren’t in play during WW1. And the game’s writers, designers, and developers never let the player forget it.

On the single-player side, BF1 features “War Stories.” Each focuses on a different soldier, aviator, or crewman from varying nations partaking in several parts of the global conflict. For example, one features an Australian soldier giving his life to take a single hill, half a world away from his home. Other Stories put players in an aviator’s boots as he’s shot down in no man's land, and a tank crew trapped inside their busted, broken-down transport like it was their metal coffin.

And in breaking with gaming orthodoxy, the game’s best mission is not the last, but the first. To really hit the player over the head with the war’s intensity, this mission starts as soon as the game loads. 

Before you’ve even seen the title menu, BF1 has you knee-deep in the mud of the Western Front. Spoiler Alert: you don’t last long.

The player rotates through five soldiers, aged 18 to 32, in a little less than fifteen minutes. Just when you get comfortable with the weaponry and responsibilities of one soldier, he’s killed, instantly transporting you to the next. And so on, and so forth.

Under the voiceover of a war-weary soldier, the last character we control comes to a stalemate with his German enemy.

After a tense moment, both drop their rifles and walk away.

All-in-all, the mission is a powerful, driving tale that stands out among its FPS counterparts. If you don’t plan on playing BF1 (though I strongly recommend you do), you can view the mission in its entirety here:

A Great Game for a Terrible War

BF1 is a fan favorite for all of the above and more. It has excellent gameplay, introduced novel mechanics, lets players control massive war machines (including an airship blimp and a dreadnought battleship), and brought a fresh setting to the usually stale genre of historical FPS games.

And yet, it’s also so much more than that. In an era when many video games push faux narratives that gloss over the reality of war, BF1 tells the truth. It makes no attempt to pretend the brutality and violence was somehow justified, or that the player was “killing for the right reasons.”

Instead, the game designers built a game that simply recreates history and opens a window into the past. 

Critics often chagrin FPS games as soulless carbon copies of one another, that offer little more than gratuitous violence. There’s some truth to that claim, but BF1 shows they don’t have to be. By being bold in its gameplay, daring with its setting, and relentlessly honest in its exploration of The Great War, BF1 has stood out as a time-tested masterpiece that continues to hold up since its 2016 release, and is sure to continue seeing players well into the future.

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1. ED. NOTE: The question of who’s to “blame” for starting WW1 is far from a settled matter amongst historians. The first country to declare war was Austria-Hungary (on Serbia) following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalists. However, the Central Powers as a whole—especially Germany and Austria-Hungary—pursued a highly aggressive diplomatic and military strategy, hoping to surprise or intimidate the Allies (this is where the “unprovoked aggression” charge comes from). But the Allies called their bluff, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Also, the fact that the King of England, the Russian Tsar, and the German Kaiser were closely related (all of them being the late Queen Victoria’s grandchildren) could’ve played a major role. The Kaiser, in particular, suffered a massive inferiority complex regarding the major European imperial powers and was openly envious and resentful of his cousins in the UK and Russia. Messy family dynamics cannot be ruled out of the equation.

As Joe said, it was all a big, tangled mess!

2. ED. NOTE: More on this here.

3. ED. NOTE: And now you know where that saying comes from!