This game made me remember a time when I loved FPSes.
That time was 2002, and I was heavily into Battlefield 1942. In my many arguments with Grumpy Joe about modern FPSes, I always go back to this game, how I used to enjoy playing it, and how none of the FPSes today have the same feel as it. I could never accurately explain it, but something about today’s games felt weak compared to that one.
Watching the gameplay of Battlefield 1, I finally put my finger on it. Battlefield 1 looks more believable than all the modern shit out now. It looks like real WAR!
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When EA and DICE announced their new entry in the Battlefield series, I was one of the many who rejoiced. Not only were they steering away from the present-day, tech-laden FPS locales that the market has been saturated with, they weren’t even revisiting World War II, the conflict it and Call of Duty cut their teeth on. They were going all the way back to 1914-1918, World War I. I loved the idea when they announced it, and I loved seeing it in action even more.
THIS is how war is supposed to look. Forget drone strikes and techy suits and railguns. Battlefield 1 is about battles in tiny European villages, inside and around trenches, using tried-and-true combat weapons as well as anything you can jam into someone’s skull. The game’s setting and visuals seem straight out of the war documentaries in the Discovery Channel. To me, it gave the combat a more palpable feel. I wasn’t just watching people shooting each other in the face; I was watching a recreation of something historical.
I’m not saying all this as a knock on all FPSes today. There is a place for the modern shooter. Combat today is vastly different than it was at the turn of the 20th Century, and games today are right to reflect that. It’s not about trenches and melee combat anymore; todays armies employ deadly long-range weapons and advanced tactics. And, yes, there is also a place for the tech-heavy sci-fi FPSes like Halo and Infinite Warfare, with their pew-pew aesthetic. But a game like Battlefield 1 was long-needed.
Sometimes, it’s better to stop recreating what war today looks like. Sometimes, it’s better to stop trying to imagine what war could be like in the near future, or in space. Sometimes, it’s awesome to step in the boots of our forebears and see what war was like in the past.
Oh, and tell me that seeing that airship fall out of the sky alight didn’t make your butthole clench, even though you’ve seen set pieces like that a thousand times!
