So You’ve Set Your Big Shooting Game During World War One

People tend to grow reverential when talking about the First World War. Many see it as the epitome of wanton cruelty, a brutal and pointless stalemate that killed some 16 million people and gave rise to the worst excesses of modern warfare. This war to end all wars, more than almost any other modern conflict, is difficult to separate from the horrors it inflicted.

That's a big reason why you don't see World War I as a setting for a mainstream first-person shooter. But Electronic Arts wants to give it a try with Battlefield 1. This might sound like an exciting new frontier for the genre, but there's a reason WW1 has long been no-man's land for developers: It was a quagmire of death and disease that turned strategy into slaughter, with no handy narrative of heroism to layer gameplay atop.

The modern military-shooter found its muse in World War II; the *Battlefield *and *Call of Duty *franchises started there. Our collective memory paints it as a heroic war, one waged by good people against genuine evil. As a result, games set during WWII, even at their darkest, tend to feature clearly drawn lines of morality and objectives that reward bravery. A just war offers a high-action playground: Fight nobly, defeat evil, return home a hero.

Granted, most shooters aren't serious war stories, and don't have to be. The cultural conversation is big enough for entertainment-driven stories that nod toward the horror of war without accurately depicting it. You can debate the merits of certain pieces of culture as they relate to war, but playing a game like Battlefield is not necessarily bad. If nothing else, it makes you feel strong in a world where all too often very little does. That's OK.

World War I, though, grew from a complex web of old-world alliances. It offers no clear-cut narrative of heroism or villainy, just squabbling dynasties vying for their own interests in a particularly brutal war. And it gave rise to new ways of killing as aircraft, tanks, poison gas and other weapons fundamentally transformed combat. Cavalry charges and advancing lines of infantry were ineffective against this new technology, which cut men down in hailstorms of bullets and bombs.