It was segmented so it wasn’t really at the ending for battlefield one but the beginning that has fucked me up for a long time.
The game opens to a black screen, utter silence, and a description prints out of how wide and brutal the first world world war was. The last text that appears on the screen was,
“What you are about to experience is front line combat. You are not expected to survive.”
What they were describing was that they didn’t expect you to play one character and that you should be dying to respawn in a new section of the map with new features. This was the most accurate depiction of the war possible, even if it was just meant to describe the mechanics of the level.
It went further! Every time you died they showed a real name of a real soldier that lost their life in the war and their birth and death date. Most of these ages are under the age of 24.
After the final death, it plays a cut scene where two soldiers are pointing rifles at each other and they both break down and chose not to kill each other…I believe all of this gameplay and the cut scene are being played off as a PTSD nightmare he’s having while recovering in a hospital…one of those ‘stare at a blank wall and rethink how fucking good our lives are’ moments. Also a deviation to the standard which is having a good guy-winner/bad guy-loser. They instead opted for the “we’re all losing because of this” realization…I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it again.
That’s impressive. I know a lot of games struggle to find a good balance between gameplay and simulation. But to heap historical accuracy and storytelling on top of that, and have it be a worthwhile experience, is a feat.
It was segmented so it wasn’t really at the ending for battlefield one but the beginning that has fucked me up for a long time. The game opens to a black screen, utter silence, and a description prints out of how wide and brutal the first world world war was. The last text that appears on the screen was, “What you are about to experience is front line combat. You are not expected to survive.”
What they were describing was that they didn’t expect you to play one character and that you should be dying to respawn in a new section of the map with new features. This was the most accurate depiction of the war possible, even if it was just meant to describe the mechanics of the level. It went further! Every time you died they showed a real name of a real soldier that lost their life in the war and their birth and death date. Most of these ages are under the age of 24.
After the final death, it plays a cut scene where two soldiers are pointing rifles at each other and they both break down and chose not to kill each other…I believe all of this gameplay and the cut scene are being played off as a PTSD nightmare he’s having while recovering in a hospital…one of those ‘stare at a blank wall and rethink how fucking good our lives are’ moments. Also a deviation to the standard which is having a good guy-winner/bad guy-loser. They instead opted for the “we’re all losing because of this” realization…I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it again.
That’s impressive. I know a lot of games struggle to find a good balance between gameplay and simulation. But to heap historical accuracy and storytelling on top of that, and have it be a worthwhile experience, is a feat.