Well, it's a video game.

Despite this, sometimes soldiers do some real crazy shit.

What's the alternative, playing a character sitting in the duck and cover position in a trench for a few hours while mortars rain down? If I want a realistic depiction I'll read a book or watch a documentary. Besides, the very first mission of the game addresses this in a pretty cool way.

Sure, why not. Kind of adds a weird twist to the game. Filling in your own explanations is fun in games.

@troll93: I thought this was pretty interesting.

:)

Unreliable Narrator

Battlefield was always a bombastic, over the top series... the game's single player is basically Bad Company: WW1 in everything but tone, and I'm pretty much fine with that.

Firstly, it's a video game. Second of all, people have done more bombastic things than this. Warriors have done some absolutely insane things that should never, ever be possible during warfare. If anything, there could have been even more bizarre stories that they covered. Warriors are fucking crazy sometimes.

Some people really can't just have fun, huh?

It's a video game that's at least trying to honor men who fought in that war, while still being a video game.

People complain too much

The camera zooms back from the Australian pub to reveal someone who's been writing the story for a video game the whole time. They pass it to their boss, who reads it and says, "seriously? This sounds like something a drunk person would make up." They look at the camera and wink.

Think it would have been neat if they kept the "respawn as a new soldier every time you die" conceit for the whole game. You wouldn't play as a specific person, but rather as a battallion or something like that. That way could have kept the feel of the gameplay with some more realism. The cutscenes and stories could then be about the generals or about the groups as a whole rather than a specific person.

Thats hilarious, love the narative you've created. You're part of the art now!

I would like this game a lot more if it was Call of Juarez: Gunslinger but for WW1.

Have you ever read the flashman books? They're about a racist, misogynistic, cheating, cowardly asshole who, through dumb luck and the incredible feats of the people around him, somehow becomes one of the great heroes of the British Empire. Usually because he's the only one left alive at the end and can reframe the sequence of events to his own credit.

They're pretty great. Check them out, if you get a chance.

I agree it's disappointing that Battlefield decided to sensationalise the stories they decided to tell, especially as the tutorial where the player is bouncing around between random soldiers did a much better job at visualising the scale of death and destruction taking place. Having said that, endlessly running into barbed wire, getting trench foot, being gassed, and then eventually sniped by an enemy that you can't even see - doesn't make for a particularly dynamic videogame. And in the context of that battlefield onesie bullshit, I am Jacks complete lack of surprise that this is the road they decided to take.

While it's an interesting theory regarding the exceptionalism shown in each of the War Stories, the Friends in High Places War Story kinda lends credence to it. [SPOILERS] Clyde Blackburn is shown to be a con-man, and the last bit of his story has him ask if you believe his story, as perhaps parts or even the entirety of his story is completely fabricated just to make him look good. [END SPOILERS].

For what it's worth, the intro bit is one of the greatest ways to portray the chaos of open warfare in my opinion. Despite the ending of it being weird with the whole stand-off bit, the concept of jumping from Soldier to Soldier in a "stay alive as long as possible" scenario definitely had some of the people I jumped into die almost immediately, whereas others could take down 5-10 enemy soldiers before finally getting downed.

It is completely beyond me why people complain about the tone of Battlefield 1's narrative, while being implicitly ok with the gazillion other shooters which star one man armies. God. Who cares? Realistic WW1 sim would not be a big commercial success.