Virtual War is Hell - Tips on how to get the authentic WWI experience in Battlefield 1

For all that EA’s shoot ‘em up Battlefield 1 strives to evoke the experiences of the average footslogger in the Great War, I come away from my gaming sessions feeling more like one of the donkeys in charge than the lions in the trenches. Despite the many hours I’ve poured into the game, I still manage to accumulate almost as many deaths in a round as Field Marshal Haig managed to inflict on the British army in the opening day of the Somme. I’ve died in every way imaginable. I’ve been torn apart my machine-gun fire, had my head blown off by an unseen sniper, and watched my screen fade to black as I choked on poison gas. I’ve also, perhaps less tragically, been run over by an empty jeep as it rolled backwards down a hill onto me. All of these fatalities have brought to mind a couple of thoughts. Firstly, I am embarrassingly bad at this game. Secondly, it’s very easy to forget while playing Battlefield 1 that many of the awful things happening to my hapless avatars actually happened to men whose names still enshrine war memorials in village greens around the country. Is gamifying one of the most pointless and bloody conflicts in human history perhaps, just a little, insensitive?

‘In war, the first casualty is truth’ or, perhaps more appropriately in this case, ‘in video games, the first casualty is historical accuracy’. Perhaps riled by the suggestion that releasing a game about the First World War is one of the most blatant examples of cashing-in on the centenary since that Sainsbury’s Christmas advert, the developers of Battlefield 1 have tried hard to approach the subject with sensitivity, and a respect for the historical facts. The single-player missions, presented as ‘War Stories’ highlighting forgotten aspects of the conflict, is to be applauded. It really does show that a great deal of compassion and research has gone into them. The problem is that this approach doesn’t quite extend to the multiplayer aspect of the game. It’s hard to feel like you’re gaining a deeper understanding of the War to End All Wars when a player named ‘F**KYOMOMMA77’ is teabagging your avatar as he lies dying in the mud.

Those looking for an absolutely accurate representation of the Great War may therefore be a little disappointed. Battlefield 1 is, after all, a blockbuster video game, not an historical simulation. For this reason, I’ve compiled some handy tips on how you can enhance your experience of playing Battlefield 1 by recreating as accurately as possible the conditions of the Great War.

1. The tedium of trench warfare

The First World War was characterised by the stalemate of trench conflict, which saw entire battlelines moving only a couple of inches for long periods of the war. Unfortunately, Battlefield 1’s battles are fast-moving affairs centered around brightly coloured control points. Get around this by finding the nearest shell-hole, and sitting in it for the entirety of the game. When your teammates abuse you over voice chat, inform them sternly that you’re a historical reenactor, and that war is not a game. To really get that Great War feeling, perhaps try your hand at poetry as you sit in your hole waiting for the round to end.

2. Mud, glorious mud

If there’s one thing enshrined in our collective cultural memory when it comes to the First World War, it’s the mud. John Buchan recalls that ‘every road became a watercourse, and in the hollows the mud was as deep as a man’s thighs… Off the roads the ground was one vast bog.’ Battlefield 1 does have the great detail of covering your weapon in mud over the course of the game session, but that’s only pixels. To truly recreate the experience of the quagmire of the Western Front, find your nearest rugby or football pitch and roll around for a while until caked. Moisten further by taking a freezing cold shower. You are now ready to play Battlefield 1! Note: it is usually a good idea to lay a cover down in your living room before attempting this.

3. Bolt Action

Although the Great War was one of the first wars to see extensive use of modern battlefield weapons such as machine guns and sub-machine guns, most soldiers were armed with simple bolt-action rifles. In some cases these weapons acquired legendary status. In 1914, German troops facing members of the British Expeditionary Force armed with SMLE bolt-action rifles thought that they were attacking a machine-gun nest, such was the rate of fire of the highly-trained British troops. Unfortunately, in the interests of ‘fun’, the developers of Battlefield 1 took the decision to include prototype ‘modern’ weapons which means that the majority of players run around with assault rifles. Arm yourself instead with one of the bolt-action rifles on offer. You’ll die, often and infuriatingly, but at least you’ll do so in the knowledge that you’re approaching this game with the dignity it deserves.

4. ‘This tumult in the clouds’

World War One was the first war in which planes were used in a fighting capacity, rather than simply for reconnaissance. Unfortunately however, the ‘knights of the sky’ were often as sacrificially lamblike as the infantrymen fighting below them. Eighty per cent of British casualties for example had flown less than 20 missions; the lifetime of pilots was routinely measured in weeks. Thanks to Battlefield 1’s vehicle spawning system, it’s very likely that should you find yourself in a plane, you won’t have the required training either. As you die in an inglorious fireball after crashing into a tree, remember W.E Yeats’ Irish Airman:

I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

Reflect that upon finding ‘this death’, this particular airman was not then subjected to being screamed at over the voice chat for wasting the team’s plane respawn at a critical point in the game.

5. The Lost Generation

250,000 underage boys joined up to fight in the British Army in World War One, often with the complicity of recruiting sergeants who were paid for each man they managed to sign up. Luckily, this is one of the areas in which Battlefield 1’s historical accuracy really excels. Despite the strict ‘18+’ rating emblazoned on the front of the box, you’ll find that the majority of faceless players in the game telling you over voice communication all of the ways that your mother is intimately associated with their penises can’t be more than thirteen years old. Gertrude Stein once told Ernest Hemingway that ‘That's what you all are ... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.’ Spare a thought for the fact that the majority of these underage players on Battlefield 1 will similarly reach adulthood having misspent the pivotal formative years of their lives.

Of course, there is one way in which Battlefield 1, for all its attention to detail, fundamentally differs from the experience of real war. Soldiers trapped at the Front dreamed of receiving a ‘Blighty One’, the lucky wound that, although not crippling, would enable them to be sent back home for the duration of the war. Happily, should the continual stress of being shot repeatedly by thirteen year olds in a dubiously accurate representation of one of the most horrifying conflicts of human history get you down, you don’t need to shoot yourself in the hand to make it stop.

#WWI #Videogames #Battlefield