We are not expected to survive, the game tells us, and the title card that accompanies each death of the player character intends to remind us of the brutalizing effect of this war. We see our death coming, over and over, through iron sights, while we desperately try to repel it. In Battlefield 1, we are flung right into the midst of war’s hellscape-all mud, blood and fire. There are a few moments of verdant beauty before the camera’s eye follows our protagonists, Tom Blake and Will Schofield, into the dusty trenches, where they will be given the mission that will send them traversing across the fields strewn with death. In 1917, war is introduced to us through the small talk that flits between two corporals taking a breather-one eager to get back into the fight, to prove his valor, the other reluctant, yet already a medal-designated hero.
