The online shooter Battlefield 5 has now been released and entices with extremely intense battles from World War II. However, according to our author Jürgen, the game creates this “battlefield feeling” almost too well.
My first Battlefield: Hard to believe, but in my now over 20 years of gaming experience, I had never played a Battlefield game before. Somehow these games always passed me by, as I preferred (online) role-playing games, adventures, and wacky shooters like Doom, Fortnite and Borderlands.
The modern war setting of Call of Duty or Battlefield was always less appealing to me. Instead, I enjoyed playing the Star Wars version Battlefront.
But as part of my job as an editor at MeinMMO, I was assigned Black Ops 4 earlier this year and now Battlefield 5 as well. So, I started the game last night and played a few rounds with a buddy.
To the front!
This is not Fortnite: Before the round, I fiddled around a bit in the menus and customized my soldiers. I have been a total skin junkie since Fortnite and was a bit disappointed that Battlefield had more traditional uniforms in muddy camouflage and field grey.
The first battle begins: So, I soon stopped the military fashion show and started a “Grand Operation” with my friend. According to my buddy, these are the best way to get into the game, as they are quite quick despite the name, and one would play a sort of mini-campaign on different maps.
In our case, it was the first advance of the Wehrmacht in the blitzkrieg against France at the beginning of the war. Our mission was: As paratroopers, capture enemy artillery positions so that the main advance can proceed unhindered.
What an atmosphere: The round actually started in a transport plane, where our entire squad was present. An NPC sergeant even conducted a final troop inspection and directed me to the aircraft’s hatch.
There, I saw for the first time the “Battlefield”. A green landscape scarred by ugly brown trenches. Thick guns stood in between, our target. Meanwhile, anti-aircraft batteries were unleashing death and destruction into the sky. The flak shells detonated everywhere around my plane.
A plane in formation was recently shredded by the shells and crashed burning to the ground with its occupants. “Oh shit!” I exclaimed: “This is really like in the war here!”
And I had to jump into this inferno as a poor soldier? But well, the mission objective doesn’t fulfill itself, and my comrades needed me, after all, I was a medic and had to provide for the wounded. So I bravely jumped out of the plane, towards the battle.
War without mercy
Down on the ground, things heated up immediately. I came down together with a few other soldiers, and enemy fire rapidly thinned our ranks. I ran crouched through a trench, trying to save what could be saved as a medic. There was no shortage of wounded, my comrades were falling like flies in the hail of bullets.
The horror of war: And even if I hadn’t been a medic, I could hardly have brought myself to leave the poor devils behind. Because in Battlefield 5, the wounded moan and scream for mercy.
No mercy for medics: The thought of leaving my protected trench never even occurred to me in the face of the deadly defensive fire. It was just unfortunate that the enemy thought differently and a foe with an assault rifle sneaked up on me and shot me down treacherously. The Geneva Convention is probably not taken seriously in Battlefield, and medics are fair game.
A shocking experience
From then on, I played more offensively and rushed bravely together with comrades into the enemy positions. There ensued wild skirmishes and a chaotic mess of gunfire, explosions, crumbling buildings, and piercing screams.
Like in Grandpa’s war stories: I was increasingly reminded of my grandfather’s dramatic war stories. He had fought in a similar place during the war, and the whole scenery seemed frighteningly familiar.
This is almost too much atmosphere: Battlefield 5 almost does too good a job at depicting the battlefield. Because as much fun as the cinematic battles are, I always have in the back of my mind the thought that almost 80 years ago, a battle similar to this had really raged here in Europe and that the poor front-line soldiers back then had no respawns and no “instant medic revives”.
Should war be fun? By the way, I never had this uneasy feeling in Battlefront, even though I burned up for the thousandth time as a Stormtrooper or Clone Trooper in enemy fire. The conflict in a galaxy far, far away is clearly fictional despite almost identical gameplay, while World War II was a tangible and real war whose effects are still felt today. Among other things, the suffocating feeling I have while playing.
Unfortunately still awesome: It becomes all the more uncomfortable because the damn game is actually a lot of fun. But there always remains that uneasy feeling triggered by the setting.
But enough of my views and feelings about the game: What do you think of this topic? Is Battlefield just a shooter with a known historical setting for you, where you shouldn’t think too much? Or is it more problematic to market real conflicts from the recent past with millions of victims as a game?
