One of my favorite gaming moments in the last 4 years was playing BF1 operations, and on one of the last rounds of a match we were all running low on lives and desperately trying to hold a line and not let the other team break through our defenses. i was prone in a ditch being used as a makeshift-trench, and just nervously holding my controller, blindfiring at whatever shapes i saw moving in the grey-sky-covered mudfield, trying not to die and not knowing wtf was going on, while one of those landships tanks suddenly rolled up on all of us in the trench and ran right over us, me prone close to the ground so that it wouldn't crush my head. and just hearing explosions, the clanging of metal, and the mud-covered treads squishing over my head
that, right there, that moment, encapsulated why i loved battlefied 1, and why it's my favorite game in the franchise. It's not a simulator, it's not "Realistic", but it had a realistic aesthetic to it, an illusion of authenticity.
being helpless in a trench, not knowing wtf i was shooting at, hearing explosions and gunfire everywhere around, and praying that i'd survive as a tank rolled right over and past, while i could do nothing but watch with my stomach in mud... that was a kind of "holy shit, this is why war is hell. this really feels like... a battlefield. i feel like there's a reason my team and i are holding these objectives and trying to not die"
obv im not saying a video game is a realistic depiction of war, but i hope you get what i mean what i'm saying. it had an illusion of gritty authenticity, of being one soldier in a massive fight where you were sometimes helpless.
