Battlefield 1 delivers memorable moments from the horror of World War I

Whenever your character dies in Battlefield 1, you see a memorial message with the character’s full name, birth year, and the year of death. It is a solemn reminder that real soldiers can’t be reborn and save the world like they do in so many video games. In the prologue, those soldiers don’t come back. And that creates a touching remembrance for the “lost generation” of World War I. Millions of fans will experience this kind of feeling when they play this first-person shooter from DICE and Electronic Arts when it debuts on October 21.

EA took a lot of risks going backward in time, when the trend for shooter games was to shift from modern war to science fiction, as Activision has done with Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. EA took the risk of taking Battlefield in the direction of Grand Theft Auto with Battlefield Hardline, but Battlefield 1 has worked out far better, as DICE has produced a game that is worthy of the memory of The Great War, which claimed 17 million lives. It is less about being historically accurate, and more about re-creating the visceral feeling of being in the war.