Yet by presenting its campaign mode in a series of short, localised, multi-part stories instead of one connected narrative, Battlefield 1 not only captures something honest and respectful about the Great War but it achieves the best single-player experience seen in a military shooter for a long time.

Each story focuses on one soldier or squad, swept up in the impossibly large-scale conflict but also fighting for something much closer to home. The first two cover the plight of the all-black American infantry unit known as the Harlem Hellfighters – decimated on the front line during a German push – and an inexperienced British soldier who finds himself driving a strong but unreliable Mark V tank deep past enemy lines.

While these chapters serve as a good introduction to the game's shooting mechanics and tank-driving, they're by far the dullest of the game, making for a slow first impression. The remaining four chapters are all much better, as players take to the skies in an exhilarating bi-plane dogfight, storm the beach at Gallipoli and fight alongside Lawrence of Arabia as a female Bedouin rebel.

While there are moments of awe, excitement and even levity, but Battlefield 1 is careful to balance this with frequent reminders of the terror and enormously high death toll of the Great War. For every exciting new weapon you pick up, there's also the acknowledgment that these new mechanical and chemical means of warfare obliterated millions to no clear goal. It's hardly a history lesson, but it's much less glamorised (or whitewashed) than many historical war games.

One complaint you could make against the campaign is that all the chapters are told from the point of view of the Allies. Some Central Powers missions would have gone a long way toward selling the idea that the war was a wasteful hell for all involved (something that is touched on at various points in the game), but one can understand why that might have a bit too wide a scope for a game already filled with content.

Of course the campaign is largely a primer for the expansive online multiplayer, which is less harrowing but nonetheless an interesting take on a war not often explored by video games.

The slower, archaic weaponry and vehicles makes for some deliberate, grinding matches as opposed to the fast-paced kill-fests many will be used to. In particular the new game mode Operations — which uses real historical battles as its basis — can see two teams in a war of attrition for up to an hour.

The stark environments and great sound design — which are notable in the campaign — become engrossing in multiplayer, as you know every disintegrating building and too-close shell explosion is not part of some elaborate orchestrated show but rather the action of some other player aiming to end your life.

Like the campaign, the multiplayer smartly invokes a sense of chaos, dread and intimidation through its representations of a war characterised by the same. There is, of course, some degree of video game goofiness, but the mix of engaging objective-based game modes, period weaponry and subtle touches of agency that let you mix up the action (say, by changing your character's class) makes for an interestingly raw take on Battlefield's trademark bombast.

Battlefield 1 feels a lot like a Battlefield game, but it's something else as well. It's historical. It can't do as good a job of explaining the socio-political climate of the war as a book or documentary can, and it doesn't delve as deep into personal stories as something like Valiant Hearts does, but it conveys something meaningful about this global, hellish event of our past.

Battlefield 1 has a soul. And that's something that, in my book, puts it head and shoulders above many of the ultra-glamorised military shooters of recent memory.

Battlefield 1 is out now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC