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krreader · 4 years

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BTS reacting to a sasaeng trying to touch/take photos of your baby bump.

pairing: bts x reader fandom: bts warnings: mentions of physical assault genre: angst ; fluff word count: 2.5k+

a/n: I hope the reality would be the boys yeeting these sasaengs into another universe, seriously. but for the sake of the story, here. thanks for the request @sakuroseuchiha, and I’m very sorry it took forever ♥

kim seokjin

“What is this?” Jin entered the bedroom and practically pushed the phone in your face, his breathing heavy and his cheeks flushed, clearly upset.

You looked at what he was showing you, but then quickly averted your gaze and continued folding the laundry as if what he was showing you didn’t matter.

“(Y/N)!” he rarely got angry, not like this. And you knew that he wasn't angry with you.. maybe only for not telling him about what had happened today. He grabbed your upper arm and turned you so that you had to look at him, “Why didn't you tell me about this?”

“I didn't want you to get angry.. like now,” you sighed deeply, “I wasn't hurt, I walked into the nearest store and they didn't follow me inside because the shop owners were kind enough to help me and keep them out. All they got was a blurry photo.”

Your husband's mouth dropped, his eyebrows furrowing, “How can you be so nonchalant about this?”

You snorted, “What do you want me to do, Seokjin? Do you want me to sob my eyes out because some sixteen year old girls wanted to become Twitter famous by posting our unborn child on their Twitter account? If I were that weak, then marrying you wouldn't have been a good idea in the first place,” you pushed his hand away, “I'm fine.”

Maybe, but he wasn't. He was so tired of this bullshit.

And you only found out just how tired he was when you wanted to go grocery shopping the next day and were face-to-face with a man that introduced himself as your new bodyguard that your husband had hired to make sure that situations like those wouldn't happen anymore.

You had meant what you had said, you were fine, but knowing that someone that size was following you around and making sure that no harm would come to you and – even more importantly – to your unborn child – made you feel a lot more at ease.

min yoongi

Yoongi cursed and thanked BigHit at the same time for existing.

On one hand, he hated himself for ever having signed up with them, because now you and his unborn child were in danger because of him, but at the same time, he was so grateful that they tried their best in protecting the three of you to the best of their abilities.

One of the staff members had managed to gain access to a secret forum used only by sasaengs, where they shared private information about idols that nobody but these idols, their families and the company should know about.

And during this 'undercover work', she discovered a thread dedicated to you and Yoongi, or more specifically, your unborn child.

She found out that they had found out where you had planned to have your delivery and wanted to be there to take pictures of the two – or in the end – three of you.

You and Yoongi would have had no idea about this. You would have had no other choice but to endure it and later see these very private photos online, but thanks to her, you were able to switch hospitals last minute and were able to handle this matter privately.

That female staff member said she was merely doing her job when you and Yoongi thanked her later, but your husband made sure that she didn't just get a raise, but a promotion on top of it.

You both owed her a lot.

jung hoseok

“Look, daddy!” Hoseok beamed happily as he watched his son point upwards to the head of the giraffe, “Soooooo biggy!”

“If you want to be that big, you need to eat all the vegetables that mommy puts on your plate from now on, okay?” he tickled the little boy a little, engulfed by his beautiful laughter, that he didn't realize what was happening behind him.

You were standing a few feet behind them, wanting them to enjoy a father-son moment, while also watching the buggy. However, unlike your husband, you weren't smiling. Your eyes were focused on three girls to your right who had been following you for the past fifteen minutes and were now debating on whether or not to go up to your husband and say something.

And you really didn't mind if they said hello when it was only Hoseok, but your child was with you and you didn't want to involve him in that life. Not yet, not if you could avoid it.

However, you had been wrong all along. You thought that they were whispering among themselves to figure out a strategy on when to go up to Hoseok.

But that wasn't the case.

They were waiting until they were sure that he was busy enough with your son not to notice what they were doing.

Which was pull out their phones, all three of them, and then point the camera at you.

Even though you knew it wasn't actually you, but the baby bump that had begun to form. A story that had only been rumors up until now, but you were too far along now to hide it any longer.

The moment you realized what was happening, you pushed the buggy forward until you were at your husband's side and said: “We need to go. Right now.”

With how alert you were, he instantly became too, started looking around and realized what was happening.

He put his son in the baggy, then took off his jacket and placed it over your shoulders, before he pushed the baggy with one hand and you gently forward with his hand on your lower back.

So much for keeping the secret about baby number two a little longer.

kim namjoon

Namjoon had been an idol for long enough to know when someone was obviously staring at him out in public.

And you had been with him for long enough to know when he was uncomfortable. He constantly shifted in his seat, glanced around and nervously bounced his leg up and down.

Eventually you reached over the table and put your hand over this, “Come on. Let's ask them if they can fill our drinks in take-away cups and go home.”

You had wanted to enjoy the possible last peaceful coffee shop date that you could have before your daughter would be born, but when married to Kim Namjoon, a peaceful date outside was almost never an option. And normally, when it had been only him and you, he hadn't minded as much. But now he was scared for his child.

And as soon as the two of you got up, his biggest fear became reality, when a girl walked by and spilled her – thankfully – cold coffee on you. More specifically, on your baby bump. Accidentally, as she tried to make you two believe, but you knew better.

Even more so when she started bowing, apologized and then immediately wanted to rub over your baby bump with tissues to clean your clothes.

Namjoon was alert in an instant, but you were faster and grabbed the wrist of the girl, smiling at her, but your eyes were so dangerous that the girl gulped down.

“Thank you, but I'll do that myself.”

“I..- I only..-”

“I said I can do it myself,” you grabbed your bag and then Namjoon's hand, “Let's just go home.”

Sometimes he forgot just how much of a mother you already were before your baby was even born.

Nobody like that was allowed to touch your baby, not now and not ever.

park jimin

Jimin had been so naive to think that the pregnancy would be a peaceful one for you. He had let his guard down after month seven, after nothing bad or weird having happened.

And that was a huge mistake.

You were due in a few weeks and he wanted you two to have one final romantic night out before the baby would be born, meaning dinner in the restaurant of your choice, then going for a walk at the Han River, then going home and.. well..

But your night was cut short when you couldn't even make it to the restaurant. As soon as Jimin had parked the car and helped you out, a swarm of fans, which were sasaengs through and through, because they were the only ones who could have found out where you'd be eating tonight, came running to you.

He realized it in time, managed to push you back into the car before their grabby hands could touch your baby bump and managed to push all of them back enough to shut the car door.

Their attention shifted from you to him and they all started to touch him and pull on his clothes. He tried to push them away from him so that he could go around the car and get in himself, but there were simply too many.

All the while, you were sitting in the car, desperately banging on the window and begging them to stop, trying to open the door to help your husband, but he was blocking it from getting opened.

There was no way he’d let you back out there.

You reached into your purse and wanted to call the police, but since you were in an underground parking lot, your phone didn't have any service.

At that point, you were sobbing your eyes out because of how scared you were for Jimin, but then someone from the building, maybe guests of one of the restaurants or people that worked there, saw what was happening and helped Jimin pull the girls away from him, one after the other.

They told him to get in the car and he did so without hesitation, reversing and then driving away without looking back, eternally grateful for these kind strangers.

“It's okay,” he tried to calm you down while driving away.

But it wasn't okay. Not when he had scratches on his face and hands, not when he was close to tears himself.. not when you realized all that stress caused you to suddenly go into labor.

kim taehyung

This day had started out so well.

The weather was so perfect that Taehyung and you had spontaneously decided to go on a little road trip.

With you having passed the worst of your pregnancy phase and being able to actually walk and eat without throwing up every hour, it was now the perfect opportunity to just drive around and find a really cute spot to hang out, maybe have a picnic or coffee/tea.

But you should have guessed that it wasn't as easy as that, because Taehyung's super hardcore fans had never been ones to just leave him alone.

You had been driving for a while and you had become thirsty, so the two of you had searched for a very cute café and found one that was so aesthetically pleasing that you forgot about your surroundings for a second and just.. enjoyed it. Like every other normal human being would.

Your husband had gone inside to grab the drinks, so he wasn't there to stop what was happening.

“What the hell?!” you instantly pushed the chair back when you saw a hand reach down to your belly to touch it, then jumped up, “What do you think you're doing?!”

Unfortunately, there weren't too many people around to help you, only an elderly man and a young couple that, by the looks of it, hadn't even graduated high school. They wouldn’t be much help.

“Please, we just want to touch it. This is from Taehyung, directly from him, we just..-”

“I'm going to give you a fair warning,” your husband pushed himself between you and the girls, pointing his finger at one of the girls chest, “You come this close to my wife or child again, I will call the police and I'll make sure that your future is ruined. Do you understand?”

“But..-”

“No. No but. There is a line and you just crossed it. So this is my final warning. Leave now, or I'll call the police.”

The two girls glanced to the side to find the shop owner already standing there with her phone, ready to call the police if Taehyung said so.

You doubted that people like that had much planned for their future, but the threat of police and a possible lawsuit involving thousands, if not millions, if Taehyung had his way, scared them enough for them to scurry away.

You only allowed yourself to breathe again when they were out of sight, your husband immediately cupping your face and checking to see if you were harmed.

“I'm fine,” you shook your head a little, “I'm fine.”

“Shit,” he pulled you against him and kissed the top of your head, “I'm so sorry, (Y/N). I'll be more careful from now on.”

jeon jeongguk

This had been a massive scandal from the get-go. Not only were you and Jeongguk not married when rumors started to form that you were pregnant, but he was also 'way too young' to have a kid now and 'not in the right place in life yet' to be a father.

BigHit had kept quiet through it all, knowing that those weren't just rumors that people spewed, but the truth.

You were indeed pregnant. An accidental pregnancy that had shocked you and your boyfriend to the core, but after countless of nights crying and worrying, you've not just accepted it, but were looking forward to your baby.

The first few months were easy, a comeback had overshadowed the rumors and whenever they were doing interviews, BigHit made sure to tell the journalist not to ask any personal questions, or they'd be kicked out of the panels – they really had no mercy in that sense.

But there came a point where you just couldn't hide it anymore, unless you were to stay at home every single day till the day of the delivery.

And well, you didn’t.

You waited until Jeongguk was gone to leave, knowing that it'd be easier if it were just you, had taken precautions and worn a hat and a face mask... but these sasaengs, man.

You couldn't take fifteen footsteps until you heard screaming from a distance and a group of seven people charging at you with their phones up in the air, ready to take photos of your baby bump and expose it to the world.

Since you were still close to the entrance of your neighborhood, the security guard reacted perfectly, grabbed you by your upper arms and pulled you back in, closing the gate to Hannam Hill just in time and turned you around so that the girls wouldn't see your baby bump properly.

They were left standing and screaming at the fence, reaching through it like crazy zombies.

Rather scary, actually.

“You need to be careful, Ms. (Y/L/N),” the security guard warned as he walked you back to your apartment, “You can't just go out like this without precautions.”

“I just wanted to buy something for the baby,” you said sadly with slumped shoulders, “They have this limited Disney collection at Spao.. I just wanted to get something for my daughter.”

He let out a heavy sigh and watched you enter the building extremely upset.

Maybe it wasn’t his place, but when Jeongguk came home that night, he told him about the incident, wanting to make sure that he’d talk to you and make you understand that you couldn’t just go out like that without some sort of security.

And well, let’s just say Jeongguk’s father side really jumped out that night. He had you sit down on the couch and lectured you for nearly an hour without you saying a word.

#bts imagine #bts reactions #bts x reader #bts #bangtan #bangtan reaction #bangtan boys #kpop #kpop imagines #kpop reactions #bangtan sonyeondan #reader #bangtan x reader #bangtan boys x reader #requests

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the-desolated-quill · 6 years

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Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

#quill's swill #quill's swill 2018 #worst of the year #review #opinion

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/battlefield-vs-single-player-stories-are-the-right-way-to-do-war-games/

Battlefield V's single-player stories are the right way to do war games

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Part of The Verge holiday 2018 gaming guide

Fighting Nazis is timely again, and yet Battlefield’s return to World War II feels ill-advised. Endless war has taken a toll on this series, and the generals need a new strategy.

I’ll start with some praise. Despite its flaws, Battlefield V is a breathtakingly cinematic game, and it has all of the relentless chaos that fans expect. In my experience playing a press preview of the game, there were only a few bugs (mostly funny ones, like corpses wobbling in midair), and the game retains the series’s recent level of polish. Control inputs feel tight and fluid, everything looks really nice, and the user interface is better than ever, which are all real accomplishments. Battlefield V is an unquestionably well-crafted object.

But as I was thinking about this review, I could not escape a strange feeling. I’ve now been playing Battlefield since 2002. I’ve spent thousands of hours playing these games: it’s a weird fact that’s difficult to reconcile with my personal identity as an adult. A past self decided to love these games, and now I’m cursed by my mastery of them. At this point, it’s hard to tell whether I’m playing for enjoyment or routine.

It’s at least comforting to play the same game over and over, as the movements become rote. It’s nice when the body and a task become the same thing. (I think this is how games like Battlefield become so abstract: after a while, you’re not holding a gun or fighting Nazis; you’re just responding to patterns and using your limbs effectively.) But this familiarity can also be alienating. A few hours into my multiplayer tour, as the rest of the world faded to the background, I had a genuine out-of-body experience. It was like watching a phantom version of a younger self charging an enemy flag. The sameness of it all made me feel like a passenger. My Battlefield exploits now read more like The Myth of Sisyphus than a medal of honor citation.

Despite my optimism for big changes to the series, developer DICE bluffed its hand. The game’s “Grand Operations” mode strings together multiday battles that are supposed to have continuity, but the consequences of winning or losing a match are minor, like adding a little bit of time to the next round. You have to squint to see how Grand Operations differs from the 16-year-old Conquest mode, and other modes like Breakthrough and Domination don’t offer meaningfully different experiences. Battlefield V’s multiplayer is essentially a lot of the same chaos: capture a point, drive a tank, fly a plane, die, repeat. Character customization and progression are tedious and don’t add much to the experience, though I wholeheartedly welcome EA’s confident turn toward inclusiveness. Ultimately, Battlefield is still rock-paper-scissors with explosions — something with exciting moments, but no sense of accomplishment. At least they’re really nice explosions.

As multiplayer shooters are rapidly evolving with the emergence of differentiated battle royale games, Battlefield is no longer an FPS bellwether. I’ve been playing another recently released WWII game, Post Scriptum, which is made by a team of people who, incidentally, started as Battlefield 2 modders. If Battlefield V is a glistening statue, Post Scriptum is a pile of rocks. It’s buggy, clunky, and only for people with the patience for an early access game that might never be finished. It’s also one of the most memorable shooters I’ve played in a while, with moments that I want to run to tell my friends about.

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Post Scriptum is a shooter that lets you do things other than shooting, which I think ought to be the future of every multiplayer game with guns. Its clever trick is using the stakes and atmosphere of a war game to make the non-shooting activities feel genuinely rewarding. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with playing Post Scriptum as Euro Truck Simulator: World War II. As a logistics truck driver, I can ferry supplies to the front line while getting shot at, which lets me be a part of the deadly spectacle of a large-scale battle without killing people. Playing music out of my truck over the game’s local chat is met with laughs and appreciation. It’s something I simply can’t find in a Battlefield game. It’s weird. It’s fun. It makes me smile. I just wish it was made by the artists at DICE.

And then there’s Battlefield V’s single-player campaign, which really surprised me. The “War Stories” format, introduced in 2016’s Battlefield 1, is the smartest attempt at single-player storytelling in war games that I’ve seen. I just wish DICE had made more of them. There are only three war stories to play in Battlefield V, with a fourth coming in December. (Battlefield 1 had six.) Each story takes about an hour to complete, and while they’re hampered by forgettable action sequences, laughable NPC intelligence, and formulaic set pieces, the format still feels like something with great potential.

Instead of playing an untouchable hero who inexplicably massacres hordes of enemies like in so many other shooters, these short stories allow you to be a vulnerable part of war’s death machine, which feels more authentic than getting the costumes right. Battlefield V’s opening sequence achieves this feeling to stunning effect. When you start the game, you jump between characters in rapid succession, often taking the place of someone who just killed you and continuing the fight from their perspective. The opening whisks you from a nighttime raid to a desert ambush and huge aerial battle. I wish the entire game had been like this.

The War Stories format also cleverly echoes the intangible experience of hearing real war stories told, which often walk the line between real historical accounts and tales stretched tall by time. I was impressed by one Battlefield V story about two brothers from West Africa who were sent to France to fight for a colonial power whose land they had never seen. After native French soldiers took their guns and handed them shovels, they had to overcome the racism of their allies before being allowed to achieve glory in battle — only to see themselves erased from history in the story’s epilogue. It’s a tight and powerful single-player story that’s wrapped in the modern context of a veteran reflecting on his long-secret contribution to history. I wanted more like it.

The “Tirailleur” story could have been the model for a deeply felt war game that elevates neglected heroes into popular historical canon. We’ve had decades of interactive Clint Eastwood movies, and so I appreciate DICE’s attempt to break away from tried-and-true narratives, even if it’s clumsy about expressing them in gameplay. I just wish these stories were the centerpiece of a more complete game, not a context wrapper for multiplayer deathmatches.

If the next Battlefield game only has a collection of untold war stories, I don’t think I’ll miss its multiplayer spectacle. After 16 years, I’m ready for my own war story to end and for others to begin.

Battlefield V is available now on PS4, PC, and Xbox One.

The Verge holiday 2018 gaming guide

September 9

Donut County is a game about swallowing Los Angeles and realizing you’re an asshole

Dragon Quest XI review (PS4, PC)

Dragon Quest’s creator doesn’t want to stop working anytime soon

Marvel’s Spider-Man review (PS4)

Shadow of the Tomb Raider review (PS4, Xbox, PC)

Destiny 2: Forsaken review (PS4, Xbox, PC)

Nintendo Labo Vehicle Kit review (Switch)

Nintendo’s new Xenoblade expansion eases players into the daunting world of RPGs

Life is Strange 2 review (PS4, Xbox, PC)

October 9

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey review (PS4, Xbox, PC)

Super Mario Party review (Switch)

428: Shibuya Scramble is the best crime book you’ll ever read on your PS4

The World Ends With You review (Switch)

Return of the Obra Dinn review (PC)

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 review (PS4, Xbox, PC)

Red Dead Redemption 2 review (PS4, Xbox)

Red Dead Redemption 2 improves some of my favorite parts of The Witcher 3

This queer horror game forces you to literally tear yourself apart

November 9

With Diablo III and Dark Souls for Switch, you never have to leave the dungeon

Déraciné review (PSVR)

Tetris Effect review (PS4, PSVR)

Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s trippy new take on Tetris will put you in the zone

Tetris Effect is perfect for people overwhelmed by modern video games

Hitman 2 review (PS4, Xbox, PC)

How Hitman 2’s developers turned its gigantic levels into ever-evolving playgrounds

Sean Bean is excited to see how he dies in Hitman 2

Fallout 76 journal: an ongoing exploration of post-apocalyptic West Virginia

November, continued 3

Pokémon: Let’s Go review (Switch)

Pokémon: Let’s Go is the perfect way to introduce kids to the series

Pokémon: Let’s Go is a ‘starting point for the next 20 years of Pokémon’

December 1

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s single-player mode shines on the Switch

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18103432/battlefield-v-review-single-player-battle-gameplay-combat-story-video-game

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