In Star Wars: Battlefront, the historical campaigns include a similar feature. In one battle you may be a Rebel fighting the evil Empire, then in the next battle you are one of Darth Vader's henchmen. In playing it, it was the first time I really thought about the possibility that in the Star Wars universe, the rebellion would have likely been seen as a threat to the existing order (terrorists? insurgents?).

"In jumping across the foxhole, you're forced to acknowledge that your enemy has its own subjective, if flawed, reasons for fighting, that maybe they're something more than a cardboard cutout you use for target practice"

Doesn't that defeat the object, though?

Personally, I agree that it's a good thing. But am I the only one to suspect that people buy and play many types of games - notably FPSs - precisely because they are morally simplistic?

When we were kids, the world was simple. As we got older we gradually had to deal with more complexity and uncertainty, shades of grey where before there were black-and-white distinctions, complex humans in place of ideallised archetypes, and two sides to every arguement. But that's tough. Most of us would rather live in a simpler world - the world of the angry five-year-old where everything is black-and-white and no problem requires more than the application of violence to solve.

FPS-style games pander to our desire for absurdly simplistic worlds. Remove the simplicity and you remove the appeal.