I was playing Titanfall.
As some background info one of the ways Titanfall deviates from Call of Duty is scale. There's only six players maximum on each side. Instead, each team has something like 25-50 NPC soldiers, a mix of regular human grunts and robotic spectres. Killing grunts and spectres gives you XP, counts down your Titan drop, and gives you points toward winning in the Attrition game mode.
Absurd moment:
As I parkoured my way across the map, I heard a grunt say "Door's clear, let's move!"
And it was a kind of moment of clarity for me. It was like I was some warmonger king and I found a letter a dead foot soldier had written to his lover back home. Suddenly the absurdity of the grunts and the micro-drama of their little battles was apparent to me.
Titanfall is set in a world where we have advanced combat robots, like I mentioned. They're almost as tough as pilots, they're more mobile than grunts, and they're generally superior to grunts in every way. We also have pilots who are obviously superhuman. And we still send grunts. It's absurd. And it's cute to watch how seriously they take everything, how dramatic their completely pointless lives are.
A squad of grunts gathers at a doorway, ready to breach and clear. The squad leader signals with his hands, careful not to alert the occupants. A pilot banks off a wall and careens through a window at 30 miles an hour, clearing the building in seconds with his SMG.
The IMC and the Militia are engaged in a tense firefight, the IMC calling for support as a second militia squad moves in to flank their cover. Suddenly a Titan runs by and squishes the whole squad.
A militia soldier, out of ammo, charges forward with a battle cry for freedom to punch a Spectre in the face. It catches the punch and effortlessly breaks his wrist.
Everything the grunts do is completely absurd. I kind of want to get a permacloak card, then open up a private match and just follow a squad of grunts around, watching them.