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I play Foxhole as a pacifist medic who refuses to carry a gun but the enemy doesn’t seem impressedTrust me, I’m sort of a doctor
Trust me, I’m sort of a doctor
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Siege Camp
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Siege Camp
Another explosion sends the bodies flying. “Has anyone been here long enough to tell me what the hell is going on!?” the sergeant yells. He sounds annoyed. The field hospital is gone, probably blown to pieces. Troops keep wandering north and disappearing from view, only to come flying back as airborne cadavers moments later. The number of corpses and spilled backpacks on the road imply that someone in battalion headquarters (if such a place even exists) has made a terrible decision. If the Colonial forces want to win the persistent online war ofFoxhole, suggests the sergeant with his many irritated noises, then someone needs to piece these dying fools together. As the only medic in a 500 metre radius, that means me.
Foxhole Infantry Update - Official Launch TrailerWatch on YouTube
Foxhole Infantry Update - Official Launch Trailer
That doesn’t mean throwing your life away at the front. It means moving metal girders from one town to another, refuelling abandoned vehicles, dismantling tank traps, and refilling old trenches with soil. Your success as a frontline soldier hinges on the thankless work of players who just want the roads to be neat and tidy, as if the town of “Scurvyshire” might lose a Village of the Year competition if it’s not kept clean. The logistics players in this game are so organised, they oncewent on strike.
But more recently, it gotan infantry updatethat adds anti-tank guns for any poor sods facing a column of armoured vehicles, as well as two new tanks for said sods to panic-fire upon. But all that is very violent. I’m more interested in the expanded role that medics play on the battlefield sincemy last adventures back in 2017. There are a lot of useful roles to adopt at the front - a mortar operator, a spotter, an ammo distributor - all of them gun-toting and ready to fire off a few rounds if needed. But I’m a doctor, not a fighter, as I have frequently yelled toward enemy lines. That does not seem to have any effect on the number of bullets that whizz past my skull. Nevertheless, I decide not to carry a gun as I play.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Siege Camp
The general loop will be familiar to anyone who’s played a similar medical role in first-person shooters like the hectic dumbassery ofBattlefield Vor the excellently tenseHell Let Loose. You equip yourself with trauma kits and plasma at the spawn point (usually a small town headquarters) and use those to revive fallen friends. You also stock up on a first aid kit and bandages, useful for wrapping up wounds of soldiers, who often bleed so heavily it looks like they’ve fallen in a vat of cherry jam. For added drama, you can also heft fallen warbuds onto your shoulders and hoof it as fast as possible away from the gunfire, like a true Forrest Gump. This shoulder-slinging is something even non-medics can do, and it feels very heroic, even if it gets you killed quite a lot.
But those are just the basics of the battlefield. There’s one other very fun medic responsibility - the saving of “critically wounded soldiers”. These are rare bodies that spring up following a soldier’s death, hard to spot and even harder to retrieve when the artillery shells are falling. They aren’t players at all, but little harvestable dudes almost indistinguishable from your online pals. Bringing these hurt NPC folk to field hospitals will see you dump them in a bed as a “patient” and (following a countdown timer) you can discharge them and harvest them for “shirts”.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Siege Camp
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Siege Camp
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Siege Camp
Not every medical emergency has been so ill-fated, though. In the next big fight I encountered, I scurried around the bombed-out buildings of an urban flashpoint, bringing my ambulance back and forth through bombed streets, and actually managed to save some of those “critically wounded” NPC soldiers I’ve mentioned. I even got to use my ambulance’s siren horn to honk trucks and passing tanks out of my way. Don’t they know a man is dying here! I need to harvest his linen!
Shell after shell hits that town, but I go on running around without a rifle, picking up all the bullets, radios, gas masks, and first aid kits I can find, squirreling it all back to the nearest bunker and dumping everything in a big box for fresh recruits to find. In this act, and in the act of bringing injured men home just so I can iron their shirts, I have discovered Foxhole’s true nature. It is actually a game about recycling.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Siege Camp
I clamber out of the truck and do a “hands-on-head” emote. They slowly approach me without firing. I invoke the Geneva convention and tell them everything. I am a doctor, I don’t even carry a gun. They are doing a fine job, I insist, and are upstanding gentlemen. They seem to be very amenable and ask only that I unlock the truck full of supplies, which I assent to with gracious dignity, and barely any whimpering at all.
The truck is open. They inspect the contents and seem satisfied. Then one of the men in grey wonders aloud: “Is it bad to kill someone after they surrender?” It is an airy question, perhaps directed at his friends, or perhaps to a passing cloud. The Wardens aim their guns and fill my torso with bullets. I have only a few seconds to gasp with my dying breath: “Hey, you broke the rules. You broke the rules of war.”
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Siege Camp
