Narrator (Battlefield 1)

"They push — we push. Every once in a while, we push hard enough that the light breaks through the clouds — so the world beyond the war glimmers — just out of reach."

- The Narrator at the end of Storm of Steel

The Narrator is an American character featured in the campaign of Battlefield 1. As a member of the 369th Infantry Regiment, also known as the Harlem Hellfighters, he serves as the main protagonist of the chapter Storm of Steel.

Alongside that, he is the narrator for the game's campaign, who can be heard talking about his opinion of the events happening around the world throughout World War I in the chapter selection menu of the game, and in the closing chapter Remember Us.

Biography
Not much is known about the life of the Narrator before the war occurred aside from his monologues said during each chapter of the campaign's chapter select menu. In the beginning narration for the chapter Through Mud and Blood, he mentions that his grandfather fought in the American Civil War, and that he had told him how he could be prepared to fight in the frontlines. However, none of that could have prepared him for the new technology brought on by the war, such as tanks.

Before starting Friends In High Places, the Narrator admits he never saw an airplane in his life before going to war. He was at first amazed by them as they flew over him, admiring the daring pilots who flew them, but soon realized that most of these planes and their pilots would crash down to their deaths into "twisted smoking wrecks". For Avanti Savoia!, he was somewhat aware of the events going in the other theaters of the war, such as the one in Italy with their coasts and the Alps. The Narrator is skeptical of the fact that this war would be "the war to end all wars", due to the fact that the human race will never stop seeking to destroy each other.

Furthermore, in The Runner, he considered the war, just as many other soldiers did, to be a "rite of passage" and an adventure that would make them grow up into becoming real men. However, the reality was far from it and death (or the fear of it) was the only thing that made every soldier equal. Finally, for Nothing Is Written, the Narrator knew about the guerilla war happening between the Bedouin rebels and the Ottoman Empire. He understood that the war fought there was very different from the one he fought, and that the rebels were united under one leader who motivated them through the ideas of "freedom and change".

At the beginning of Storm of Steel, the Narrator is shown sleeping on a bed in an unknown place and time, just as the song "Dream a Little Dream of Me" is playing. Just as the hand of a person reaches out to him, he wakes up. However, either through a flashback or that the aforementioned sequence was just a dream, the Narrator is woken up in the middle of a battle by another soldier. He tries to get an idea of what is going on, looking all around him as American, French, and German soldiers are killing each other mostly through melee combat. He then hears a German soldier doing a bayonet charge towards him and is able to dodge it before stabbing the soldier in the back with his knife. He readies up a Gewehr 98 just as the chapter moves on.

The Narrator does not appear for most of the chapter until the very end, where he and the other Harlem Hellfighters are pushing forward towards the German lines across no-mans-land. He makes it as far up as possible, but then gets smacked behind the head by a German soldier with a Shovel. Just as the soldier is about to do a finishing blow, he gets saved by an artillery strike (serving as a distraction for him) before getting knocked out by it. He soon wakes up, picks up his rifle, and sees nothing but dead bodies around him. However, right in front of him is another German soldier who also woke up from the artillery strike. They both point their rifles at each other for a short moment before lowering them again, realizing that adding themselves to the high body count of the battle is a pointless endeavor. Since the battle happened close to the end of the war, it can be presumed that the Narrator survived the war and got back home safely to live a peaceful life.

Trivia

 * The Narrator is the soldier featured on the cover and much promotional material of Battlefield 1.
 * The Narrator is the only playable character in Storm of Steel that does not die.
 * He is also the only playable character in the chapter, and in the entire campaign, that does not have his name or age disclosed.
 * Despite being an American soldier, he is seen using a Gewehr 98 at the start and end cutscenes of Storm of Steel and in the Remember Us ending. Presumably, he has acquired the rifle the fallen German soldier he stabbed at the beginning of the mission.