ww1 might be fun, less armor, mustard gas, real trenches. You could start out as a french soldier whose hand is shot. Then, accused of self mutilation, you get thrown into the no man's land as an alt-execution, having to fight your way back home. And at the end of the game a hot Audrey Tatou shows up and declares here love for you...
Why so much ww2? I don't know. Because if we made a game about the war of 1812, gamers everywhere would suddenly stop and say "wait a sec, wtf were we all dying for again?" There are revolutionary war mods, but any indication of realism in them just goes to show how slow the guns were and how dumb it is to have everyone stand up while fighting. And any game about vietnam is going to end mysteriously early in the campaign. Personally, I still want to try that civil war mod I think it still around somewhere...
As for elsewhere, a yugoslovian game could be fun, the main character could be a vengful albanian muslim, though it's essential that this fact not be revealed in the promo material as to surprise all those redneck ww2 war hobbyists who didn't pay attention the first time because it was a war under that "disgraceful" president..
We could make a modern Iraq game, Sunni's VS Shiites. But considering the percentage of people killed by bombs and or kidnappings/executions VS people killed in actual firefights, that game would get realy f'n depressing real f'n quick.
I guess we could get a faulken islands war game where you can play a british commando who slices up the coastline and at the end gets the honor of having a psychotic crone pin a RAF medal through your nipple before leaning in and asking you where the best epicenter would be for a nuclear assault.
Perhaps I'm being too literal, but after finishing COD2 over the weekend I can say the actual style of the gameplay didn't bother me nearly as much as the lack of any indication of a story. It existed to do nothing but throw endless enemies at you to kill and repeat. Really, are there any players that aren't surprised by the sudden credit roll of these games?
Just killing the minutes before class...