Frankly, I'm of the opinion that that's because it was an equally crass attempt at stimulating that kind of emotional investment. You don't get feelings for free. They are contextual things with many more dimensions that what is put immediately in front of you. Trying to build a genuine commentary on the nature of war into a game like that requires a fundamentally different kind of game, and attitude towards game-making, more than just a tacked-on nod to the fact that some people died in the War.