An FPS single player campaign is a good emulation of reality, as fast paced action and first person point of view combine to create the illusion of reality.  Complex systems and the way these interact together, further encourages this illusion.  A standard FPS campaign can be summarized as a series of action-moments punctuated by cinematics.   At first, these pre-rendered cut-scenes can drive a narrative, but late, these can also foil the trick after numerous play-throughs.  Cinematics are unchanging, but game sections are variable.  Players can choose to integrate their experience from the cinematic into their play.  Or, if they are creating their own narrative or challenge, they mostly ignore them.  Why is this?  Fundamentally a game is either a series of stations to complete, or a contiguous narrative.  A player's experience will fall somewhere between these two extremes.  Though there is more here to investigate in order to uncover the poetry of this truth beyond it's Cartesian composition.