Sounds like they have it backwards more or less.
I'll be honest, I have never killed anyone, though I have known a lot of people that have. I have however been involved in a number of violent situations which I will not go into (less to do with my former employment than you might think, as I did that job by defusing and controlling situations so violence wouldn't happen despite being prepared to handle it) as it's unimportant.
The bottom line with violence, even killing, is that it gets easier the more that you do it, not vice versa. If they wanted to convey the realities of war and violence, the trick would be a matter of making the first few acts unusually graphic and meaningful in their encounters, but as the game progresses, ramp things up gradually to the point of causing "massacre fatigue" and then at some point as part of the story make an issue out of how many people have been being killed, and how casual it all was compared to the beginnings of the game.
To be entirely honest, the more you fight and kill, the less you generally begin to care about fighting and killing. This is why a lot of soldiers have such a hard time reassimilating to society after being in a war. Using violence to solve problems becomes second nature. This is also incidently why propaganda is so important during a war, both to help soldiers take out those first few enemies when they are still thinking in human terms, and then to keep reaffirming that they are doing the right thing as the war continues. Of course given that few real people kill as many people as a video game character does, it's a bit differant and spread out over a longer period of time (with a lot of downtime in between, waiting for things to happen).
I'll also say that even as art, I see video games as being a form of escapism. Truthfully, I'm not sure if I quite care for the attitude of trying to show the overall impact of war and violence. Honestly, I don't think most people need to be seeing these kinds of things because with the "peace at any price" moment acting in full force, and very little propaganda, during our current war, people are hammered with the realities every day. I don't think anyone needs to be shown the realities of the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Afghanistan, or other things because we've been bombarded by it for quite a while now.
Honestly, I think what we need actually are games focusing on the glory of war. That might sound odd, but to be honest it seems that most games are focused on being gritty nowadays, and pretty much all of the shooter games and such out there are pretty depressing when you get down to it. It seems games come in that flavor, or over-the-top satire and/or action movie fare. A serious game, about the glory and positive fortunes of war, well told would be a good counterpoint. Everyone seems to think that such games are the standard, but they haven't been, not for a long time.
This is just my opinion however, as far as "Homefront" goes, the idea interested me as I'm a fan of old movies like "Red Dawn" and "Invasion USA" even if people mock them nowadays. The latter in paticular was an entertaining piece of high camp, where Chuck Norris actually seemed to be having a good time making the movie. That said, I'm not a huge shooter fan, and unless the game has some heavy sandbox elements (I haven't been following it too closely) I probably will wind up passing on it.
