Video games excel at creating new worlds for players to explore, but they can also be valuable windows to more realistic premises. While many games simply use historical locations and conflict as a backdrop, others put the effort into faithfully recreating their subject matter.
The interactive nature of games means accuracy can be difficult to maintain beyond initial setup, but some developers have found creative ways to keep their sandboxes closed just enough to maintain historical relevance. Whether it’s studying photographs to recreate WWII roads and buildings or using historical texts to study the behaviors of ancient civilizations like the Romans or Egyptians, these games succeed in combining educational precision and entertaining gameplay.
ten Mount & Blade: Warband – Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars may not be as portrayed in video games as conflicts like WWII or various theaters in the Middle East, but Mount & Blade: Warband – Napoleonic Wars brings the era to life with incredible precision. The game’s long reload times for guns and inaccurate weapons show that machine guns are not necessary for tense battles. Additionally, this game is one of the few that allows players to take on roles unrelated to combat, such as drummer or ensign. Much like in real life, people in these roles offer their allies essential morale boosts that can turn the tide of war.
9 Red Dead Redemption 2
Red Dead Redemption 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor to create the most historically accurate interpretation of the 19th-century American West ever seen in a video game. While Rockstar Games has fictitious cities and specific names in the game, everything else in Red Dead Redemption 2 is based on reality. Several characters are based on real people, the social climate is faithful to the times, the most common firearms are portrayed accurately, and even some specific missions have players committing crimes based on out-of-town activity. real and historical law.
8 Second civil war
Contrary to what its name seems to imply, Second civil war concerns the bloody conflict of the nineteenth century between the American Union and the Confederation. While several Civil War games accurately set up the battles and the war’s most famous characters, Second civil war succeeds in realistically implementing some of the broader issues of the Civil War.
Army movements and combat management are certainly necessary for victory, but players will also need to consider less common obstacles such as how much money can be printed before inflation becomes detrimental or what is the best way to implement an embargo. The result is a game that’s as close as possible to the harsh realities of one of America’s deadliest wars.
7 Medal of honor
The last games of the Medal of honor The franchise left most of its historical roots behind, but the series started out as a relatively entrenched portrayal of World War II. Medal of Honor: Frontline is the most realistic of the bunch, and players fight through various battles of the Western Front of WWII. Steven Spielberg, who directed Save Private Ryan, assisted the development team by providing access to authentic weapon sounds and firing models as well as its military tactics consultant, Dale Dye. These details helped bring the whole game to life, but it all comes together especially well in the heartbreaking game description of the Assault on Normandy Beach.
6 Kingdom Come: Deliverance
The medieval European era inspires many fantastic role-playing games, but few of them attempt to represent the realistic struggles of the time. Kingdom Come: Deliverance swaps more popular Western European settings for the Kingdom of Bohemia in the 1400s. Although the game is packed with action, injuries occur quickly and can easily turn fatal.
However, combat isn’t the only time the player character is in danger. Players should be concerned about eating food, drinking water, and keeping track of their provisions as they wear out or spoil. All of this takes place in an open world filled with buildings and landmarks inspired by reality.
5 Europa Universalis IV
It’s difficult for great strategy games to be historically accurate because how events unfold depends on the player. That being said, Paradox Games’ Europa Universalis IV does all he can to reflect reality. While some groups may flounder or thrive in ways that don’t fit the history books, the issues and events players face are inspired by real breakthroughs and crises.
Of course, that doesn’t mean players won’t end up with a totally unrealistic story, but issues such as rebellions, technological advancements, religious tensions, and war that must be overcome for victory attempt to honor them. alliances and historical events.
4 The black
The blackThe crime story of s may have been a work of fiction, but Rockstar Games used its open world experience to faithfully recreate Los Angeles circa 1947. Instead of just trying to recreate the overall feel of American d postwar period, developers used hundreds of specific photographs and mapping data to bring the City of Angels to life as accurately as possible. Historical accuracy isn’t limited to the buildings in the game either. Cars behave as badly as they did in the 1940s, several social conflicts affect the story, and there are references to several real-world crimes that actually happened. .
3 Brothers in arms
Many WWII games trade historical precision for more engaging gameplay and storytelling flow, but the Brothers in arms frankness sticks as much as possible to the facts. The developers have attempted to recreate the current battlefields as faithfully as possible with photographs relevant to the time, and they consulted with several historians to ensure the game did not contain any significant oversights or anachronisms.
The game developers also visited the actual locations of the game’s missions to make sure the environments were properly laid out and represented what real soldiers saw in WWII. Places like Carentan Church, the House of Dead Man’s Corner and the intersection of Saint Comet are examples of the attention to detail the development team has given. Each building is precise right down to its masonry patterns and landscaping.
2 The Assassin’s Creed series
The Assassin’s Creed The franchise has had its ups and downs, but none of the core games have gone to great lengths for historical accuracy. However, that changed when Ubisoft added Discovery Tour mode to Origins of Assassin’s Creed and Odyssey. This mode was designed to be used by teachers as a teaching aid to teach students about ancient Egypt and Greece. Discovery Tour allows players to move around in the traditional way or automatically move between points of interest associated with narrated information accounts of how the object or area relates to the actual story.
1 Rome: total war
The Total war franchise has managed to move away from history with its Total war hammer series, but integers like Rome: total war continue to serve as viable educational tools. Story mode introduces players to the context of famous battles from Roman history, and the various combat units behave like their real-life counterparts.
The game’s developer, Creative Assembly, studied various historical documents to understand Roman tactics, and the game represents its subject matter so well that it was used to feature battles on the TV show. Time commanders.
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