A surprising number of games like Assassin's Creed draw on real life and real history, from World War 2 all the way back to the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. Whether it's in the form of running, fighting, and parkouring through colorful, accurate-to-history environments, or told through dialogue and real resources of the period, games can be wonderful, and surprisingly accurate, teachers of history.
Although the options for historical games are substantial, selecting ones that offer uniquely strong learning opportunities can be difficult. The best history games provide learning resources or offer narrative elements that accurately convey the place and period. Titles like Assassin's Creed bring historical settings to life with massive budgets secured by years of popularity, while others make clever use of more limited resources. Regardless of their differences in approach, players can walk away from great historical games having enjoyed the experience while gaining more knowledge along the way.
Assassin's Creed Is A Flagship Historical Experience
Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series has long been known for its ventures throughout history. The first game in the series brought the Holy Land to life at the time of the Third Crusade, and subsequent titles have explored settings from the ancient world, to revolutionary France, to the Caribbean. Although the games take significant artistic license with their subjects, shoehorning fictional protagonists into major events and threading in a tale of an Assassin's Creed precursor race living in the past, they also make painstaking efforts for accuracy in other regards. Key historical events and assassinations, for example, tend to follow the records and dates its believed they occurred, only requiring players to accept the secret involvement of a robed killer.
The greatest potential for Assassin's Creed game as history lessons, however, comes in the form of the Discovery Tour game mode. First introduced with Assassin's Creed Origins, Discovery Tour uses the detailed renditions of historical settings as a learning environment while setting aside the overarching narrative of the games. The Discovery Tour has become a series staple for the time being, with both Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Assassin's Creed Valhalla receiving their own versions. The feature is offered both as an additional mode for fans looking to learn on the side and a standalone Assassin's Creed Discovery Tour purchase for educators or gamers uninterested in the traditional franchise experience.
Open The Historical Manuscript Of Pentiment
From Neverwinter Nights 2 to Fallout: New Vegas, fantasy and science fiction games form the core of Obsidian Entertainment's gaming legacy. With Pentiment, the studio broke with tradition and dived into the past. A monastery and a countryside town in 16th-century Bavaria are disrupted by accusations of murder, thrusting the player into a web of intrigue. Pentiment brings Renaissance Europe to life through a style reminiscent of the period's illuminated manuscripts, matching its narrative to its aesthetic in a memorable way. Even the text of the game provides a sophisticated reflection of the context, shifting through styles to represent different backgrounds for the characters.
Obsidian's focus on complex choices and interactions proves a perfect fit for the historical setting. Players can learn and explore through both major decisions and background choices in Pentiment, exercising an amount of freedom that makes the act of seeking information feel uncommonly rewarding. The context of the era's cultural shifts proves to be much more than a backdrop, and the core narrative intertwines with tensions and developments unique to the time. With twenty-five years of meat to the story, there's plenty to glean from its unfolding. Even if the mysteries at the heart of Pentiment are fictional, many elements that weave into them were once very, very real.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance Is A History Buff's Dream RPG
Many modern games focus on delivering fun as efficiently as possible, streamlining and heightening narratives and gameplay to make the player feel powerful and consistently engaged. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a game for people who want the nitty-gritty, focusing on a medieval world with more poverty and fewer dragons. The best perks in Kingdom Come: Deliverance are earned through steady repetition and practice, and the protagonist is the son of a blacksmith who finds his way through the narrative more by determination than destiny. For gamers interested in a realistic historical angle, Kingdom Come: Deliverance's approach elevates its authenticity over its peers.
Like Assassin's Creed, however, the real history lesson in Kingdom Come: Deliverance comes not from the principal gameplay but from a side feature. The game features a Codex for the player's benefit, a source of information that lists facets of the setting that the player might encounter, and offers explanations for each. The Locations category of the Codex, for example, allows players to access blurbs about various places in medieval Bavaria that appear in the game. The entries that shine are the ones about various roles, tasks, items, and behaviors, educating the reader on everything from how a medieval blacksmith used a forge to the thrilling world of municipal finances.
Oregon Trail Rolls Down A Path Of History
When people think about historical games, Oregon Trail may very well be the first to come to mind. The game has persisted for decades across various incarnations, buoyed to eternal relevance by both its educational value and entertainment factor. The title earns a mention by merit of the newly revitalized version of the game available on PC and Switch, which marries pixel art with polygonal backdrops. An interactive Journal feature chronicles actual people and places from history, and losing a party to dysentery in the Oregon Trail HD remake still ensures that a player will never forget the threat of the disease in the 19th century.
Whether the Oregon Trail calls or medieval Bavaria beckons, the variety of games that dive into history ensure that gamers seeking knowledge will never have to leave unsatisfied. The games like Assassin's Creed and Pentiment mentioned here are far from an extensive resource, only a selection of the best the industry has to offer. When it comes to finding out more about the past that shaped us, none of these titles are likely to disappoint.
Source: Ubisoft/YouTube