Summary
TheAssassin’s Creedseries is popular for a bunch of reasons. Most gamers enjoy roaming around unique, open-world settings, sneaking up to unaware foes, and giving them a shanking. Some may even like its weird, sci-fi plot about the Assassins and Knights Templar’s feud being connected to an advanced pre-human race called the Isu.
But others like to see which characters were real historical figures, if only for the novelty factor (AC2lets players beat up Pope Alexander VI!). But between George Washington becoming king in theAC3DLC, Alfred the Great turning up inAC Valhalla, and the upset over Yasuke inAC Shadows,it might be easy to forget there were other great games featuring historical figures.
Out of all the games here, which often go for high fantasy rather than historical accuracy,Eternal Sonataperhaps has the strangest premise of the bunch. It’s about the famous Polish composer Frédéric Chopin during the last hours of his life before he died from tuberculosis. On his deathbed, he dreams of a world where everyone’s named after musical terms, and one in particular, a terminally ill girl called Polka, has to save the world from the machinations of Count Waltz.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Polka also represents Chopin’s real younger sister Emilia, who died from TB in her teens. Her adventures are part her trying to make the most of her remaining time, and part Chopin processing both Emilia’s death and his own from the same disease. Gameplay-wise, it’sa solid, if linear, RPGwith a neat musical theme. As a story, it’s a strange, somber tale of a composer seeking meaning in his and his sister’s lives before he follows her into the void.
Practically every game here takes some liberties with its figures. Otherwise,Like a Dragon: Ishin’s story about Ryōma Sakamoto would be a short one as he was assassinated. Still, the game does allude to it by staging it as part of the plot’s conspiracy, complete with his likely assassin, Tadasaburō Sasaki of the Mimawarigumi, a rival faction of samurai cops to the more famous Shinsengumi.
He andother people from Japan’s Bakumatsu period(1853-1868) turn up to either drive the story or the substories. Sōji Okita and Kondō Isami challenge the player in both story and gameplay. But the likes of surprise boss Thomas Glover, and chatterbox Ernest Satow were also real people active in the country at the time. Even the “ee ja nai ka” (“isn’t it good?") protest from a recurring substory is based on a real set of protests that took place throughout 1867-1868.
FromKoudelkatoShadow Hearts: From the New World, theShadow Heartsseries used real-world locations and historical characters and events to aid its story. But they spiced them up with demons, dark magic, and bittersweet endings. The series’ recurring villain, Roger Bacon, is named after a real 12th-century monk and philosopher who was accused of being a wizard (despite being more of a proto-scientist).
But he’s actually a fictional cardinal called Albert Simon who achieved immortality while using Bacon’s name as an alias. Luckily, he and series protagonist Yuri are back inShadow Hearts: Covenant, where the latter forms a party with Tsarina Anastasia to stop Rasputin from replacing Tsar Nicholas II as ruler of Russia. As wild as that sounds, it’s just the tip ofSH:C’s plot of conspiracies, rituals, and sacrifice.
China’s Three Kingdoms era is one of the more romanticized periods in history, largely thanks to the iconic Luo Guanzhong novelRomance of the Three Kingdoms.There have been centuries of operas, plays, movies, shows, and more that have adapted and re-adapted its tale of the fall of the Han and the rise of Wei, Wu, and Shu before their eventual transformation into the Jin dynasty. Many of its figures were based on real people, though they likely weren’t as superhuman as they appear in the novel.
Total War: Three Kingdomsactually includes a “Romance” mode where the likes of Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Lü Bu can pull off the feats of strength from the novel. But players who want a more historically accurate experience can opt for Records mode. Players can still play other factions to change things, like upholding Dong Zhuo’s empire in “Rise of the Warlords,” or having Meng Huo’s southern tribes overcome Cao Cao in “A World Betrayed.” But it won’t necessarily be any easier or harder than following history or the novel.
Loosely based on an undeveloped script by Akira Kurosawa,Niohhas a historical basis. Kind of. Kurosawa planned to make a movie about William Adams, the English sailor who landed in Sengoku-era Japan and became an advisor to Ieyasu Tokugawa (i.e. the basis for the novel and TV seriesShogun). By the time Team Ninja finished turning it into a video game, they had made some drastic changes.William Adams is now Irishand, aided by Hattori Hanzo, is fighting off yōkai in his pursuit of the evil mystic Edward Kelley.
The two come across a who’s who of Sengoku-era figures, including Yasuke (as the Obsidian Samurai) and Tadakatsu Honda, albeit with a little artistic license. Hattori Hanzo is a literal ninja rather than a samurai commander, and Kelley looks more like the frontman of a J-rock band than a beardy old scryer. But the likes of Honda, Date Masamune, and Toyotomi Hideyori (son of the more famous Toyotomi Hideyoshi) all resemble their classical appearance, trademark armor and all.
The 1940s are still just about within living memory, though most ofL.A. Noire’s historical figures turn up as namedrops and mentions rather than in-game characters. Players sadly can’t push Richard Nixon down the stairs during his congressional campaign, nor try to pin the Nicholson Electroplating case on Howard Hughes. But they can check out the Spruce Goose, and find Nixon’s banners throughout the city (alongside remarks about his trustworthiness).
But they can come acrossthe infamous gangster Mickey Cohenand his bodyguard Johnny Stompanato in the Traffic and Vice cases. Cohen plays a key part in the story’s subplot and the downfall of Jack Kelso’s old war buddies. In a morbid turn, it also includes real murder victims, as the remains of Elizabeth Short, the “Black Dahlia,” turn up in the last Homicide case. It’s become one of the most notorious unsolved cases in history, yet players have to find out who killed her, as well as several other (fictional) victims.
The Sengoku era was one of the most brutal yet most romanticized eras in Japanese history. It’s been the subject of many TV shows, movies, and video games.Samurai Warriorsturned it into a slash fest.Sengoku Basaramade it an anime brawler where the infamous warlord Oda Nobunaga is treated like a Hammer Horror monster. EvenYakuza/Like a Dragonstarted its samurai spin-offs in that era with the still-Japan-onlyRyu Ga Gotoku: Kenzan!
ButTotal War: Shogun 2lets players control whole clans from the period in their quest to unify the country. Players could follow history and try to dominate the land as the Oda clan or bide their time like the Tokugawa. Or they could use all their resources to bring other clans, like the Takeda, on top or, via its “Fall of the Samurai” DLC, head to the Bakumatsu era to save the shogunate from the Imperial factions. The choice is theirs, but to achieve those aims takes skill.
Strategy games can be relied on for providing historical figures most of the time. But if theCivseries' historical figures leading their countries for millennia before and after their time seems odd to some, they may preferCrusader Kings 3. Players can choose to play (in)famous medieval figures like Harold Godwinson and William the Bastard (later Conqueror), but they can’t live forever. Like the priorCKgames, players have to think beyond the battlefield and secure their legacy to play with generations of leaders too.
They have to have children and use them as part of their political plans as well, usingtheir inherited traits to their advantagewhile working around their flaws. Players aren’t tied to history, so they can choose any faith, policy, or partner they like. But without careful planning, they could end up with a fallen dynasty that makes the Habsburgs look like the Kardashians.
Civilization 4gets the nod here as it’s often considered the best game in the series. But whether fans preferCivs 1-3or5-6or not, they all use famous historical heads of state (or figureheads) to represent their playable nations. Across the games, players can take control of Napoleon, Queen Victoria, George Washington, Shaka Zulu, etc., and make them do all sorts of out-of-character deeds to attain that military or scientific victory.
For example,Civ 1turned the peaceful protester Mahatma Gandhi into a hyper-aggressive warmonger who threatened anyone and everyone with nukes, while other civilizations got bunched together because their cultures shared common customs. For example,Civ 4’s Boudica, queen of Celtic Britain’s Iceni tribe, had cities named after British Roman towns. But inCiv 5, she used Scottish and Irish cities and spoke Welsh, which is akin to having the Aztecs and Mayans represented by the Incan emperor Pachacuti, who speaks Yupik.
