What part of history would you like to see a game use, and use accurately?

Many games that do history don't do them all that true to the real events, so I was wondering, if someone did do one trying to be accurate, what part of history, and maybe more specifically what event would you like to see? This has been done before, so it's not very surprising or interesting perhaps, but since I'm listening to the Gladiator soundtrack (which is a good movie, but not historically accurate either); just prior listening to the oldest known melody from 1400 BCE (I am curious what ancient people listened to), as well as looking at cities under the ocean (because I was curious how long it took for the bathysphere in Bioshock to get down to Rapture), I came upon Alexandria, where Cleopatra lived over 2000 years ago, I was thinking that it'd be awesome to have another, though far more historically accurate story about ancient Rome.

Perhaps the rise and the fall of it over a 200 year period time. I love games, and I love learning. I think games could be fun, but also be a lot more insightful, and history is something many, if not everyone to some degree find interesting. Video games being one of my biggest interests, I just want something to experience that deals with more than fiction, which is largely every single game one way or another. There's a lot of bright people in the gaming industry too, so I hope we see something more in line with what I was talking about. Games can partake in it, rather than just film, books, or TV. Anyways, what about you? What would you like to see? That all said, something I love to do when games come out that deal with history is check to see what really happened from as many, and what look to be trusted sources. The last time this was the case was Ryse. A lot of what Ryse does is fictional, but there's beliefs in there, and actual figures.

Just because a game that deals with history is inaccurate, doesn't make me automatically hate it, as all it does is make me want to know what really happened. Or when a game brings up history I had no idea happened. Bioshock Infinite brought up an event I had no idea happened, which was the Boxer Rebellion. Something that did somewhat bother me was when I randomly went back and played World At War. The same can be said for any WWII shooter, but that's the one I played, and I disliked that no matter what nationality you played, you got English (going so far to even give Russian accents? Come on. Go all the way). It was only, and it is only ever the opposing faction that speaks in their language, so in that instance, Japanese and German. I wish they would make a game and use the actual language.

Napoleonic Era, American Civil War, Crimean War, Korean War, Africa during Imperialism, Byzantines from 400-1450, Warring States and Spring Autumn Periods in China.

Gritty Cold War subterfuge. I want spies that have all the sophistication of an alcoholic fuck-up like Kim Philby or that American guy who chucked names to the Soviets because he thought it was all chickenfeed. And spy swaps.

The final days of the Roman Republic. The Punic Wars. The Wars of the Diadochi. The Mongol invasion of the Middle-East. The fracture of the Umayyad Caliphate. Oh so much to cover. I really appreciate when any type of media takes a swing at historical events and even though it'll never be completely accurate I still love to see a modern rendering of them. Things like HBO's Rome or even something more granular like Game of Thrones' recent depiction of the brutality of medieval warfare comes to mind.

The Total War mod community is really good at blending the games with historical authenticity and CKII is a good sandbox that has also been improved by modders to make it a very enjoyable experience that is based on a historical setting. Ryse was less good, really bummed out by that game. ARMA is also a much appreciated franchise although I've never put enough time into that game to wrap my head around it.

The crucifixion then resurrection of our lord and savior.

Controversy time!

I feel game development needs to be more diverse if we really want our games to be historically accurate. You would need multiple perspectives if you really wanted a fair and "accurate" representation of what went on during a time period. There also needs to be more than fighting/shooting going on. Religious/political/social/economic themes should also be used.

Also to answer the OP, I would want a game centered on British occupied India during WWII. It doesn't have to be centered around Gandhi or the independence movement, but how life was during the time in that location.

Big budget character driven games (ie not Total War or niche strategy games) have pretty much completely failed at any kind of interesting representations of historical periods. The ones that do get made are encumbered by the video game industry's total inability to tell an interesting, character driven story that does not take refuge in some kind of "larger issue" like mythology or science fiction.

In Ryse, instead of using the innumerable examples of actually interesting political and military squabbles from Rome, we got Boudicca invading Rome itself, and we got Gods intervening.

In Assassin's Creed (which comparatively made a decent effort in some ways), instead of using any interesting issues around the crusades and using that frame to tell a decent, character driven story we got science fiction nonsense and a ridiculous "This side wants total freedom!" "This side wants total control!" political schism, neatly sidestepping any coherent commentary on the actual things these figures they appropriated were fighting and dying for.

I wrote a post recently about how the new God of War game is probably going to completely ignore any of the actual context of those stories (I don't really blame them for this - it would be a pretty jarring switch over from how the other games in the series were presented).

At this point asking for any big budget historical games more nuanced than these is asking a lot. You are better off reading a book or watching a TV show.

It doesn't have to be accurate, but a game taking place in part of Portuguese or Spanish history would be really cool, I feel like these countries have so much history from the crusades to the Age of Discovery and much more but they're countries nobody cares about on most popular media (except some strategy games, maybe).

It doesn't have to be accurate neither but something from old Egypt with pharaohs and everything would be nice as well, I can't remember a good game that took place there.

@shivermetimbers: I'm absolutely on board with the perspectives idea. A good war-time shooter could be much better if perspectives and motives were more established, especially for both sides. I want games to show me more than one aspect of war. I want not only the fighting but the civilian, political, logistical, propoganda elements as well that could serve to pace the action. I want a WWII shooter that paces the action by interluding with German civilian life and puts you into the MIND of a German civilian. I recognize that thiswould be a big risk in the game industry, but a successful AAA game like that could be a watershed moment in games.

As a Bosnian, I want to see the Bosnian war depicted in the way I described above. I want it to accurately depict the breaking of Yugoslavia, the Serbian's genocidal invasion, Croatia's motives, and of course Bosnians' struggles during the whole period. I want it to be controversial and I want it to be gruesome, but most of all, I want it to be honest.

I don't feel like video games are the medium for accurate representation of reality. At least not those that aren't basically interactive fiction to begin with.

That said, give me a medieval torture simulator. Whee!

Rome, when it was just one city and still fighting with the Etruscans and shit.

I'd liked to see a game that covers the rise of Rome to a tribal society to a kingdom, republic, empire, and the splitting of that empire before it fell. I have no idea what that game would be in terms of gameplay but it went through so many interesting phases and stories that most people only know snippets of. Plus there's plenty of documentation to make it accurate and plenty of cool political and military events to allow for interesting gameplay.

That seemed a little bizarre to me. Discounting all of the ridiculousness in that plot, the rebellions in Roman Britain were basically a footnote during that period. Only a few years later, Rome would be embroiled in a civil war that would actually threaten the Empire - complete with intricate political manoeuvring, large battles, intrigue, assassinations, you name it. Hell, the Dacian wars from 88 onwards and Trajan's expansion would be a far more compelling setting for a video game.

Brexit.

History isn't accurate to the events so I don't mind how a game interprets it. I'll always take gameplay first.

Ryse never made sense to me. I'm a History Teacher with a Masters in History, specialising in the late Roman Republic (particularly 133BC - 78BC). There is so much crazy political stuff and wars that happens in that time period that there was no need to have the crazy emperor going to England and Boudicca invading Rome itself. Ryse was just dumb. It wasn't a bad game, but it wasn't a good one either.

I'd like a non war or city building Roman game done properly. An isometric RPG set in Ancient Rome or Greece would be fantastic.

LESS REALISM MORE IMAGINATION!

The crusades would be pretty cool, there's a lot you could do with that.

2020's.

I can't think of a single Sci-fi game that looks remotely plausible. It's usually just modern life with a few specific tech upgrades (gimmicks) and a lot of sci-fi textures.

China's Warlord Era. Roughly from 1916 to 1928. Read up on it if you can; it's really fascinating.

Viking age, anything with Ghengis Kahn and the war of the ninepenny kings.

I hate to break it to you, but a game set in the 2020s wouldn't be sci-fi. That's like, 4 years from now.

Are there any good Tudor-to-Elizabethan London games out there?

Fascinating period - Hillary Mantel described it as England's "national soap opera" - and there's surely enough day-to-day grit to tackle from the perspective of a commoner, or alternatively plenty of courtly intrigue if you wanted to go in that direction.

The Enlightenment/Revolutionary Era. Either America or France. Doesn't need to be a particular genre, although I could see a Paradox-style strategy game with a few counter-historical choices thrown in working well.

I'll never forgive Assassin's Creed for f'ing that time period up. Twice.

A game where you play as Magellan and need to manage the supplies, internal politics and all the other stuff in order to pilot your small fleet of ships around the world.

I've become pretty interested in modern military history (post-WW2) and the two subjects that jump to mind would be something set during all of the dirty shit the US was doing in Central/South America in the 70's and 80's, and the wars/conflicts in Central/Easter Europe in the 90's and 00's after the fall of the Soviet Union. Lots of really interesting stuff happened in those time periods that had a huge influence on the world today that aren't really explored much in games or media in general. The story of CoD Black Ops II and some of the old Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games touched on it but nothing substantial. I'm sure you could craft a pretty interesting action or FPS game set in those parts of the world around that time period.

Oh, and the Wild West or American Frontier. We need more Western-themed games. Red Dead Redemption showed that it could be done, so let's keep it going. A Western-themed RPG would be awesome. Think of a Bethesda or BioWare style RPG set around the Wild West. How cool would that be?

Ethiopians fighting off the European powers and winning.

age of exploration

I'd love a game set during the Space Race, I'd imagine some sort of sim where you are in charge (on the U.S. or Soviet side) and you have to manage the time and resources and all of the hurdles they had to go through back then.
It couldn't be completely 100% accurate, especially if you are the Russians and you win, but still, you could teach a lot of stuff with a game like that and it could be super cool. Or just one where you are the astronauts flying the missions. Everybody knows the famous first Moon landing, but stuff happened before and after that, that could be really interesting to cover. And Tom Hanks would do a voice over in it, obviously.

I mentioned the same in what I wanted to see in a game. Over here in the US those wars didn't get much mention in the media besides a small reference to Bosnia or Kosovo every now and then, and I think that most Americans have forgotten about what happened there.

@duluoz: what a well thought out response. I agree.

To be honest, I think "accuracy" is probably something big budget games should really focus on. They should, like @duluoz says, focus on telling an interesting narrative with an emotional core that resonates.

Let's take The Order:1886 for example. This was a game I was pretty excited for. It's not historically accurate of course, but there is an *insane* attention to detail in that game's setting and props. So much so that the fake, fantastical guns seem pretty believable. What wasn't believable, sadly, was how your main character could be so vaunted and yet be such a petty shit heel. The writing was what really sunk this game for me.

Historical accuracy on games? Idk. Just please, please actually write dialog and plot that doesn't make me embarrassed to play it around my wife.

Ancient China or Japan for me. Though of course not at all accurate, I loved the setting of Jade Empire and would like to see more games set in Asia.

I think you'd have to handle it really carefully but I think there's an incredible stealth/adventure game to be made set in the pre-Civil War South about a slave trying to escape.

World War 1 or the American Civil War. Yes I know, we're getting Battlefield 1, but I'd like something with a strong singleplayer campaign with (if pigs could fly) actual character development.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but I personally would like to see the entirety of the Cold War in a video game.

Since games nowadays can be over 100 hours long easily, I think that's possible. Could be a pretty diverse game as well, you could be a soldier on the Vietnam War shooting people in first or third person, espionage between the US and Soviet Union, among other things as well.

Just wanted to add - as the thread is serendipitous - that I recently picked up Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, and I have to say, I think it does a pretty credible job of portraying the aesthetic of Victorian-era London. (Emphasis intended).

I'm having fun, but only a few hours in, can't comment on the quality of the game. What I can say though is that I'm playing it very differently to how I'm played Black Flag. I'm doing a lot of walking around the city rather than running, even choosing ground level over rooftops at times, just to soak it all up a bit.

It's obviously not a perfect map and is rather condensed, but as someone who has spent a long time living in London, I'm impressed so far as to how often I can guide myself to a landmark through street knowledge alone - and how when I get there, I see what looks like a faithful reimagining of what the historical version of that locale.

So far it seems to be tackling some Victorian-era topics, too - child labour, dodgy medicine, the age of invention - though this isn't 'authentic' so much as 'arcade fun'. The constant running into historical figures is already wearing a little thin.

Even so, as someone who might be leaving London in short order, I'm pleased to have this sort-of-replica to fall back on when nostalgia hits me.

A well done game centering around rome and their fights against the seleucids, Carthage, and barbarians during the punic wars.

Totally pulling this out of my ass as I type it. But maybe a gritty realistic game based on the christian bible. I'm not religious myself but I know alot of crazy shit happened in that book. It could make a cool fantasy game.

An accurate portrayal of the formation of the Illuminati would be nice for video games to tackle for once.

I'd love to see a game make use of the early modern europe. Maybe the period around the thirty years war, or here in Ireland the nine-years war and war of the three kingdoms

There are a lot of cool choices, but I would like a game based around being a nomad in Asia on the steppe for a tribe or empire. A game that focused on mounted archery. In many ways Mount and Blade does this but I would love a game really focused on it with a story. I really enjoy Mount and Blade but if you focused just on the mounted combat I feel like someone could do it really well. An open world game where you roamed around with a band of cavalry.

A game set in the height of the Aztec and Mayan empires would also be great.

The samurai setting is underused still I think. It's had moments, but I would love some real samurai action games.

the 80s, If you watch some Quicklooks or listen to the Bombcast Jeff mentions wrong songs, different tech in games. But yeah like Blood Dragon, Hotline Miami, GTA Vice City, MGSV Phantom Pain, there are a few games that try emulating it but kinda get it all meh. I feel the same way, yes I do love the day glow era but I do think there's a HUGE difference between 90s and 80s and right now it's getting blurred into a fuzzy memory exactly how I was as a child when I saw Back to the Future and wonder if the 50s was like that.

@tortoise: That sounds awesome.

I think I would enjoy a game set in ancient Egypt, with lots of crafting. More of a strategy game than a fighting game.