History and its influence have their way of showing up in unexpected places. Video games, for example, are just one medium that borrow heavily from real historical events. Titles within the Assassin’s Creed franchise or Wolfenstein series aren’t afraid to dig deep into the annals of time to lift elements from the world’s history. In this blog, we’ll be discussing some of the various aspects of history that fictional video games sometimes borrow, from character attire to geography, architecture, and weapons.
Costumes and Weapons
The Elder Scrolls series is an absolutely massive video game, and unless you’re not paying attention, it evidently pulls a large amount of inspiration from medieval Europe. The Elder Scrolls V: Skryim, in particular, takes inspiration from Northern Europe with quite a few nods to Norse and Viking culture. Character costumes and weapons echo this region especially, with Viking helmets, swords, and shields reminiscent of that historical era and region. Players can easily draw comparisons to various different in-game items with the historical era that they are based upon. The world of Skyrim is filled to the brim with historical inspirations, and it’s fun to notice all of them while playing.
Architecture
Quite often, a video game’s world and setting are inspired directly by locations from the real world. One franchise that has done this time and time again also happens to be the biggest video game series of all time - Pokemon. While the first four regions are said to be based on smaller regions of Japan, later installments take inspiration from other areas of the world: Kalos, the region featured in Pokemon X & Y, is based on France, with Lumiose City based on the city of Paris (and Prism Tower based on the Eiffel Tower). The Alolan region from Pokemon Sun & Pokemon Moon is based on Hawaii, and the Galar region from Pokemon Sword & Pokemon Shield is based on areas of the United Kingdom. For a franchise that has almost nothing to do with history, it’s interesting to see the physical world of Pokemon taking so much inspiration from real-world locations, modern and antiquated.
Politics
Many fictional worlds and their conflicts often take direct inspiration from real-world politics. This is nothing new, as fictional works have been inspired by historical events in all mediums; Star Wars contains many World War II parallels, with stormtroopers based on the Nazi regime, and the world of Game of Thrones heavily inspired by European history and its politics.
When it comes to video games, there are too many historical inspirations to count. The Elder Scrolls game series takes plenty of inspiration from European history, but perhaps an even more interesting parallel can be found between Fire Emblem: Three Houses and European history. The Holy Church of Seiros, the fictional church of Three Houses, feels heavily inspired by the Catholic church in 16th-18th century Europe, with the church having major political power. The game’s turning point halfway through the game echoes history as well, with a rising conflict between the Holy Church of Seiros and monarchs comes to a head and ultimately leads to the church’s fall. This is just one example of a game that expertly weaves real-world politics into its fictional world, with many other examples.
It’s exciting to notice how fictional video games have been inspired by history in various ways, with more games to count taking some form of inspiration from our world.
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(This article is credited to Ben Price. For as long as he can remember, Ben has always loved playing, discussing, and writing about video games. Since receiving his B.A. in English, he now writes about them for a living.)