Historical settings in games: what works and why

Let's go back in time. Back to when the Nazis were still an international threat, when the holy land was fought over by crusaders and jihadists, and when Los Angeles was still riding the wave of Hollywoodland's star power. No matter where we go, who we are or when we are, games that take us through the Time Vortex like Dr. Who on a whim always fascinate us.

Playing as a soldier doesn't always feel like being a soldier.

From "Call of Duty" to the "Total War" franchise, games that use historical time periods as their setting tread a fine line between reality and poetic license for entertainment. Kratos's exploits work wonderfully because they work within Greek mythology rather than weaving him through events in Greek history. Perfect. Whereas Ezio and Altair of "Assassin's Creed" meet major players in history but rarely effect the course of well-known fact (minus the Borgias, of course).


The key is immersion. What can the developer get away with and what can they bend without the player losing immersion. To properly immerse a player in the idea that, yes, you are back in time and this is how things are, is much harder than one might think. There is a lot of preparation and set dressing to do before the game even gets underway.

A lot of research must be done to properly understand the clothing, jargon, languages and proper cultural nuances that must be layered into the game world. Now, no one would really bat an eye at the Nazis shouting in English with German accents, but it is more frightening to hear a foreign language shouted at you and not know what it means.

Eventually, you feel proud of yourself when you pick up terms that you know mean "grenade" and the like that help to fight back more effectively and dodge appropriately. That's exactly what our soldiers have to do in war when they fight against a foreign enemy.

 Let's not forget the weather of France and the flowing language plastered all over buildings in small towns to really make you feel you are in a foreign land fighting against a foe that you can't understand. Though, apparently every American soldier is from the southern U.S. or grew up in Brooklyn.

Some war games like to put you directly into battles that really happened, and this is where it gets tricky. "Call of Duty" seems to do this very well by making you accomplish goals that aided in the battle's completion. Or, as in "Black Ops," they make you experience the fear and terror of Khe Sanh, while not putting you in some sort of position that would change the course of the battle just for the sake of playing in it.

He can see his house from there!

Then there are games like "Assassin's Creed" which put you directly in historical settings with important figures.

Now, since the franchise establishes that there is a sci-fi element to it, and that the whole premise is that history may not be what is written, they cleverly avoid having to stick to historical fact too much. Yet, they use immersion.

In the "Assassin's Creed" games, half of what you hear on the streets of Jerusalem is incomprehensible if you don't speak the language, while in Rome the streets are flooded with shouting in Italian. Even Constantinople has a mix of languages to really set the tone.

The colors used, landmarks, buildings and clothing cement the location. Not to mention the ability to visit historical monuments and climb all over them. Even though the game mucks with historical fact here and there, it really does rely on being grounded in history to provide an enjoyable experience for the player.

But what about games set in a well known time period and location while also using fictional people and places? Look no further than "Red Dead Redemption" and "L.A. Noire." New Austin clearly isn't real, but it felt just as beautiful and weather-beaten as any other part of the West during the Expansion Era of the United States. Even the region of Mexico that John Marston travels to is believable, though not all of Mexico was full of bandits and tyrannical colonels.

Then there's Cole Phelps and his descent into the gritty underbelly of Hollywood. Of course, using real studios was out of the question, but putting fictional ones seamlessly into the iconic Los Angeles landscape was simple enough and downright convincing. Having a shootout in an RKO-esque movie set, car chases through greater LA County streets and searching for clues in back alleys all sold the setting.

The streets of Armadillo are paved with dead gunslingers.

We love going back in time. It's why we go to movies and read books and play video games. The times we really enjoy it, though, are the times when we believe it - the times we're truly convinced we are seeing or experiencing an event from the past.

 Even if something about the game is far fetched, like flying through the Venice skyline on one of Leonardo da Vinci's flying machines, we still feel as if it's Renaissance Italy. Even if you take over the Roman empire as Carthage in "Rome: Total War," you believe it's possible using the historically accurate troops and tools of that time period.

The name of the game, ladies and gentlemen, is immersion. Say, that might actually be a pretty good game title. Anyone want to help me make it?