A General Look At: Medieval Setting

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week we're going to do something different and look at a general aspect of gaming.

Many games use a setting that involves kingdoms, knights, bards, and potentially wizards and dragons. This tends to come in two flavors: the medieval setting and the standard fantasy setting. Today we look at the more historical medieval setting, the next post will be looking at the standard fantasy setting.

Off the top of my head, I thought of the games that use a medieval setting. My list was a little lacking because I tend to play more of the standard fantasy setting. And this is one of many reasons I'm so happy Google and Wikipedia exist. I'm going to put a nice disclaimer here that I haven't played any of these games so some of what I say could be inaccurate. Feel free to correct/support/add on in the comments.

When I did get a list, a glance lead me to a further split: how historically accurate the games are. Here we take a look at what the medieval setting is used for. Some games are about reproducing the life and events of the medieval era.  Ethereal is a new game that actually took data from SCA combat (which tries to be as accurate as they possibly can) to make a mulitplayer medieval combat sim. They were interested in reproducing the battle style as opposed to event, but still wanted historical accuracy. Similarly, Stronghold appears to be more interested in being semi-accurate. In Stronghold you are a Lord and are concerned with making your area a stable economy and being protected from invaders as well as gaining new territory. The battles are based more on realism and have fire be very dangerous for your area as pitch, boiling oil pots, wood and thatch were all present, some of those in abundance,and nicely flammable. Yes it uses standard RTS controls, but is more accurate than some others.

And here we see the other side of the medieval setting coin. Stronghold may not sound like an exact historical replica, but it uses the same medieval setting as Medieval: Total War. This too is a strategy game, made by the same guys who made Shogun: Total War, but things get a little silly if you think about it. You start as the nameless head of a faction (no guarantee you are the king, just some higher-up guy) and then through time, fighting, diplomacy and so on you can basically be King of Europe. Some famous names like Richard the Lion Heart and Saladin do get dropped as your generals but you can take over everything in Europe. Factions who should be fighting constantly bow before your will as you basically become the next Alexander the Great. Yes there is some historical accuracy here, but there are also a lot of liberties taken.

The difference between the medieval setting and the standard fantasy setting are in degrees of fictionality. But instead of being total opposites, there is a sort of sliding scale. For example, Jeanne d'Arc is a game with roots in the story of Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years War. It then promptly adds magical gauntlets. This sits squarely in that middle ground where there's enough historical base to say so, but also lots of fantasy elements that don't totally override the historical stuff.

For other games. The lines are not clear cut where they stand. Where would you put Vampire: The Masquerade- Redemption?

Looking at these examples of games, I'm curious why developers choose to do what they do. Mostly by comparing the two strategy games. On the surface they look very similar, but one choose more historical liberties over the other. Why? Why even remain historically accurate in certain situations? Does it make the game more compelling or was it because they didn't want the label of fantasy? Let me know what you guys think and I'll see you next time for the discussion of the standard fantasy setting.