History and Games This Week
Welcome to the week in history and games, a short collection of links to stories and news that we hope you find interesting.
Probably the biggest historical game news of the last week came this past Sunday, when we got to see some details on Age of Empires IV. It has been a long wait - Microsoft first announced the game in 2017 - but we have a lot more to go on now. One of the game's campaigns will focus on the Norman Conquest. I will be honest, I did not see ninth to eleventh century English history becoming a thing in video games in 2021, but here we are. The game also has some interesting game mechanics tied to specific factions: the Delhi Sultanate has elephants and Mongols can move entire cities. That last one is not necessarily terribly historically accurate. But it sounds extremely cool.
Game preservation, long something plenty of video game enthusiasts have been passionate about for a while, seems to be gaining some traction with the recent decision by Sony to close online stores for the Playstation 3, Playstation Portable and Playstation Vita. Mike Diver sits down with Iain Simons, of the National Video Game Museum in the United Kingdom, to talk about the importance of game preservation and its challenges. Games make for fascinating historical documents: as art, entertainment, and collaborative software products all at once. They can end up showing in all kinds of places, as Keith Stuart shares over on The Guardian.
Patrice Desilets, creator of Assassin's Creed and creative director of the first three main installments in the series, has things to say about his upcoming game 1666: Amsterdam. PC Gamer's interview focuses mostly on the development - or lack thereof - of social stealth in big budget games, but we are pretty excited about any game set in the Dutch Republic. Though Desilets is keeping a lot of the details to himself for now.
Finally, Arkane's Deathloop, a science fiction game with a strong 1960s vibe, is the latest game to be delayed until later in the year. We are looking forward to checking it out when it's ready.
