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.
E3 is happening! Kind of! The venerable Electronics Entertainment Expo of yore seems to finally be giving way to the realities of the increasingly diversified video game development industry, and between that and ongoing safety measures related to the global pandemic, we have a lot of online video! So... the same experience as usual, for the vast majority of us.
A LOT to talk about for fans of history in their video games. We have meta-history, with a remaster/re-release of Final Fantasy 1-6! And a new game from Team Ninja set in the world of the first Final Fantasy game! We have evocations of the 1980s that still feel very, very 2021, with Sad Cat Studios' VERY exciting looking Replaced! A confirmed launch date for beloved classic historical-game-adjacent Diablo 2 (check out our episode on Diablo III with Dr. Mikki Brock from back in the early days of History Respawned)! A direct sequel to medieval inspired A Plague Tale: Innocence! We've got S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 a sequel to an alt-history classic! And we've got a new entry in a good old fashioned, meat and potatoes, engaging in challenges with historical representations historical game series Age of Empires. There is a game John has been incredibly excited about and definitely counts as historically influenced, Elden Ring! And in not-quite-E3-but-still-new-game news relevant to our interests, Devolver Digital also announced Terra Nil, an inverse city builder that should offer an interesting contrast to the norm (a norm we are currently exploring in our Civs 101 series). And finally, and arguably most relevantly, we got more information on Assassin's Creed: Valhalla's Discovery Tour mode.
And... does the Avatar game count as a history game at this point? The film feels like an historical object already... I admit to being confused.
There is a lot, is what I am saying. We will have more E3 content later in the week once things have settled down and we have recovered.
I want to give a shout out to the Value Foundation twitch page. Just this past week they have streamed Crusader Kings III, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Aviary Attorney, Going Medieval and The Secret of Monkey Island.
Academics did not take the week off. Aris Politopoulos from the Past at Play Lab discussed the links between Jonathan Blow's The Witness and scientific and archaeological research. Attentat 1942 features alongside software and virtual exhibits clearly influenced by video games in this excellent post from Digital Holocaust Memory. And Jeremiah McCall, who has been making great efforts to start fun (okay... nerdy... but also fun!) conversations on twitter had a great thread sharing some games worth exploring and possibly using in the classroom.
Phew! A lot to be excited about. Go watch some game trailers.
