Historical periods that are barely ever explored in games

[Saltyk]

I don't think there are many games based in Ancient Egypt.

I'd also like to see some good naval combat, just in general. World War era and even Roman era sea battles could be interesting new games. Seeing what they have done is Assassin's Creed, I think that could be a interesting twist.

World War One.

We have lots of WW2 games, but not much of the first world war.


Also with WW2 games, I would love to see some RPGs or something, like village life or whatever during the war.
Not just more shooters.

You may want to look into Valkyria Chronicles. It's based on WWII. It's a strategy game, similar to games like Final Fantasy Tactics and such.


There are other games in the series, too.

 

[DRTJR]

World War 1
The Punic Wars
Viking games

 

[OldGus]

I see a lot of people suggesting wars and major conflicts (though thankfully, some suggestions of crime, like Ned Kelly, and colonization, like the fur-trappers in Canada.) I think people get too caught up in that. While conflict is a good basis for a game, it does not have to be in the setting of war, and more importantly, not having a clear good and evil side opens up explorations of humanity (especially when you get to choose the side you want.)

Well, lets think for example, a time period not often explored, and a job not considered. Seeker of the Dead in the era of the Black Death in Europe. Your job is basically an early epidemiologist... or to put it in laymans terms, you look at lots of dead people and where they were and how they died to determine how a disease is spreading, and find ways to stop it to save your town, country, whatever. You would go to houses on a map, find the corpse, determine how it died, and add that to a large chart and decide to leave them be, quarantine the house, burn it, kill everyone inside, quarantine the town, etc. Higher up, you could make suggestions to burn the bodies, bury them, leave them to rot and forbid anyone from going near them, kill certain animals in the area, burn everything and move the survivors to a different town, forbid anyone from leaving the town, all for the good of protecting whoever you are loyal to, be it the lords, the people, the land, the country, the king, or yourself. Although, in this example, it is still somewhat cut and dry... you are good, the plague is bad.

Honestly, to get games that move away from that, you either have to have neutral sides on a conflict, a third party in the middle of a conflict, or no conflict (kind of like Kerbal Space Program.) For neutral sides, I would love to see anything involving the Indian Sub-continent pre-colonization, Dark-Ages Europe, or Russia pre-Napoleon (really, any time before that.) For third-party, just give a random person a pivotal role in some conflict anywhere in history where tipping the balance either way could be a clear victory for one non-completely-evil side or the other (personal favorites being the split of the Roman Empire, the wars in Carthage, anything in the Middle East, any native group negotiating between several colonial powers in Asia, Africa, or the Americas, any part of the Hundred Years' war, or the Ottoman Empire.) For no conflict, I am partial to the idea of an epidemic game, set in say, the 1800s, where names are barely known, symptom reports are all you have to go on, treatments are rudimentary, and you really have to guess to find causes that can range from diets to parasites, from airborne to waterborne, from human intervention to human waste; in such a game, all you would have to go on would be your knowledge going in, the information you have, logic, and trial and error to solve such a puzzle.

 

[gargantual]

I would say that the American Civil War counts, but with the release of Gettysburg: Armoured Warfare(bad example) and Ironclad Tactics, I feel that it's getting some attention.

A pet peeve of mine is that people say that Feudal Japan is over done, when it clearly isn't, at least not to me. The games that come to mind upon hearing those words are the Shogun Total War series and Okami, nothing else.

Also, the classic era would be cool(no Romans though, media in general has kind of been there, done that) such as Babylon or Carthage(especially considering that Babylonian architecture looks pretty interesting, and that now we barely have any idea what it looked like).

Oh they might never get to the punics. They just want to celebrate Ceasar and the latter emperors glory, the further you dig there are so many parts of history that challenge traditional views. Not saying it can't be done, but if Hollywood tried to white wash or skip over history that's unflattering to the established, you can bet other big pop culture mediums might have the same skew.

 

[Padwolf]

Snippidy Snip

I completely agree with you. I always thought WW1 needed a good game but one that wasn't a shooter. It would make a fantastic psychological horror game, it's one thing I really would love to see. The way I see it is that it could be from the view of a soldier in hospital, suffering from nightmares and memories and the game takes you through them. I also see it like the book "All Quiet on the Western Front" where you focus on the protagonist and the group of soldiers he is with. I don't know, I have so many ideas for it. Finding snippets of poetry around, diaries, letters home. There is so much potential in a great WW1 horror game. It's a shame it hasn't been done, there is so much to work from with it, so much to do with the horror of it so it's not glorifying it.

 

[Oroboros]

I would really like to see a game set in Achaemenid Persia or in India (any period, we don't exactly have many/any games set there in any period) Pre-European Mesoamerica or Andes would also be great. So much rich history, culture, and mythology is untapped here.

 

[Alssadar]

Post Fall of Rome. We all know Rome in its glory, and the vast domains that it once held, but where is the fall?
Of vast numbers of barbarian tribes, steppe folk, and Arabs that took over its dominion, few are ever focused on, despite being a pivotal moment in history, as these peoples set the stage for the establishment of the kingdoms of the Middle Ages, forming the kingdoms of the Franks, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Goths, Vandals, Allemagne, Sassanids, Umayyad, and all the Hunnic influence amongst the Slavic peoples.
It's the dark ages, as there's no massive empire that forcefully dominates the setting, as each kingdom struggles amongst its neighbors, striving for the power that Rome once had.

It would make a great Age of Empires-like strategy game, with a good variation of troop choice and technology difference.

 

[rutger5000]

Era isn't nearly precise enough. I'd say you're looking for civilizations. I'd go for the Byzantium, Persia (done a little in PoP, but not nearly enoug), and the Ottomans. The last had a very interesting system of social classes, and that could make a RPG very interesting.
Carthage would indeed be very interresting, you could do a lot with Mediterranean trade.
And perhaps the Indus valley or Harrapan civilization could be fun. The writers would / could do with a lot of creative writing, as we don't know that much about them.
As a stragedy game, I think the Maya's could be very interesting. Historical data suggest they had a huge and sudden development to a great civilization that could perhaps have lasted for a thousand years. (you know had the Spanish not shown up)

 

[Terramax]

I'd like to see more done on India's fight for independence against England. I think that was an intriguing time in history for the country and would make for some great stories.

 

[Soxafloppin]

"The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Probably best to keep it that way given that its basically still going on, and have a protagonist from one side, and a antagonist from the other would be offensive regardless, since atrocities have been carried out by both sides.

 

[MCerberus]

Precolumbian North America. Large and varied cultures, fairly populated, and then suddenly a plague starts going through the continent leading to (insert plot).

 

[thewatergamer]

World War 1 and 2 are barely ever touched to my knowledge, never understood why

 

[MCerberus]

World War 1 and 2 are barely ever touched to my knowledge, never understood why

And I'm pretty sure that every genre of game has been set in ww2

 

[Naeo]

Pre-Columbian Americas would be cool--I could see a neat game being based around any of the major Central/South American civiliations (Aztec, Mayan, Incan, etc), but one based entirely around the North American civilizations would be pretty awesome too. You could do it either as an open world RPG, a la Elder Scrolls/Dark Souls/etc, or a hack-and-slash/more action-oriented game. A big open-world RPG would probably make me shit my pants a bit--for one, a lot of the architecture of Meso-/South-American civilizations is very unusual compared to modern, Western architecture, so it would be really cool to move around cities/towns with even just a few, say, big step pyramids scattered around the game.

Then there's always the middle east, basically at any point before the last hundred or so years. Or, hell, even in modern times, but do it in a way that's not "white Americans go shoot brown terrorists in the cities".

Basically any African civilization. I don't know of a single game that features African civilizations.

Or, hell, anything set on the enormous number of islands out in the Pacific. It could be pretty cool traveling between islands, doing whatever you need to do.

EDIT: To clarify--I'm primarily thinking of open-world, RPG-ish games set in these places/times. I think it would be absolutely awesome to run around any of these places in a big, open world and interact with it as a member of that world.

 

[thewatergamer]

World War 1 and 2 are barely ever touched to my knowledge, never understood why

And I'm pretty sure that every genre of game has been set in ww2

hmmm if we are talking first person shooters then yeah I guess that you have a very good point my bad XD but aside from Spunkgargleweewee games, it seems rarely touched, like I'm thinking more like why aren't there many more stealth or puzzleish or RPG games set in one of the world wars, maybe such games exist but Ive never heard of em

 

[MCerberus]

World War 1 and 2 are barely ever touched to my knowledge, never understood why

And I'm pretty sure that every genre of game has been set in ww2

hmmm if we are talking first person shooters then yeah I guess that you have a very good point my bad XD but aside from Spunkgargleweewee games, it seems rarely touched, like I'm thinking more like why aren't there many more stealth or puzzleish or RPG games set in one of the world wars, maybe such games exist but Ive never heard of em

That was at some point the intent behind Saboteur... it didn't really work out.
There's strategy games both real-time and turn-based. A lot of it has origins in tabletop games like Axis & Allies.
4x games pretty much love having a 'ww2 age'.
There's a game where a vampire-skank murders a lot of Nazis.
You explode Hitler in Bionic Commando.
Third-person stuff like that one series I can't remember but hasn't had a third entry and fans are mad about it.
IL-2, and naval combat games. Hell Crimson Skies is set right before alternate-world WW2.
That Titanic puzzle game was very concerned with Nazis.
And, if you'll remember even CoD was good back when it was set at the time. This says nothing about games like Red Orchestra.

 

[thewatergamer]

World War 1 and 2 are barely ever touched to my knowledge, never understood why

And I'm pretty sure that every genre of game has been set in ww2

hmmm if we are talking first person shooters then yeah I guess that you have a very good point my bad XD but aside from Spunkgargleweewee games, it seems rarely touched, like I'm thinking more like why aren't there many more stealth or puzzleish or RPG games set in one of the world wars, maybe such games exist but Ive never heard of em

That was at some point the intent behind Saboteur... it didn't really work out.
There's strategy games both real-time and turn-based. A lot of it has origins in tabletop games like Axis & Allies.
4x games pretty much love having a 'ww2 age'.
There's a game where a vampire-skank murders a lot of Nazis.
You explode Hitler in Bionic Commando.
Third-person stuff like that one series I can't remember but hasn't had a third entry and fans are mad about it.
IL-2, and naval combat games. Hell Crimson Skies is set right before alternate-world WW2.
That Titanic puzzle game was very concerned with Nazis.
And, if you'll remember even CoD was good back when it was set at the time. This says nothing about games like Red Orchestra.

Ahhh I knew about the original Cod games but never heard of any of those other ones... interesting

 

[TotalerKrieger]

I would like to see a WWI fps or rts, but it would be very difficult to make a historically accurate portrayal of the conflict that is also enjoyable to play. A heavily scripted single player campaign might work, but any multiplayer modes would either be very dull/frustrating or completely ridiculous.

The Korean War is another conflict largely ignored that would make an excellent game setting. Unlike WWI, Korea '50-'53 would be fairly easy to recreate using modern FPS and RTS paradigms. Defending against or taking part in a Chinese infantry assault complete with bugles and blazing PPSH-41s would be amazing. You could also implement Sabre vs MiG air battles, napalm strikes and heavy-tank battles (T34-85 vs. M48 Patton/ M26 Perishing/ Centurion). Infantry weapons would be largely WW2-era, but you would also see some post-war models like the M1D sniper rifle, M2 Carbine, SKS-45 and Super-Bazooka.

 

[Mutie]

Recently I've been playing Rome 2 as the Brits and I'm really getting into that sort of time period and aesthetic.

Mist, monsters, men painting themselves blue, druids and a lot of woodland.

I was actually thinking that it's an underused (if ever?) setting in games and wouldn't mind seeing more of it before I saw this thread.

I concur. I'm Celt-Iberian of blood, but that doesn't mean to say I don't lament the eradication of my home isle's children and customs Albion and Hibernia were the source of magic (in the academic sense) and, subsequently, a great proportion of human development. To explore the druidic forests of ancient Albion in an open world setting would be awesome ^_^