Poll: Historical Inaccuracies in Games

[barbzilla]

I'm frankly surprised they haven't put dragonskin into the game as a perk unlock or something.

That's because it would be too cost ineffective ;-P

OT: I don't usually get too bothered over a slight historical accuracy, though the occasional misshot entirely will set me off. Some changes for ease of language, usually not a big problem. Now if we have people completely out of character from the historical selves (and it isn't an alternate reality or something), then we have an issue. I'm even okay with the occasional future item appearing in period games, provided there is something somewhere telling me it is an experimental prototype and not manufactured.

 

[Swiftkillz]

I am a student of history and a pretty big history buff, and it does not bother me in the least. This is fiction and i take no offense to it. If someone was presenting some false notions as facts then i would comment on it, otherwise i am good.

 

[thegamermn]

I tend to only care if it seems like they didn't even attempt to make it accurate. The first Assassin's Creed, for instance: It took some liberties with the history, obviously. But if you do some research on the early Hashishin/Assassins: They actually got it pretty close to the real history. And even how the group acted. I'm okay with things like that. But when they're being blatantly anachronistic with a game that's meant to be at least moderately close to th actual time period...I tend to get a little twitchy

 

[A_Parked_Car]

Since I'm a military history major, I tend to notice an awful lot of the inaccuracies in games. For the most part I can dismiss them, but every once in a while there is a particularly offensive one that just drives me crazy for whatever reason.

A good example would be the new Company of Heroes 2 game. Everything they have shown is about how cold the Soviet Union was. They are making it look like perpetual winter was the only thing that stopped the "God-like" Wehrmacht. That idea was completely dismissed by any actual Eastern Front historians for several decades (Read: David Glantz, David Stahel, Alexander Hill and various others).

I particularly like David Stahel's new works on Operation Barbarossa, which was supposedly this amazing demonstration of the Wehrmacht's perceived awesomeness. He took a serious, in-depth look at it and realized that the German invasion was collapsing well before Winter even occurred. A combination of poor planning, poor kit, poor logistics, lack of strategic direction, deficiencies in the German 'Blitzkrieg', the sheer size of the Soviet Union and the fact that despite the officer purge, the Red Army was fighting back far better than anticipated.

Anyway, my point is that they are waaaay overemphasizing widely held stereotypes of the Red Army and the idea of "General Winter" doing everything for the Soviets, at least in their marketing.

Something minor that will drive me crazy is if they have MG42s, long-barrelled Panzer IVs, Panthers and crap during Operation Barbarossa or whatever. I'm hoping that they will at least have a Panzer III model, idealistically a Panzer II or even some captured Czech tanks. Same with something like the BT series and T-26 for the Soviets.

However, I'm a bit more forgiving of technical stuff like that, since they only have so much time and money to produce a certain number of units. Especially for a game like Company of Heroes, which is all about creating a super-streamlined, relatively fast-moving RTS.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Depends on the game. If it's a game that holds itself up as historically accurate than yes, it annoys me when they get it wrong.

If it's just a fun game that happens to be set in a historic period, then so long as it's not too ridiculous I'll let inaccuracies slide for the sake of entertainment.

this.

however, i think they should TRY to make it as accurate as possible, for the sake of keeping vocabulary correct (such as the torpedo example) because it can be a neat way to learn a thing here or there about history (obviously besides the plot/gameplay changes)

there is a vast amount of words/pieces of history that i've learned from random games, usually i'd go and look them up after hearing/playing it on the game, and it'd spark a nice little read for an afternoon.

 

[Rangerboy87]

It actually varies to me.

Absolute minor inaccuracies (like your example) don't bother me at all. They are too small for many to notice or care, so why should I.

Major inaccuracies really depend on the game. If it is doing alternate history fiction where some of it is accurate but is mostly wrong (like Assassin's Creed), it's forgivable. They're not trying to be 100% accurate; they are wanting to do their own story with the time period.

If the game is trying to be historically accurate and just completely messes up the whole thing, then I have a problem.

 

[Haukur Isleifsson]

If the game is going for history I think that all the big things must be right unless the plot demands otherwise. The small things... It's real nice when you see that they really made the effort to get them all right. But I understand that it is very hard to be a 100% in these things.

 

[beastro]

The example that made me cringe as fuck was in Empire Total War, were Polish Winged Hussars not only weren't available at starting date (year 1700 - they were going out of use then =_=) and you have to research basically whole tech tree to get them.


Other: Same Winged Hussars, apart from the fact they had inaccurate double wings (it looks awesome, so it's forgiven) instead of lances, have lances. Yeah, it doesn't work in English.

they should have this

and had this =_=

so instead of long lances (similar, not identical, to knights') they had these... spears lol.

anyway, I ain't bothered by Assassin's Creed pseudo-history, or World of Tanks', but 'serious' games like Total War, or Europa Universalis can get on my nerves

Captcha: No Way
True story, Captcha.

Sadly all lancer units in the game use those "spears". I guess they didn't want to both integrating the charging mechanics of Medieval II into the game or have the lance vanish and sword be drawn and just gave them something short that would be easily animated in a close melee instead.

 

[SckizoBoy]

snip

More or less the same thing in R:TW. The general's bodyguard units have got these long stick things (less than 9ft) instead of proper xystons (15ft) across the entire game.

Sadly all lancer units in the game use those "spears". I guess they didn't want to both integrating the charging mechanics of Medieval II into the game or have the lance vanish and sword be drawn and just gave them something short that would be easily animated in a close melee instead.

I think they used the same thing for all the lancers in N:TW as well... though it's more forgiveable in that game, considering how much narrower it is.