From Ukraine to Gaza
The first game in the 'Brothers in Arms' series, this first-person shooter video game is based on the true story of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the legendary 101st Airborne Division who dropped behind enemy lines on D-Day. The regiment further distinguished itself in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge.
Real-life wartime secret agent and saboteur Violette Szabo provides the inspiration for this stealth video game. Szabo was eventually caught by the Nazis and interrogated, tortured, and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where she was executed.
While the series' eponymous first title features historical fiction, science fiction, and fictional characters, 'Assassin's Creed' is intertwined with real-world historical events and figures. The game's world is set in the Holy Land during the 12th century and the Third Crusade.
This interactive adventure game revolves around the fictional Reza Shirazi, an aspiring photojournalist who returns to Iran amidst the Iranian Revolution. Players are tasked with taking in-game photographs of their surroundings, while given historical background of events for reference.
Los Angeles in the 1940s and '50s, recreated using actual photographs and city planning documents and blueprints from the era, provides the historical backdrop for this detective action-adventure game, the story of which follows fictional detective Cole Phelps on various crime-busting cases.
The saboteur in question is based on the real-life British-French racing driver William Grover-Williams, winner of the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix, who fled France at the onset of the Second World War but later ended up as a special agent who worked for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) inside France. He was later captured by the Nazis and executed as a spy.
In this adventure game set in the First World War, players take on the role of four fictional heroes. Their stories, however, are based on firsthand accounts of the war, and all of the battles represented in 'Valiant Hearts' are real conflicts, including the awful Battle of the Somme.
'Dynasty Warriors' is a series of video games based upon the 14th-century Chinese historical novel 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms,' which details actual events in China between the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE.
The historically accurate 'Kingdom Come: Deliverance' allows players to incarnate survivors of the bloody war in Bohemia in 1403. Real-life figures, including Wenceslaus IV, Sigismund of Luxemburg, and Racek Kobyla of Dvorce, are introduced throughout the conflict.
This war survival game is set in more recent times, inspired by the dreadful living conditions and wartime atrocities that Bosnian civilians endured during the 1992–96 Siege of Sarajevo.
A psychological horror adventure game, 'The Town of Light' is set in a hospital in Tuscany, Italy, called the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra ("Volterra Psychiatric Hospital"). This mental asylum actually existed and became notorious for the cruel treatment of its patients. The facility is pictured in the early 20th century. It was abandoned in 1978.
'Battlefield Vietnam,' a first-person shooter video game, uses original field maps and battle plans such as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Battle of Hue, and the Battle of Khe Sanh to recreate the awful reality of this notorious and long-drawn-out conflict.
In the fifth game of the franchise, 'Assassin’s Creed III' depicts various historical episodes that took place during the American Revolution. While the plotline itself is fictional, actual events, including the Boston Tea Party, placed within the story add authenticity to this particular installment in the 'Assassin's Creed' series.
The series of historical, real-time strategy video games known as 'Age of Empires' number nine in total. The first in the series spans the Stone Age to the Iron Age.
The sequel, 'Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings,' is set in the Middle Ages, from the Dark Ages to the Imperial Age, with users able to immerse themselves in 13 playable civilizations.
Gameplay changes in the 'Age of Empires III' expansion pack, which introduced three new civilizations, with a focus on Native Americans.
While fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is a figment of British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's imagination, Jack the Ripper was very real. The unidentified serial killer stalked the streets of London's East End in the late 1800s, taking the lives of at least five women. In literary reality, Sherlock Holmes never embarked on a quest to bring the ripper to justice.
'Papers, Please' is a game based on the latter years of the Cold War, and is set in an area inspired by the strict checks in place at the Berlin Wall and the political tension permeating throughout the city.
Launched in 2004, 'JKF Reloaded' was withdrawn from sale by developer Traffic Management after they received a lot of backlash. Based on one of the most tragic events in recent US history, the game casts the player as the assassin of John F. Kennedy—a scenario denounced by many, including several public figures, as distasteful and upsetting.
Sources: (GamesIndustry.biz) (Smithsonian Magazine) (National Geographic) (Daily Mail) (Reuters)
See also: The smartest US presidents based in their IQ scores
While the events portrayed in this survival horror game are pure fiction, the town that 'Silent Hill' is partially based one is real—Centralia in Pennsylvania. An underground mine fire that flickered into flames in 1962 has been burning ever since, causing most of the town to be abandoned.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart takes center stage in this point-and-click puzzle adventure video game in which the Austrian composer discovers a plot to overthrow Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II.
'Fearless and United Guards' features a story mode plotted upon the incidents of the Galwan Valley clash in 2021 between Indian and China.
Based on Julius Caesar's historical campaigns in Gaul and Britain, Crassus' battles in Parthia, and the events of Caesar's Civil War during the 1st century BCE, 'Praetorians' allows players to choose sides either as a Roman, a Greek, or a barbarian warrior.
'Resident Evil Village' contains a location based on a real-world place, Peleș Castle, in Transylvania.
The player's objective in this science fiction survival video game is to negotiate, as a fictional Ukrainian physicist, the highly radio active Chernobyl Exclusion Zone while searching for his fiancée.
This horror survival game is set in the fictional Mount Massive Asylum, itself modeled on the H. H. Richardson Complex located in Buffalo, New York. In the late 1800s, this place served as a mental institution where patients were segregated by sex: males on the east side, females on the west. It operated until the mid-1970s.
According to GamesIndustry.biz the video game market revenue hit a staggering US$200 billion in 2022. Indeed the gaming industry is huge, not least because some of the best-selling games ever devised are those based on real-life people and world events that actually occurred. Truth is stranger than fiction it seems, with history providing plot lines and scenarios that interpret reality as if taking place in real time.
So, what are the best video games based on true stories? Click through and start playing!
In 1959 in the northern Ural Mountains, nine Soviet trekkers died in mysterious circumstances in what became known as the Dyatlov Pass incident. In this horror survival video, the player controls a protagonist who is tracing the steps of the hapless group.
Among the legendary figures players can take control of in this fighting game is Joan of Arc. Other historical warriors at hand include Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and William Wallace.
These games were created around real people and true events
Video games based on true stories
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According to GamesIndustry.biz the video game market revenue hit a staggering US$200 billion in 2022. Indeed the gaming industry is huge, not least because some of the best-selling games ever devised are those based on real-life people and world events that actually occurred. Truth is stranger than fiction it seems, with history providing plot lines and scenarios that interpret reality as if taking place in real time.
So, what are the best video games based on true stories? Click through and start playing!