5.1 Reflection

The podcast-style monologue that I have created is centred on the idea of critically examining whether historical video games should value historical accuracy in their development, and why that might be important. I look at Ubisoft’s 2017 game, Assassin’s Creed Origins.

This podcast is born from a love of videos games, of history and of storytelling. I feel it is important that academia take popular media like video games as vehicles of historical storytelling more seriously as an area of scholarly study. Some of my understanding of the past comes from movies, TV shows and especially video games. By understanding how the public receives information about events and philosophies of the past, we can better educate ourselves and fight stereotypes, propaganda and misinformation. Humanity is more alike than we realise, as we can see as we delve into our collective pasts.

This is such a multifaceted and nuanced area of study that is still somewhat new when looking at video games; there is so much more that would have been highly relevant to the topic. I could have included more direct examples of artistic liberties and inaccuracies, but I felt it was important to talk more about the why than the what.

I not only learned more about ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire generally while researching this topic, but also about how propaganda and the politics of the past can still impact our opinions today. We have all seen the differing and competing accounts of Cleopatra, both ancient and modern. Her likeness used in art, such as one of the most well-known paintings of her, an apparent ‘historical event’ captured in The Banquet of Cleopatra by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in 1744, kept right here in the National Gallery of Victoria. She is painted with white skin, blonde hair and wearing what appears to be the traditional clothing of the Baroque period in the West. There is a long list of film and documentaries that all add to her story, and what I think is the ‘mythology’ of Cleopatra. She has appeared in literature and poems, even if just in passing, such as in Dante’s Divine Comedy. As much as she was a real person, with flaws like us all, she and her story have been twisted, changed and ultimately mythologised.

Every story about her is also about propaganda. How we tell her story amounts to an attempt to legitimise our own interpretations of her and reflects our own cultures. Assassin’s Creed Origins, for example, has Cleopatra speak in a distinctly British voice. Perhaps it is to mark her as ‘royal’ and different from her constituents, a kind of sociolinguistic marker for the player to recognise her as upper class. Perhaps it’s a marker of a colonial interpretation of her.

Ultimately, we continue to retell her story because ancient Egypt and Rome are as interesting and even important to many as ever, and there are always new discoveries to make.

I hope one lesson learned from me is that history isn’t just for the historians, it’s for all of us, so let’s make the effort to write and talk about history, together.