When Video Games Got History All Wrong

Video games don't just entertain — they teach, too. For decades, educators have used games like Carmen Sandiego, Reader Rabbit, and Number Munchers to make learning fun. Well, kind of fun. These days, a whopping 78 percent of teachers use digital games in the classroom, a steady increase that shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

But not every game gets the facts right — even those claiming to be based on historical events. While the following games might be a blast to play, they mangle history in odd and often hilarious ways. 

We're not saying that this is a problem. We're just saying that, if you're considering firing up the PlayStation instead of cracking open that history textbook, don't blame us when you have to repeat the ninth grade.

Manon Batiste, hero of Medal of Honor: Underground, isn't a real person, but she's based on one: Hélène Deschamps. Like the video game character, Deschamps joined the French Resistance after the Nazis invaded her home country. Soon she was working as a spy, relaying information about German airfields and troop placements to Allied forces and helping Jewish families escape. Deschamps' brother didn't die in the war, but her surrogate sister did. Deschamps even went on to serve in the United States' Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence service that eventually morphed into the CIA, just like Batiste.

DreamWorks Interactive and Electronic Arts were so dedicated to getting Deschamps and her story right with the character of Batiste that they even hired the former spy, who went by her married name by then, to serve as a consultant. When Medal of Honor: Underground came out in 2000, critics praised its historical fidelity, claiming the game "provides a meaningful historical context that's rare in most video games today."

Until the end, anyway. Medal of Honor: Underground's final "bonus" missions? Not entirely accurate. Firstly, Hitler's forces didn't actually wear medieval armor, which wouldn't stand a chance against modern weapons anyway. It's the dogs, who dance and wield bazookas. It's the robot soldiers. It's the zombies. By the time you get to the killer nutcrackers (which, believe it or not, actually have some historical basis), it's pretty clear DreamWorks Interactive treated the whole "reality" thing like more of a guideline than a rule.

Many critics slammed Xbox One launch title Ryse: Son of Rome for its basic and repetitive combat and its overuse of quick time events, but it turns out that an interesting premise isn't the only thing that Ryse's developers butchered — they took a sword to history, too. In Ryse, you play as Marius Titus, a Roman centurion who fights an army of Celtic rebels. Along the way, you'll defend the city of York, sword-stab the Roman emperor Nero, and capture King Oswald, the Celtic leader.

There's just one problem: Oswald never existed (Nero did, of course, although the fiddle playing he's famous for is easily debunked). The Celtic revolution was actually led by a woman named Boudica. When Boudica's husband Prasutagus died, Roman authorities moved in and took his land and belongings, then brutally abused Boudica and her daughters. Boudica vowed revenge, and spearheaded a revolt that ultimately took the lives of around 70,000 Romans and Roman allies.

Boudica appears in Ryse: Son of Rome, but she's portrayed as Oswald's daughter. In the game, Boudica also storms Rome itself and meets her demise when Marius cuts off her head. This is all made up. No one knows who Boudica's father is, her forces never left the British Isles, and she died by suicide, not in battle. At least the game got one thing right: in both Ryse and real-life, Boudica kicked lots of ass.

According to Koei Tecmo, Guo Jia is fans' favorite Dynasty Warriors character. It's easy to see why. The commander and master strategist has been a series mainstay since Dynasty Warriors 4, and made his playable debut in Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends. In the games, Guo Jia is handsome, playful, and charming, while his weapons — a scepter and some brightly colored floating orbs — certainly help him stand out among Dynasty Warriors' varied and extensive cast.

But in reality, the real Guo Jia wasn't much of a fighter, and he certainly didn't use flying spheres to decimate his enemies. He relied almost entirely on his mind. As advisor to Cao Cao, a warlord best remembered for his ruthless political machinations, Guo Jia helped his leader take down rival Lü Bu. He encouraged Cao Cao to sow dissent between rival brothers Yuan Shang and Yuan Tang, which ultimately made both easier to defeat in battle. According to historical sources, the real Guo Jia wasn't all that likable, either. He was a snob who looked down on uneducated commoners, and made many enemies, including the well-liked warlord Sun Ce.

Of course, the main source of information about Guo Jia's life, the wildly popular 14th-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is full of folklore, urban legends, and out-right fabrications, so who knows? Maybe Koei Tecmo knows something we don't. Maybe Guo Jia really did throw balls at his enemies. However, given what we know about history — and, like, everyday physics — we're gonna say probably not.

L.A. Noire's big selling point was the MotionScan motion capture system, but that wasn't Team Bodi's only attempt at giving the game an unparalleled sense of realism. The developer also tried creating the most accurate depiction of 1940s Los Angeles ever. They consulted real city maps to ensure the city's layout was authentic, and used aerial photographs to recreate contemporary buildings, cars, fashions, and traffic patterns.

And yet, during the day, L.A. Noire's sky is powder blue. If you've ever spent a balmy summer day in the real Los Angeles, you know that's wrong. Los Angeles is filled with smog, as Angelinos are reminded every time that they set foot outdoors.

Don't blame the time period for this inaccuracy, either. In fact, in recent years, Los Angeles' smog problem has actually seen considerable improvement. In the '40s, however, its skies were a mess. In 1943, smog's sudden appearance made Los Angeles residents think that they'd been gassed by the Japanese. In 1947, the year L.A. Noire takes place, things got so bad that the California governor created the Air Pollution Control District. In 1955, a mere eight years later, Los Angeles suffered its smoggiest day ever. L.A. Noire might deliver some of the most realistic facial expressions in video game history, but when it comes to pollution? Eh, not so much.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance's big hook is that it's a "historically accurate" medieval role-playing game. That means, while you'll still be choosing a character class wielding weapons like swords, spears, and daggers, you won't find any magic spells, mysterious prophecies, or unnatural beasts. Kingdom Come plays things as close to reality as possible.

Or does it? Many critics aren't so sure. See, in addition to dragons, ogres, and wizards, Kingdom Come: Deliverance also shuns characters of color. Given that historical "whitewashing" is a major concern in this day and age, you can see why this might be a problem. It doesn't help that Kingdom Come: Deliverance's director, Daniel Vávra, is heavily involved in the GamerGate scene, which many perceive consider a misogynist, racist, and xenophobic community. While promoting Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Vávra famously claimed that "there were no black people in medieval Bohemia," and used historical accuracy as justification for excluding them from his game (women and foreigners don't come off so well in the game, either).

Of course, there were Moors in medieval Europe, and evidence suggests that some of them might've found their way to Bohemia. Not many, but some. Combine that with the controversial comments Vávra's social media feed (as well as observations from a number of Kingdom Come fans who celebrate the game's all-white cast as a strike against so-called "social justice warriors"), and it's hard not to draw the conclusion that historical accuracy is a smokescreen for some good, old-fashioned prejudice.

In real life, war isn't very much fun. So, how did the folks at Electronic Arts and DICE make Battlefield 1, which is set during one of the bloodiest and most brutal conflicts in human history, a good way to kick back, relieve some stress, and have some good time? It's simple: they just downplayed The Great War's human cost in order to give players a fun, exciting experience.

"It's supposed to be fun first so, of course, we're going to take some creative liberties where we can," DICE senior producer Aleksander Grøndal tells VICE. For Grøndal and his team, that mean dialing World War I's carnage way, way back. In the actual war, 8.5 million soldiers were killed and another 21 million wounded. Chemical weapons made their big debut, decimating troops in seconds and poisoning nearby civilians. Turkish nationalists used the war as a pretext for genocide, murdering 1.5 million Armenians. All that, and we haven't even discussed the mental toll that WWI took on the survivors. Look, they're called the Lost Generation for a reason.

That's all gruesome stuff, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. Instead of dealing with it, DICE decided to ignore it. "There's horrors here that we don't necessarily don't want to dive to deep into," Grøndal says. "So we've picked out some of the youthfulness and the adventurous and the hopefulness of this." That's not the only change that Battlefield 1 makes to history in favor of gameplay, of course, but it's the biggest — and by far the most disrespectful.