10 Video Games Based On Alternative Histories

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10 Video Games Based On Alternative Histories

Alternative history is a fun story idea to play with, and Assassin's Creed and others have taken full advantage of that for their games. Alternative history is a fun story idea to play with. It makes yourself ask a lot of questions, such as what would have happened if Germany won World War II? Or what would happen if certain famous people were never assassinated? Despite how big the world is, every little aspect of history is important as a building block for how we live today. So what if history changed? Some video games like to answer that question. Here are ten video games that explore worlds where history was altered. THEGAMER VIDEO OF THE DAY

The Wolfenstein Series

The premise of this game is that the Nazi's won World War II. How did they win it? They found a secret underground vault filled with highly advanced technology made by a secret society of Jewish scientists. Throughout the games, you fight giant building-sized mechs or get car chases with fire-breathing robot hounds. You also wear a high tech exo-suit in some of the games. The final boss of one of the games is one of your war-buddies brain that is put into a robot and forced to fight you.

The Assassin s Creed Series

deals with a lot of real historical characters and places, but often gets a lot of criticism for its inaccuracies. In that sense, it is more of a alternate history game. What makes their history different is that humans are not the only dominant race on Earth. There was another that went extinct a very very long time ago. However, they left holograms behind to warn mankind about a second apocalypse. Templars and Assassins have been waged in a war over the technology of the extinct race.

The Chaos Engine

Here we have the oldest game on the list, dating back to 1993. It is steampunk and takes place in Victorian England. History alternates because of a time traveler accidentally getting his technology taken by the hands of the Royal Society which is lead by inventor Baron Fortesque. So the inventor creates futuristic technology based on what the time traveler had, thus alternating history. The inventor created a Chaos Engine, which wraps reality, and that basically ruined everything and England is full of monsters. For those interested, the game has been remastered and put on Steam. It can also be two-player, so you and a friend can play together.

We Happy Few

Released in 2018, this creepy-looking game is another alternate history that involves a different ending to World War II. In this version, Germany becomes an empire and takes over England. The game takes place in Wellington Wells in 1964. They had to do something terrible involving children and created a drug to make themselves forget. However, this goes sideways very quickly. The drug makes them happy but they also have no morals anymore.

The Bioshock Series

alternate history is actually difficult to pin down since it is in so many alternate timelines. Basically, it takes place in an alternate future where technology advances way faster. This is why there is basically future technology in what appears to be the 50s. Cities like Rapture are pretty separate and isolated from the rest of the world, so there is actually little historical information to go on. However, it definitely shows a lot when it comes to experimenting with American cultures and ideas under different circumstances.

The Fallout Series

In , the United States got bombed into a nuclear wasteland by China. An interesting part of the game is that the 50s never quite ended but technology got boosted. So while you have 50s style advertisements, music, fashion, you also got robots, mech suits, and plasma rifles. The game series focuses a lot on its alternative history, as you can find old pre-war documents about what was going on before the bombs fell.

Damnation

This science fiction western came out in 2009 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows. However, it utterly failed in terms of reviews got very low ratings. Apparently the graphics, gameplay, and voice acting were all terrible. It is a pity, since the alternate history idea sounded cool. Basically, the American Civil War goes on for much longer and steam powered technology becomes dominant. So it is steampunk, and also a western.

Prey

One major way history was altered in Prey was that President Kennedy was never assassinated, so he got to fund way more into space exploration. Besides just President Kennedy, a lot of philanthropists and rich people band together and get really into space stations. In the 70s, an alien race was also discovered called the typhon. The study of these creatures allowed humans to create devices capable of re-writing parts of the human brain in seconds. So if you want to be a piano prodigy, you can easily become one.

The S T A L K E R Series

The first game of this series came out in 2007 and the latest in 2009. It is based loosely on a book called Roadside Picnic by Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky. These games take place in a world where the Chernobyl incident has a second explosion that created anomalies in space-time and mutated people and animals into weird creatures that can turn invisible, move really quickly, and have a thrust for human blood. A lot people are salvagers who brave the radioactive wasteland to find valuable artifacts and sell them. This creates factions, fights, and a lot of other kinds of fun.

Freedom Fighters

This is one of those PlayStation 2 games that needs a remaster, as it both had an interesting alternate history and great reviews. What sets history apart from ours is that World War II was actually ended by Russia who dropped a the first nuclear bomb on Berlin. So Russia then starts running the world and invades the United States. Strangely enough, the main characters are brothers who work in plumbing in New York City. Talk about unlikely heroes. Also, plumbing brothers? That sounds oddly familiar to some certain famous Nintendo characters.