The reception to my last article tackling historical myths in video games was fantastic, to say the least! With tens of thousands of views and a lot of comments on social media, this raised some interesting and educated discussions. Thank you so much for that. Given that there’s a clear want for this kind of content, I’ll be working on expanding the concept and delivering more historical gaming lists! This time, we are going to be tackling military myths!
The Virtual Battlefields We Know Are a Lie!
For decades, video games have served as a thrilling and interactive portal to the past, allowing players to command vast armies, lead charges with a sword held high, or experience the devastating power of a musket line. Titles like Total War, Age of Empires, and Call of Duty have cemented themselves as cultural touchstones, shaping our perception of historical warfare forever, for better and for worse. However, in their quest for engaging gameplay, these games often simplify or outright misrepresent the complex realities of military history. They turn slow, methodical sieges into cinematic assaults, chaotic battlefields into organized chess matches, and flawed weapons into powerful plot devices. In this article, I enumerated 10 historical myths games have become guilty of perpetuating, and I’ll be working to reveal the historical truth behind them. Prepare to have your long-held assumptions about knights, cannons, and battlefield tactics challenged by the reality of historical warfare.
10 – Siege Warfare Was All About Battering Down Walls
The Video Game Version: In all of the most popular historical strategy games, siege warfare is boiled down to a simple, direct assault. Players build battering rams and catapults, march them to the enemy’s walls, and use them to punch a hole or scale the fortifications. Once the walls are breached, the defending force is often rendered vulnerable, as walls in video games tend to be used more as a mechanic to keep the enemies out, instead of as a weapon in their own right.
The Historical Reality: The truth of siege warfare was far more subtle and, frankly, much more boring than what video games portray. The goal of a siege was not always to destroy the walls and take the castle by storm. In fact, a direct assault was often a last resort, as it was incredibly costly in terms of lives and resources, and a much more viable approach was to just lay the siege and starve the defenders out, or just outright bribe a couple of soldiers to open the gates in exchange for riches and their lives. Quite often, castle sieges ended with nighttime raids, with small groups of daring soldiers infiltrating the castle walls and opening the gates for the main force to enter. Besides all of that, you might want to use your newly conquered castle to shelter your troops, and having a pile of rubble will do you no good in the long run.
Why the Myth Persists: The reality of siege warfare doesn’t make for an exciting gameplay loop. Players want action, not a waiting simulator. The direct assault mechanic offers a clear objective, a satisfying sense of progression, and the opportunity for grand, epic battles that are the bread and butter of many historical strategy games. It’s a classic example of historical accuracy being sacrificed for the sake of fun and engagement. However, grand strategy games like Total War, Crusader Kings, and Europa Universalis model this extremely well, with sieges lasting for months and even years in the most extreme of cases, so not all games are guilty of this! Well done!
9 – Soldiers Were Always Eager to Fight
The Video Game Version: In most military-themed video games, soldiers are portrayed as eager, highly-trained professionals who are always ready for action. They are typically seen as fearless heroes and warriors, charging into battle with a shout, firing their weapons with unwavering accuracy or swinging their swords with unmatched expertise, and showing little to no hesitation or psychological distress. The primary motivation is victory, and the gameplay loop is centered on the thrill of the fight. There is no moral ambiguity, no fear, the psychological toll of combat is usually represented by morale bars increasing and dwindling.
The Historical Reality: The reality of combat throughout history and up to the present day is a stark contrast to this video game fantasy. The truth is that most soldiers, even the most highly trained, were (and are) often reluctant to kill, and even more so, extremely reluctant to die! Take into account that for most of our History, there were very few professional armies, and the idea of military training was reserved to only a small fraction of men. The fact is, that men didn’t want to go out and kill each other. In modern accounts of combat of the Second World War it isn’t rare to read about soldiers firing wildly “over there”, with zero intentions of killing the enemy, and it wasn’t until they were ordered by officers or by circumstance that they would actually shoot to kill.
Why the Myth Persists: I think this myth is a direct consequence of the demands of the gaming medium. A game where a soldier hesitates to shoot, freezes in fear, or struggles with the moral implications of their actions would be far less “fun” for the majority of players. Who wants to sit down, boot up ARMA and just stare at the screen contemplating if the pixel soldier you just killed had a family. The “eager soldier” trope streamlines the gameplay, keeps the action moving, and aligns with the power fantasy that many military shooters aim to provide. It’s a way of removing the difficult and uncomfortable psychological realities of war to create an unadulterated entertainment experience.
8 – Hand-to-Hand Combat Was a One-On-One Affair
The Video Game Version: Many games with melee combat present fighting as a series of individual duels. A player character (or several NPC characters), often a highly skilled warrior, will face a single opponent, and the two will engage in a choreographed exchange of blows, parries, and dodges. The player may have a small group of allies, but combat often breaks down into a series of isolated one-on-one encounters, even in the midst of a massive battle.
The Historical Reality: The grim reality is that warfare wasn’t, well… fair. One-on-one fights rarely happened. Heck, if they did, what was the point of having a larger army if you couldn’t bring all those weapons to bear at the same time? The fact is that battles were messy, confusing, and grim affairs, and if a soldier, or a group of soldiers, could gang up on someone for an easy kill, they certainly would. In Medieval battles, it has been described often how knights would be defeated exactly like this. By having several soldiers swarm the knight and pin him down, while someone would finish him off.
Why the Myth Persists: The one-on-one combat myth is an understandable and necessary sacrifice for gameplay, even in strategy games. It presents a clear and manageable challenge for the player. The idea of a player fighting a single, formidable foe is a powerful narrative and a core mechanic in many genres. A game that accurately simulated the chaotic and often-lethal reality of a historical melee would be frustrating, overwhelming, and likely not very entertaining for most players. The heroic, individualistic nature of the player character is at odds with the collective, disciplined reality of historical combat.
7 – Knights and Samurai Were Noble Warriors
The Video Game Version: In movies, books, and games, knights and samurai are often presented as paragons of virtue of their time. They adhere to rigid codes of conduct—chivalry for knights, Bushido for samurai—that emphasize loyalty, honor, and the protection of the weak. They are frequently portrayed as highly disciplined, almost saintly figures who are more concerned with their code than with personal gain. The player’s journey often involves living up to this heroic ideal, making difficult moral choices, and proving their worth through virtuous deeds.
The Historical Reality: They were tugs. While ideals like chivalry and Bushido did exist, they were more aspirational moral frameworks than strict rules of law. The reality was far more pragmatic, brutal, and often contradictory. Knights were famous for tormenting the local folk, killing, stealing, and lying their way to riches. Historical sources often register groups of peasants going directly to court and complaining to the king about the behaviour of knights. The king would very often compensate said peasants and punish the knights, too. The samurai were equally as bad, and their wild tendencies had to be reigned in quite often by local authorities.
Why the Myth Persists: The origins of this myth have a very distinct line of succession. Whenever the warring nobles’ skills as fighting men started to be less and less relevant (15th century onwards in Europe), a lot of works were commissioned portraying that noble family as a faithful servant of the king and country, as defenders of the common man, and very conveniently avoiding all of the trouble they had caused. These works, known as “chronicles,” eventually bled into popular culture and became its own myth, a self-evident truth for centuries, and very few historians questioned. Things have since changed, but it’s still prevalent in gaming. Why? Because this myth is deeply embedded in the “power fantasy” that many games sell. A player wants to be a hero, not an opportunistic landholder. The simplified, morally pure image of the knight and the samurai provides a clear, compelling role for the player to inhabit. It’s a way of making historical settings palatable and engaging by stripping away the more complex and uncomfortable truths of real-world feudalism. While games like Ghost of Tsushima and Kingdom Come: Deliverance have made admirable attempts to add nuance, the core gameplay loop still often revolves around a single, heroic protagonist, reinforcing the myth of the exceptional individual rather than the messy reality of the historical class.
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