Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider, and Uncharted have several game mechanics in common: free climbing just about any surface, adventure themes, stealth mechanics, and more. One of the most interesting and detailed are the artifacts you can find in any of these games. While some of these locatable objects have no real-life analogue, some do and both types help embed a narrative within these picturesque, sweeping landscapes. Finding an artifact will give you more information on the object, its approximate date, and its cultural origin. These game developers do fantastic work building a world through these items so that players can situate themselves more stably in a past setting (Jenkins, 9-11). However, the game does not give you these items outright; you must find them hidden throughout the game. Similarly, reading about these objects is not required of the player. It is hard to speak universally about how individual players assimilate this information into their own perspectives on historic settings, but these resources are available for those interested. Every Assassin's Creed game opens with a screen that informs the player about the team of developers and historians that built each game's semi-fictitious world.
All Assassin's Creed games (and Tomb Raider, Uncharted games) put emphasis on historical accuracy, at least to some degree. There was never an Ezio Auditore who traveled across Europe reinstating a secret assassin organization to combat the coercive Knights Templar. However, the Ubisoft development team that worked on the Ezio series paid close attention to representing Renaissance Italy and its historic characters in as accurate light as possible. Characters include Leonardo da Vinci, Rodrigo Borgia (or Pope Alexander VI), and Niccolo Machiavelli, all of which aid Ezio in his quest. You can visit such places as St. Peter's Basilica, Il Duomo, and the Roman Colosseum. Visiting these historic characters and places evokes a preconceived notion of the times, at least for those relatively informed about Renaissance Italy (Jenkins, 6-9). Traveling through this world by no means replaces a class or an expert on Renaissance Italy, but for the less informed individual, their perceptions of this time period is evoked through the development of accurate places and semi-accurate people.
In terms of research, the game provides a depth of historical background that is extremely useful for those looking deeply into a game. My own research on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood was supplemented by the pages upon pages of information I found along my playthrough. Additionally, these intricate games inspire many other players to research themselves, sparking the thousands and thousands of web pages found in dedicated Wikias. Using Wikias is a useful way of gleaning more information from a game that you might have otherwise missed. However, caution should be used when using a Wikia, as they are (as the name suggests) crowd-built, meaning anyone can write in them. There are curators to many of these Wikias, but it is important to check back with the game and with the historical record to confirm if the Wikia is accurate. Regardless, these games can be abundantly helpful to games researchers. This may be obvious to those who dedicate their research to video games, but for those who do not, each game I mentioned is deeper than one might previously think. Similarly, dedicated fan bases do a lot of their own research and build Wikias that archive and comment on the embedded and evocative narratives of the game. Using these resources alongside your own methodologies expands upon these games as more than just entertainment, but as historical artifacts and commentaries themselves. Sources
Jenkins, Henry. "Game Design as Narrative Architecture." Published September 9, 2005. Accessed November 3, 2018.
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