The Illusion of Accuracy: Simulating the Crusades in Ancestors Legacy (2018)

Abstract

Ancestors Legacy is a 2018 real-time strategy video game set in the Middle Ages. The game was developed by the controversial Polish studio Destructive Creations, whose members have been accused of sympathizing and supporting far-right movements online. This ideological support can be seen in their video games, some of which have included the use of crusading medievalisms in line with the civilizational-conflict narrative often espoused by far-right movements: i.e. the idea that Christianity is embarked in a never-ending battle with Islam and other cultures, of which the crusades are just an episode. Nevertheless, Ancestors Legacy categorically condemns the crusades as unfair and hypocritical, a statement backed by a reasonably accurate recounting of the events. Upon closer inspection, however, this accuracy is superficial and molded by a larger ideological framework about the Middle Ages and the crusades. This article argues that the game occupies the dissonant space of condemning crusading but adopting it as an unavoidable part of the clash of civilizations that lasts until this day, hence justifying the player exercising the very violence it condemns. This is an example of what Adrienne Shaw has called the tyranny of realism: an obsession with accuracy in video games, based on hegemonic and audience-driven perceptions of the past that do not allow for a critical and emancipatory approximation to history.Banner image taken from the press kit for Ancestors Legacy (2018, Destructive Creations).

Keywords

• crusades
• middle ages
• video games
• medievalisms