The European Middle Ages in Japanese Video Games
Why Europe? It's not (quite) Tolkien
Modern Medieval
by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele
Matt and I both have a love of video games. One of our favorite Bright Ages events was when we got to live-stream with the makers of Crusader Kings 3, which you can watch in three parts: Part I, Part II, and Part III.
I’m personally not a huge player of Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPGs ) but I have played Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy VII, two of the greatest hits! But I’ve been thinking about them because there’s been controversy lately, familiar to fans of other games, about identity and representation in Final Fantasy 16, set in medieval Europe, using only “British English” accents, and very white characters.
We’ve faced similar discourse around the games The Witcher 3 (fantasy) and Kingdom Come (“realistic”), as well as the Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings shows, etc. My take is always this: If you choose to imagine a past with dragons, then anything you deem unimaginable - people of color, women with autonomy, LGBTQ people - is not only bad history but is a tell about your values.
What I didn’t know is why JRPGs are so frequently set in an imagined medieval Europe. I assumed that it was Tolkien’s influence, as is so often the case, and it turns out that’s not not true, but it’s not the whole truth. Thanks to a tweet from author Alexander Chee (whose profile is currently locked, hence not sharing a link), I ran across this article on the origins of the European fantasy for JRPGs. The answer seems to be: Ultima and Wizardry, two of the great video game franchises of the 1980s.
When reading interviews with Japanese developers, it's apparent that none were reading the fantasy literature popular with Western developers, and while a few knew of D&D, the majority were in fact fans of Wizardry and Ultima on the Apple II. These two Western games, above all else, were the direct influencers of a generation of RPG developers, and were said developers' primary cultural sources…When interviewing developers behind these games, they all reference Western tabletop games, or computer games, which they enjoyed. Rather than earlier Western sources, such as Tolkien books, or King Arthur stories. It seems almost as if Japan's introduction to Western folklore was through Western games.
I’m really interested in the ways that medieval European history plays out in the teaching and the imaginations of all parts of the world, where they converge, where they diverge, where there’s syncretism among traditions, and so forth.
The article goes on to talk to both academic and gaming experts, and while I suspect my colleagues in Japanese history and literature would point to places beyond gaming that served as vectors for European folklore to enter Japan, games make sense.
Also, for what it’s worth Ultima was great. It was the first video game experience that felt even close to analogous with tabletop D&D.
At Modern Medieval, we hope to do more following of medieval European fantasy settings, watching the choices that creators make, and seeing the way that games - in which the player has agency and choice in theory - convey both the troubling ghosts of the past and opportunities for making new choices.
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