This chapter analyzes how video games serve as immersive tools for rethinking and interacting with the European Middle Ages, especially through the perspective of Germanic heroic traditions. It evaluates how video games convert historical and literary themes into interactive experiences via remediation, merging amusement with cultural memory. The games from the corpus draw upon tabletop RPGs and fantasy literature, recontextualizing medieval elements like quests, heroism, and myth inside intricately drawn digital realms. These games blend both narrative depth and player agency, allowing for active involvement with recreated pasts. The chapter also investigates the effect of commercial needs, technical restrictions, and ideological biases on historical portrayal in games. Video games develop as dynamic cultural objects that influence how contemporary audiences see, experience, and reinterpret the medieval past, affirming the continuous relevance of Germanic heritage via interactive storytelling and digital ludonarrative frameworks.

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Video Games as Playable Explorations of the Past

  • Enrique Torres-Hergueta

摘要

This chapter analyzes how video games serve as immersive tools for rethinking and interacting with the European Middle Ages, especially through the perspective of Germanic heroic traditions. It evaluates how video games convert historical and literary themes into interactive experiences via remediation, merging amusement with cultural memory. The games from the corpus draw upon tabletop RPGs and fantasy literature, recontextualizing medieval elements like quests, heroism, and myth inside intricately drawn digital realms. These games blend both narrative depth and player agency, allowing for active involvement with recreated pasts. The chapter also investigates the effect of commercial needs, technical restrictions, and ideological biases on historical portrayal in games. Video games develop as dynamic cultural objects that influence how contemporary audiences see, experience, and reinterpret the medieval past, affirming the continuous relevance of Germanic heritage via interactive storytelling and digital ludonarrative frameworks.