Politically Correct History / Video Games

• Metal Gear:
  • Inverted in the first Metal Gear Solid, where Master Miller identifies Naomi Hunter as a fraud because of her family's inconsistent history: Naomi claims her Japanese-born uncle was a member of the FBI in the fifties, but Miller later points out that the head of the FBI at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, was a well-known racist and wouldn't have allowed him in the bureau. In reality, Hoover being racist is a misconception stemmed from his liberal usage of a certain N-Word (which was just the norm at the time) and his feud with Martin Luther King Jr. (Hoover viewed him as a radical and feared the Civil Rights Movement had been infiltrated by Communists): in reality the FBI hired non-Whites under Hoover's tutelage as early as the 1920's and even admitted them into the ranks of Special Agent, including James Wormley Jones, James Amos, Earl F. Titus, Arthur Lowell Brent, and Thomas Leon Jefferson (not that one).
  • Played straight in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The Boss was a woman who led a group of specialists during the invasion of Normandy in World War II. Women were allowed in the army as nurses or other kinds of logistic support, but almost never as armed forces and certainly not in a command position. She presumably got to do more than that out of a combination of being just that good and being a descendant of one of the original Philosophers. It's also mentioned through later details about her past in Peace Walker that not everyone was entirely happy with a woman having a non-logistical role, which was in part the reason why she was blamed for a mishandled space mission that allowed the Soviets to beat America to space in the first place, and later for why she was set up as the fall-guy for the Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater during the events of MGS3.
• In Operation Darkness, K Company, 1st Platoon, or the "Wolf Pack", allows women into front line roles — which is wildly anachronistic for the World War II setting of the game. Somewhat justified by the unusual nature of K Company, 1st Platoon — the British Army doesn't traditionally allow werewolves or Mad Scientists to act in front line roles, either — and lampshaded when Jude assumes that because he's being transferred to a unit containing a woman, he's thus being moved off the front lines.
• Pirates of the Burning Sea provides equal male and female options for all factions. There's absolutely no way a woman would have been able to openly serve in the French, British, or Spanish navies of the time — women have long been considered unlucky to have aboard ships, and would have been considered too timid, flighty, and incompetent to serve in the military. Pirates were less traditionalist, and there were indeed some female pirates known to history... but they tended to try to pass as male. In addition to the issue with "women are bad luck", female clothes of the period were highly impractical, and it was generally not a good idea to be visibly the only woman in a crew full of rowdy sailors who have been on the sea too long.
• The Sakura Wars series is set in the 1920s, but seems to show many more opportunities for and much less discrimination against women (and, in the New York-based Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, non-Europeans) than would be expected in that time period. Of course, this is a setting with demons and Humongous Mecha, not historical fiction.
• Age of Empires III is notable for completely glossing over slavery and the genocide/relocation, though much of the times and places the game takes place (the colonial east coast mere years after the first British colonies, the Great Lakes and Rocky Mountains just before the American Revolution, and the western frontier at the dawn of railroads, respectively) wouldn't have featured any of that in the first place. The first Expansion Pack, The WarChiefs, slightly rectifies the latter by showing the Red Cloud's War and the Battle of Little Bighorn.
• Assassin's Creed has tended to appeal to Reality Is Unrealistic and historical revisionism. But even then, it does feature huge dollops of politically correct history:
  • While Assassin's Creed was considered daring in its time for having an Arab protagonist and portraying a revisionist view of The Hashshashin, many noted that it ended up making The Crusades a backdrop to a secular dispute between two secret societies, when this was a major conflict professed to be driven by religion. Most Assassins likewise tend to be Secular Heroes with the brotherhood featuring "liberated nuns" like Sister Theodora in Assassin's Creed II or harmless and theologically suspect priests like the one on Connor's homestead in Assassin's Creed III.
  • Patrice Desilets mentioned that in Assassin's Creed II he wanted to make Leonardo da Vinci's homosexuality explicit and mention the fact that the real-life Leonardo faced charges for sodomy in Florence, but the producers insisted they remove it. While Leonardo's homosexuality is hinted at in the vanilla game of both II and Brotherhood, only the optional DLC for Brotherhood features a direct acknowledgement.
  • Despite the fact that the games are set in events central to Jewish history — the Crusades, the Renaissance, the French Revolution — none of the major games feature Jewish NPCs or supporting characters in any of the playable main and side missions, with barely any mention to the institutional and systemic anti-semitism operating in this time^note The exceptions are the presence of the wooden synagogue and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem in the first game and some of the missions in Assassin's Den in Brotherhood and Revelations, none of which are playable by the main character. Likewise, the depiction of Rome in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood does not have the famous Jewish quarter, filled with refugees from Spain and France, patronized by the Borgia's support. It took until Assassin's Creed Syndicate for the series to feature major Jewish NPCs — Karl Marx and Benjamin Disraeli.
  • Assassin's Creed Syndicate features Victorian London gangs which are remarkably gender diverse. Every gang in London not only has female members, they all have an equal number of females members who wear men's clothes and are treated on an equal level as the male members. This in an era which treated its working class women so poorly it gave rise to Jack the Ripper. On another note, one of the Frye Twin's friends is Ned Wynert, a transgender man who successfully runs a criminal enterprise without, from what we see, anyone having any problem with him being transgender.
  • Assassin's Creed Origins is set in Ptolemaic-Era Egypt during the reign of Cleopatra VII. A lot of the plot is set in Siwa oasis but makes no mention of that region's historically renowned and documented traditions of same-sex relations and homosexual marriages dating to the ancient world. Similar to the erasure of Jewish history in early games, the Hellenistic Judean community of Alexandria is missing. The presence of slavery in the Ptolemaic-era is neglected and not referred to, and the game's portrayal of politics in The Roman Republic falls squarely in the Good Republic, Evil Empire dichotomy.
    • The game's Discovery Tour, essentially a guided educational tour through the game's world, makes mention of this fact. Near the Library of Alexandria, a class group of both genders can be seen learning. The narrator says that they know this isn't historically accurate, but they decided they'd rather be politically correct than historically accurate. The fact that this rather defeats the point of the mode's educational nature isn't mentioned.
  • Assassin's Creed: Odyssey does this in spades.
    • When you play as Kassandra, the game more or less ignores the strictly enforced gender roles of Ancient Greece, especially Athens; by modern standards these would be considered nothing less than misogynistic. A woman was seen as more or less property of her “oikos” (family unit), and wouldn’t have been able to make any decisions for herself. Notably, there's also no difference between interacting with men in Athenian controlled regions vs Spartan controlled regions, even though the two city-state cultures differed significantly in their treatment of women. Sparta came the closest to modern standards of gender equality, with women being able to own land, receive an education, and run businesses. However, Spartan society placed the heaviest importance on women bearing strong offspring, and aren't known to have ever sent them into battle. Similarly, both Alexios and Kassandra would have been maligned in Athens as foreigners, and would've had their movement and social standing heavily restricted.
    • The game is pretty cavalier about women soldiers in general. Half the bounty hunters are females, and while neither of the Spartan or Athenian armies employ women, women are frequent among bandits and pirates. Keep in mind that to the Ancient Greek, the idea of women soldiers (who they may have seen in Scythian societies to the Eurasian east) was so fantastical and unbelievable that it literally became the stuff of myth in the Amazons.
    • The practice of pederasty, common among Greeks of the time, goes obviously unmentioned.
    • The Greek practices regarding prostitution are included in the game, but the game glosses them over by using the ancient Greek terms and never defining them for the audience. It will often use the term "hetaera(e)" for various female character of high societal standing - in particular for Aspasia (Who was one in real life), but the game never goes into detail explaining that the term means to avoid offending audiences (Or raising that ESRB rating). ^note Hetaerae were concubines/prostitute, generally dedicated to a single or small number of clients. As opposed a pornai who was seen as lower class and would take any client. The closest the game gets is noting that Corinth is known for its prostitution, and mentioning how there are a lot of Hetaerae running the town, letting the player add 2 and 2 together.
• A major facet of Empire: Total War is your faction's participation in the 18th century's colonial/maritime economy, but Creative Assembly really tries their damnedest to ignore the fact that African slavery was arguably the most vital cog in that economy. Two of the "trade theaters" in the game are West Africa and East Africa/Madagascar, and they exclusively produce... ivory. Slavery is also glossed over on the flavor texts for the plantations; the most mention that the practice gets is the late-game "Abolition of Slavery" technology... Though Revolutionary France abolished the practice in 1789, it was reinstated by Napoleon. The long game's ending year of 1799 was long before any American/European nation permanently abolished slavery. This is especially weird since the game just prior, Medieval II, did feature slaves as a tradable resource.
• World of Tanks includes the following:
  • Black and white people in the same tank crew during World War II.
  • Female tank crews for various nations even though only the Soviets used them in real life.
  • No Swastikas.
  • Adding the ability to give Soviet and Chinese troops better rations although this could just be Gameplay and Story Segregation since every nation has a food related consumable ^note  Chocolate for Germany, Cola for the US, Tea and Pudding for the Brits, Onigiri for Japan and Strong Coffee for France with the same effect (improving crew performance).
• Interestingly, World of Warships zig-zags this. US Navy commanders, for example, are strictly white this time around, though there are still No Swastikas for the Germans.
• In Sid Meier's Ace Patrol, the player can have both male and female pilots, despite the games taking place during the World Wars, and only the Soviet Union had female combat pilots during WWII (and, of course, the USSR is absent in the WWII-set Pacific Skies). The second game, at least, does give you the option to disable female pilots in order to be more historically accurate.
• In Silent Storm, both sides of World War II has men and women of all races serving together in all branches of the military. This would only be true for the USSR.
• Most of the games in the Civilization franchise gloss over slavery. The Call To Power series explicitly has a Slaver unit (as well as an Abolitionist unit), but beyond that slavery is largely abstracted. Civs I through III basically ignore it completely; III has a different graphic for "workers" you "capture", and they work at half the normal rate but don't cost upkeep. In IV, you have the option of Slavery for your Labor civic, but all it does is lets you rush a project at the cost of population. It's mostly gone from Civ V as well, although you can demand "workers" from City States.
  • Colonization only does two parts of the Rum trade triangle - the third were slaves. However, the game allows the player to massacre Native Americans if they wish to, which leads to a mild What the Hell, Hero? towards Sid Meier in the Prima guide.
  • However, slavery wasn't completely glossed over in Colonization. While slaves are not used as a trade good, they are present as actual colonists - they are as productive as regular colonists at producing raw resources, but almost useless for manufactured goods. Indentured servants, essentially people who have sold themselves into slavery for a certain time until paid off by their labour, fall between slaves and free colonists in productivity. So while the slave trade itself is not depicted (and would be difficult to include sensibly since Africa is not present at all), slavery as a source of cheap labour for the fields is.
• Played with in the BioShock franchise:
  • Rapture, the setting of the first and second games, was constructed after the end of World War II and lasted into the end of the 1950s, when it all went to hell. Nonetheless, it is presented as being racially integrated and openly accepting towards homosexuality, transexuality, and pornography. This is justified, however, as Rapture was envisioned as a libertarian utopia that was not to be constrained by the social, political, and religious mores of its day. Although this is not to say period appropriate prejudices don't exist. Both games do contain racial and sexual prejudice that lingers in some of its citizens. "Changing your race" or sex is treated in the manner of improving negative features, some of the splicers are overtly racist or sexist in their dialogue, and one of the main characters in the second game is a black woman who happens to live in the poorest part of the city...
  • BioShock Infinite, which takes place in 1912 in the Steampunk sky city of Columbia, averts this for the most part. The game doesn't hold a single punch when it comes to depicting the extreme levels of racism, xenophobia, and ultra-nationalism that permeated American culture in the early 20th century. In fact, Columbia is actually canonically extremist even for its day, which is part of the reason it seceded from the United States. The only social aspect of Columbia that is incongruous for the time period is the equality experienced by women, who can be seen serving on the front-lines of Columbia's police force, military, and rebellion. This is again justified, since one of Columbia's architects was a brilliant, independent female scientist and it's implied that the leader of Columbia, Zachary Hale Comstock, has been making an active effort to rid Columbia of sexism since he was grooming his "daughter" Elizabeth to lead Columbia as a messiah-like figure.
    • Strangely enough, though, you'll never hear any actual racial slurs uttered. There's one instance of a sign that's been vandalized with "HEEB" (in Finkton's slums, which means it was likely scrawled by one of the city's oppressed minorities), and Fink's pronunciation of "negro" in one voxophone is very clearly skirting close to the line, but the line is there.
• Fallen London is set in the Victorian era and concerned with Victorian values like scandalous manners, but the game treats men and women equally for the most part, with exceptions being mostly for flavour and comedy. Apparently women can't vote in Fallen London, but it's not as if it would do much even if they could. Both male and female characters are treated respectfully by others and Everyone Is Bi by default (although the player can choose to only pursue one gender or no-one if they choose).
  • Although you can see things that would have never occurred in the era (Same-Sex marriage, female police officers) there's still plenty of the problems that did. Namely colonialism, imperialism, corruption, poverty, Police Brutality and terrible working conditions.
  • It should be noted that the game is set in an Alternate Universe, several decades after the city of London was literally stolen by Alien Space Bats, and has demons, golems, and sentient mushrooms wandering around in it. There's also another justification in-universe: the heart of the city is sentient and desires love stories (including the kind with pictures), so it would want to increase their supply.
• The titular Order in The Order: 1886, which is a continuation of Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, has no qualms letting women into their ranks to fight for them, as evidenced by Isabeau/Lady Igraine as well as the other female knights seen throughout the game. Of course, the game takes place in an Alternate History with Steampunk technology and a centuries-old war against lycans (ahem, "half-breeds"), so obviously some aspects of the Victorian era would be different.
• Only three professions are forbidden to women in Darklands, specifically friar, priest and bishop (and most male PCs will never get those jobs either). Women can become knights, soldiers or students as easily as males. Also, the Jewish population is completely absent from the game, even in large cities, and nobody ever mentions them. The only exception are the few names in German, like Judenmarkt (Jewish Market).
• In-universe in After the End: A Post-Apocalyptic America, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic Future Imperfect Feudal Future. The great power of the Southeast is the Holy Columbian Confederacy, but the average peasant is entirely unaware what the last nation-state in the area to call itself a "confederacy" was — it bears more resemblance to the Holy Roman Empire than anything else, and the cultures there are disproportionately likely to generate mixed-race NPCs. Invoked in that the HCC's founder, the African-American Emperor Leonidas I, absolutely razed the old Confederacy's legacy — whether his motivations were disgust or pragmatism are left ambiguous.
• Empire Earth's German campaign starts in WWI and continues into WWII, starting with the Blitzkrieg and ending with an Alternate History mission where Operation Sealion is implemented and England is successfully invaded. At no point is it mentioned that you are, in fact, working for the Nazis, the Chancellor is never named, and of course there's that whole Holocaust business that goes unmentioned.
• The developers of Call of Duty: WWII have gone on record stating that, for the multiplayer modes, they want the players to have their choice of how to customize their character, regardless of historical propriety. The ability to play as a black female German soldier spawned a minor meme, since this would have run completely counter to almost everything the Nazi party believed - the whole "master race" thing was very heavy on the white Aryan race. It's not that much better for the American side, either, as women were only allowed in logistical roles, and while blacks were allowed to serve on the front lines at least as far back as World War I, they were in segregated all-black units like the 92nd Infantry Division, though 10 White Divisions (including the 1st Infantry Division, which the main characters are in) did eventually have all black companies. In the campaign however, this is Averted, with the developers keeping things as historically accurate as they can.
• Battlefield:
  • No Swastikas applies to all the World War 2 games, starting with the very first one, Battlefield 1942.
  • Battlefield 1.
    • While many armies had non-white soldiers, they are overrepresented in multiplayer given how the American, British, French and German armies have at least one out of seven classes represented by a person of color. Most egregiously, the German Scout and Calvary classes are black, whereas there were only five recorded Afro-Germans in the Kaiser's army in Europe during World War I.^note Germans had the Askari regiments... but those fought in Africa only, and the game has no such map. In contrast, the British and French historically had more non-white soldiers because they controlled the sea lanes and thus were able to ship over soldiers from their colonies. But even then, only 8% of France's troops in total did not come from Europe.
    • For Russian Army in the In the Name of the Tsar DLC, female soldiers (in reference to Russia's Women's Battalion of Death) appeared as the Russian Scout class. Again, this one is somewhat justifiable given the history behind Russia's female soldiers, but they were treated as propaganda value and disbanded before the end of the war.
  • Battlefield V
    • The game became the first in the series to feature full-fledged character customization and female avatars, something that's been requested for years. Only problem is, the game is set in World War II. The reveal trailer depicts a squad of four British soldiers consisting of two white men, a black man, and a woman with a prosthetic arm all fighting together as equals and featuring designs that aren't authentic to the era in the slightest. It was even more controversial when the box art was revealed, featuring a woman standing front and center of the WWII shooter, despite the fact that out of over 100 million people who fought in the war, less than 1% of them were women - and the vast majority of those (over 800,000) were in the Soviet military. To say that there was controversy around the trailer would be putting it mildly, especially since it was supposedly a "return" to the roots for the series.
    • The released game, possibly in response to the backlash, took a few steps back: the multiplayer still lets you customize your character as you please, but the story mode features female and coloured fighters only where they really existed (for the latter) or where they might plausibly have existed (for the former). There are also no prosthetic arms to be seen.
  • The campaign war story Nordlys depicts a mother-daughter duo sabotaging a heavy water plant in occupied Norway when in reality the heavy water plant sabotage was carried out by an all-male team of British SOE commandos.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: In-universe, with the Initiative's Milky Way museum. The whole joke is that all the entries, especially those related to the krogan, are about how everyone got along all the time, and never did anything bad to one another, evidently to not trouble any aliens species they run into.
• The Sims Medieval features gender equality and acceptance of same-sex relations and marriage in the medieval period. It's sort of justified in that the Sim world is not the same as the real world, and bigotry may never be a thing in their universe.
• The fourth season of Criminal Case is ostensibly set in the late 19th century, but there is a distinct lack of racial segregation (in fact, your team features two black characters and one Asian woman), and no one seem to show any prejudice against interracial and same-sex relations (such as the one between Evie Holloway and Katherine Woolf). Instead, most of the prejudice and discrimination you come across tends to be directed at Irish people.
• It is highly unlikely Annet (and Restiana) in El Viento would be able to wear such a scantily-clad outfit across America in the 1920s. Annet is also a dark-skinned South American, but no prejudice shows up, including any against her (alleged) interracial relationship with the white Earnest Evans.
• Murder by Numbers (2020) is set in 1996, and yet gay people like KC and the drag queen culture are treated with a lot more respect than you'd think from that decade.
• Princess Maker 2 is set in roughly the medieval period, yet gender doesn't seem to be an issue for anyone, as Olive is completely free to pursue any educational course or career she chooses without anyone batting an eye. A few characters do imply that such equality for women is recent, but that's about it.
• The classic Amiga/NES strategy game North & South received a Video Game Remake that very prominently features a black Rebel soldier, both on the main map screen and as a random playable character or NPC in the fort/train capture minigames. While the Confederate army did conscript plenty of black laborers for the war effort and it wouldn't be accurate to say that no black man ever picked up a gun on behalf of the Confederacy, there is also (for reasons that should be obvious) no historical evidence of any who were pensioned as soldiers for the CSA, nor are there any records of them serving under any Rebel officer's command. Also present is the Union army side featuring black and white soldiers fighting side by side, which is less egregious than depicting the same thing in the Confederate army but still not true to history; plenty of black soldiers did fight for the Union in the Civil War, but they fought in segregated units.