2025 Game Review: A Big Year for Historical Fantasy Video Games
Games can take players to any sci-fi, fantasy, or horror setting, but some of the best and most important games focus on realism and simulation. A significant number of highly anticipated AAA games due out in 2025 opt for something between imaginary worlds and reality: historical fantasy games will be popular next year.
In games like Assassin’s Creed ShadowsPlayers will be able to live out the fantasy of time traveling to feudal Japan and live out their own story as real-life samurai Yasuke and shinobi Naoe. Players Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 will write their own stories, thinking daily about the Roman Empire of their dreams in the image of Augustus, freedom fighter and Union Army heroine Harriet Tubman, or a dozen other soldiers and thinkers shaping civilization to their liking.
A surprising number of games in 2025 will feature original fictional stories based on historical events and settings. Here are some of the highlights.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Assassin’s Creed Shadows The story takes place in 16th-century feudal Japan, during the final stages of the Sengoku period. Against the backdrop of civil war and at the height of the power of daimyo Oda Nobunaga, players will take on the dual roles of samurai Yasuke (based on a real person) and kunoichi Naoe.
Like in the series Shogun, Assassin’s Creed Shadows will showcase the influence of Portuguese traders and Christian missionaries who helped bring technologies such as cannons and long guns to the island nation. It can also show key historical events, such as Nobunaga’s attack on the ikki of Iga Province, where Naoe is from. These events will be woven into Assassin’s Creed’s ongoing conflict between the Assassin Brotherhood and the Templar Order, adding a layer of fiction to the actual historical events.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be released on February 14 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. The game will also be available for Mac and iPad.
Sid Meier’s Civilization 7
Civilization 7 will allow players to mix and match leaders and civilizations (or civilizations) in ways that distort history. Benjamin Franklin and Confucius may meet and possibly go to war as players rewrite history, blending the cultural traditions, architecture and technology of a wide variety of civilizations as they develop through the ages. Unlike past Civilization games, players will have a wider choice of leaders, now including philosophers, scientists, politicians and religious figures, rather than just heads of state.
Although most Civilization 7Historical fiction writing will be created by the players themselves as they grow their settlements into vast civilizations. Firaxis’ strategy game has the most varied and interesting take on turning history into (fan) fiction.
Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 will be released on February 11th. It will release simultaneously on PC and consoles – PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X – a first for the franchise.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
The action takes place in medieval Europe in the 15th century. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will allow players to explore the open world of Bohemian Paradise and the city of Kattenburg in the role of the blacksmith Heinrich Skalicki.
Henry will embark on a “journey to avenge his murdered parents, transforming him from an aspiring warrior into a rebel” in the Warhorse Studios film sequel. Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The game’s fictional story is set against the backdrop of the Hussite Wars, and will see Henry meet the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg and his allies.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will be released on February 4th on PS5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X.
Sucker Punch Productions’ Ghost of Tsushima was based on the true history and setting of Tsushima Island. The game is set during the first Mongol invasion of Japan and stars Jin Sakai, a fictional samurai.
Ghost of Yotei The game is set more than 300 years after the events of the original game and will once again use a real-life Japanese setting. But Sucker Punch didn’t say much about that Ghost of Yotei The main character Atsu will do this in the sequel. Here’s what the studio had to say about the PlayStation 5 game’s historical fantasy setting.
“Our story is set in the lands surrounding Mount Yotei, a high peak in the heart of Ezo, an area of Japan known today as Hokkaido,” senior communications manager Andrew Goldfarb wrote on the PlayStation blog. “In 1603, this territory was outside Japanese control and was full of vast grasslands, snow-covered tundras and unexpected dangers. It’s a far cry from the organized samurai clans that lived in Tsushima, and it’s the setting of an original story that we can’t wait to tell.”
Ghost of Yotei will be released sometime in 2025.
Marvel 1943: Rise of the Hydra
It tells an original story set during World War II. Marvel 1943: Rise of the Hydra will star two superheroes of the era: Captain America and Black Panther. Fighting alongside Howling Commandos member Gabriel Jones and Wakanda spy ring leader Nanaly, the two World War II heroes will battle the forces of Hydra—Marvel’s Nazi stand-ins—in occupied Paris.
Marvel 1943: Rise of the Hydra will be the first game from Skydance New Media, led by former Uncharted series creative director Amy Hennig and Electronic Arts veteran Julian Bick. The studio announced its 2021 Marvel project as a “narrative-driven action-adventure blockbuster that features a completely original story and take on the Marvel Universe.” Expect a period-appropriate war, enhanced by Wakanda’s magical technology and inventor Howard Stark.
Players will get their hands on Marvel 1943: Rise of the Hydra sometime in 2025.