Ryse: Son of Rome (

2014

)

In a previous life, I was a classics grad student focusing on Roman military history (though I was mostly interested in the middle to the late republic, not the Principate period), so naturally I have a few opinions about the historical accuracy of Ryse: Son of Rome. I know, I know, expecting historical accuracy in a video game is racist. Hell, even attempting to make a historically accurate game is such an impossibility that only a fool would attempt it. Far be it from me to criticize the distinguished historical scholars working at “waypoint” and “rockpapershotgun.” I'm sure they know exactly what they're talking about, and aren't a bunch of semi-illiterate buffoons who haven't read a history book since they graduated High School. I'm certain that they wouldn't pitch a massive hypocritical fit if the film Selma (2014) had cast Idris Elba as George Wallace and Pauly Shore as Martin Luther King. So you'll have to forgive my aside at the start of this review, once an intolerable pedant, always an intolerable pedant. I pinky-swear, when I complain that Hadrian's Wall and the Colosseum were not built at the time the game is supposed to have taken place, it's not somehow code for “I hate blacks and gays.”

The historical errors in Ryse: Son of Rome fall into two categories, the incidental nitpicks that don't really matter, and the absolute absurdities that make me wonder why they bothered to set the game in ancient Rome at all. The former category being categorized mainly by things that only nerds/scholars/weirdos would notice. As I mentioned above, neither Hadrian's Wall nor the Colosseum were built at the time the game is supposed to have taken place (the reign of emperor Nero). I expected this for the Colosseum because it is such a classic image of ancient Rome that I'm used to it popping up all the time in historical works where it doesn't belong. The wall is less forgivable because it goes by the name of the emperor who built it, seriously just look up Emperor Hadrian to get his dates and you'll know that it doesn't belong here. Still, having these structures makes a certain degree of sense, they are cool historical structures. It makes sense to want them alongside a cool historical villain like Emperor Nero. Though Nero himself is hardly historically accurate, they've made him an old geezer with two full-grown sons despite the fact that Nero died in his 30s. Still, all this makes a certain degree of sense, what doesn't make sense are things like making Boudica the daughter of King Oswald, a British King from half a millennia in the future. Does anybody outside England (or an English history department) even know who this guy is? So why is he here? We can't wave this away with a rule of cool excuse. Then there are the things that I suspect will only bother me, like the fact that the characters all say “Centurion” with the soft anglicized C when it should be a hard K sound. Why is Fallout: New Vegas [2010] still the only piece of media that gets this right?

However, it's not all just set-dressing that annoys classics scholars, there are some real wall-bangers of historical inaccuracy in this game that warrant a closer look. Most notably is the fact that at the game's climax, Boudica besieges Rome with a barbarian horde complete with fucking war elephants. Newsflash, elephants are not native to the British islands and since ancient war elephants were all brought over from India (African elephants being harder to train), this implies that somehow Boudica has made common cause with barbarians at the opposite end of the empire. Even somebody with only a passing knowledge of Boudica's rebellion cannot help but see how patently absurd this is. A minor revolt in a distant province is turned into the second-coming of Hannibal; it's enough to make you ask why didn't they just set the game a few centuries earlier during the 2nd Punic War? Hell, making Hannibal the primary antagonist instead of Boudica would have also solved the game's problem with enemy variation, Boudica only had Britons to command while Hannibal's army was composed of Spanish, North African, Balearic, and even Italian forces (each with their own specializations and war-gear). Plus he actually had a few war elephants (they died early on, elephants handle alpine winters about as well as you would expect but they were there nonetheless), so the final set-piece would be a great deal less ridiculous. The only disadvantage I can see is that nobody would want to see Hannibal rocking the belt-like top (essentially Keira Knightley's outfit from King Arthur) they've given Boudica.

Enough belly-aching about historical accuracy, how is the actual game? Not good. Ok, maybe that's a bit dismissive. It's a gorgeous looking game with all sorts of visual flourishes. The bas-relief cut-scenes that come in-between the missions are downright lovely, and in the game's ending, it's revealed that they were all part of a larger design that spiraled up a pillar (just like the Column of Marcus Aurelius). The facial animations are absolutely stunning, giving LA Noire [2011] a run for its money, and the environments are universally gorgeous. The levels all have a distinct feel, from a pitched battle on a British beach-head to the primeval forest of Scotland. Even when the area is similar in some ways, they are differentiated by color palette or time of day. For instance, the level taking place in a British forest by day looks nothing like the level in the Scottish forest at night. Then there are the little details, like the graffiti that covers the Roman streets plainly modeled upon the real-life graffiti found at Pompeii. The twisted drawings of Emperor Nero being gored or sodomized that turn up in the second visit to the city are a particular delight.

The game is nice to look at, but it's downright boring to play. It has the Batman: Arkham Asylum [2009] / Assassin's Creed [2007] style combat, which is shallow and flashy at the best of times. Ryse: son of Rome cranks up the shallowness to a new level, by adding in pre-animated take-downs that have quick-time events that you do not need to pass in order to kill the enemy (To be fair, you'll get a larger combo score if you press the buttons correctly but that still feels faintly ridiculous). Honestly, this is downright insulting, it's things like this that make me feel like the game would rather not have me along playing it. It's not just the pointless quick-time events either, the regular combat itself feels more rote than organic. Enemies pop across the battlefield to get in the way of your attacks when they are slightly out of place. Likewise, they effortlessly deflect your attacks, even if you attack from behind if they are not properly staggered first. Enemies will surround you and attack you one at a time, halting entirely when you start a pre-animated takedown even if they are in mid-swing! The result is combat that is easy, simple, and mechanical. I played on the hardest difficulty available from the start (Centurion) and breezed through the game without so much as breaking a sweat. I played a bit on Legendary (the difficulty unlocked after beating the game once), and there really wasn't much of a difference. The levels are painfully linear and give you very limited options other than to run from one boring samey fight to another.

The combat is not without fun bits, the best of which are the moments when you take control of a squad of infantry and form a shield tortoise, advancing under enemy arrow fire and hurling javelins when you get the opportunity. It actually looks and feels like real ancient combat, which was based heavily on formations, as opposed to the disordered melee which makes up the bulk of the game's combat. Too bad the sequences where you get to do it are so brief and so few. A whole game could have easily been built around the mechanic were it sufficiently fleshed out. IE adding in abilities to reform a broken formation after you've been hit by a cavalry charge, and rallying your troops when their morale is low. They could even add a mechanic where you toss the company standard into the enemy ranks and then order your men to go a retrieve it less they suffer the shame of losing the sacred banner (a tactic that was used in real life by especially dickish commanders). Doubtlessly all this would have required more effort than copy-pasting the combat from established successful franchises.

The final sequence seems to go out of its way to showcase the game's worse design decisions. First, there's the showdown with Boudica. The game's combat is mostly geared towards fighting groups of enemies at a time, so one-on-one fight scenes always suffer from a slow-down of pacing as you wait for the enemy to attack so you can counter at the right time. It gets more annoying when, after having drained her health bar once, you kick her off a ledge and start round 2, which is pretty much the same fight as before but repeated. After that, you start a prolonged quick-time event sequence where you hack your way through Nero's bodyguards before killing the wicked emperor, which feels more like a cut-scene than actual gameplay. Even more annoying is the fact that the boss of the penultimate level, a duel between Nero's cheating son Commodus and the protagonist, fought in the Colosseum before a crowd of cheering Romans is actually pretty damn cool. Commodus, the cheating coward that he is, regularly calls in backup because he's too scared to face you himself so the fight actually plays to the strength of the game's normal combat. The fact that they realized this for a minor boss, but not or the game's final sequence, is especially galling.

The game's story is pretty by the numbers at first glance, being about Roman soldier Marius swearing revenge on the Britons after his family is murdered by a gang of them (who were somehow in the middle of Rome, it's revealed later to be a plot by Emperor Nero but God only knows why he thought Britons would be an inconspicuous means of eliminating a political enemy). He signs up with the legions and heads to Britain to repress Boudica's rebellion, gradually realizing that his real enemies are not the Britons but the leadership of the Roman Empire. The fun twist the game puts on an otherwise cliched story is the subtle (at least at first anyway) supernatural elements. As it turns out all this is a game being played by the Gods. They aren't deities from the Greco-Roman pantheon, but they operate in a similar fashion, toying with the lives of mortals for their own amusement/personal competition. It's fun to see the divine depicted not as good or evil, but as simply petty assholes wrecking shit for their own, mysterious reasons.

Ultimately, this is not the game for you unless you are looking for a quick little distraction and have a particular passion for the ancient Roman aesthetic. History buffs should prepare to be annoyed by the numerous inaccuracies, but at least you get to play as a Roman Centurion, carving a bloody path through a barbarian horde. To some of us, that will make it all worth it.