The same stars are shining.
Some time ago, the new work “Wolong: Fall of the Sky” by the glorious ninja group announced the confirmed release date: March 3, 2023.
Although it is said that the glorious release date in the past two years is almost over, “Dynasty Warriors 8 Empire” and “Nobunaga’s Ambition: New Life” have been delayed for more than a year, but “Wolong” obviously carries more from expectations of players.
On the one hand, it comes from the undoubted development strength of the ninja team in the field of action games, on the other hand, it is naturally because it is the theme of the Three Kingdoms.
Moreover, “Wolong”, as a game with supernatural elements that took place in a chaotic and desolate apocalyptic scene, has tried to present a “fuhuadao” of the end of the Han Dynasty in the currently released PV, and there are no forms in all aspects. Too outrageous, it is inevitable to guess what stage of historical script such a worldview will cover.
For example, the image of Zhang Jiao in “Wolong” obviously originated from Guangrong’s “Three Kingdoms” series
As a Chinese player, it’s hard not to have all kinds of extra expectations for it – after all, it’s not easy to find an innovative Three Kingdoms game in recent years, whether in terms of specific historical background or game aesthetics.
1
There is no doubt that “Three Kingdoms” is the most used background theme in video games in Chinese history, no one.
If only based on the absolute quantity of works, it is difficult for any ancient history theme to have such an influence as the Three Kingdoms in the world. You can see the themes of the Three Kingdoms in almost all game categories except FPS, from role-playing to real-time strategy, from side-scrolling clearance to simulation management – even in Galgame, you can find the elements of the Three Kingdoms.
And more than one
And if we talk about the game with the history of the Three Kingdoms as the main stage, most domestic PC players may have been raised with the “education” of the glorious Three Kingdoms: starting from “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 7”, a certain RPG mechanism has been gradually introduced, “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 10” The imitation of “Taiko’s Ambition” emphasizes the protagonist’s perspective, and then to “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 11”, which integrates various aspects and has the greatest influence in China, the mechanical content of this series has been steadily changing, and it has become the enlightenment of the Three Kingdoms strategy game for domestic players. .
But after this series has advanced to the 14th generation, it also gives people the feeling of “familiar every time”: in terms of story and plot aesthetics, or in terms of narrative content, there have been almost no major changes in the glorious Three Kingdoms, always consistent with “Three Kingdoms”. The rhythm of the plot of “Romance” remains highly consistent.
In other words, the script structure of most of the Three Kingdoms history games is like this: starting from the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the warlords’ separatist regime was succeeded by the warlords who fought against Dong and later, and turned at the three points of the world, famous battles such as Guandu, Chibi and Yiling. As a climax, Zhuge Liang’s Northern Expedition should almost end – at most, add some scenes from Jiang Wei’s Northern Expedition.
“Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14” script list. Guangrong has been doing “Three Kingdoms” for almost 40 years, and this part is really not bad.
This is also something that all the Three Kingdoms history games based on “Romance” are difficult to circumvent: Luo Guanzhong’s time line when he wrote this novel did not advance at a uniform speed.
For example, there is an important year in the novel: the thirteenth year of Jian’an, which is 208 AD. This year, important plot nodes such as the burning of Bowangpo, the battle of Changbanpo, the battle of Chibi, and the pacification of Jingnan occurred at one time. “Romance” also used a dozen times to write the story of the year .
The year 208 AD in real history also happened enough nodes
In the heroic historical view of “Romance”, such “important historical stages” constitute the main line of the full text, which can be compared with parts such as the Battle of Guandu and Xiangfan in Hanzhong. What is the plot of a Three Kingdoms game?” The most important cognition.
The people are familiar with it and love to watch it. If you don’t follow this set, this part of the scene is not well told, and it is easy to be challenged.
The most typical example is CA’s “Total War: Three Kingdoms”. As a British company, limited by gameplay restrictions (such as the iconic random events of Total War) and the cultural gap of developers, CA has created some ridiculous game content – such as the game content that was played at the beginning of the release. Guan Yu’s lines “What is loyal to the Ming Lord, or small life is more important” and so on.
But the more important problem is that CA has been a bit over the top in the subsequent content updates – it did not focus on the most intense paragraphs in the Romance, but on some special historical nodes.
There are some parts that are better done, such as the relatively well-received DLC “Ordered by Heaven”, which focuses on the imperial power politics at the end of the Han Dynasty, allowing players to experience what it means to “have a sigh and hate Yu Huan and Ling Ye”. .
The bad example is the “Eight Kings Rebellion” that made players angrily “a group of Sima things (literally) who don’t know their names declare war on each other” – at this time, more than ten years have passed since Jin destroyed Wu. It has nothing to do with the Three Kingdoms.
And when the content update of Total War Three Kingdoms ends at “Divergent Destiny: Battle of Guandu”, and even Chibi and Yiling did not appear as DLC, it is hard not to give people the feeling that it has been cut in half.
However, even if the brush and ink of “Romance” focuses more on the part of the “First Three Kingdoms”, it is not that there are no works that focus on the story of the “Later Three Kingdoms”.
2
Strange to say, to say “Later Three Kingdoms”, the “Dynasty Three Kingdoms Warriors” series, which is obviously the most “romance”, was the first to appear in my mind.
In general terms, the “Later Three Kingdoms” can be summarized as the history of the Three Kingdoms from the Northern Expedition of Zhuge Liang to the period when Jin destroyed Wu. Beginning with “Dynasty Warriors 6”, in which Ryoho Suzuki served as the producer, Wushuang has greatly involved the part of the post-Three Kingdoms, trying to show the historical stories of the middle and late Three Kingdoms.
In the sixth generation, Sima Yi changed from a Wei force to a Jin force, and characters such as Sima Shi, Sima Zhao, Deng Ai, and the beloved Wang Yuanji also joined the game.
Wang Yuanji in “Dynasty Warriors 6”, most players’ visual impressions of the future Western Jin Dynasty empress dowager are estimated to come from 356
In the biography of the Jin Dynasty of the Six Dynasties, a large amount of space was used to perform the Battle of Xingshi, a battle that was not described in Romance. Coupled with the battle of Hefei Xincheng with Sun Wu, and the return of the three families to Jin (except for the part where Jin destroyed Wu), Guangrong tried to show the story of the whole Three Kingdoms at a relatively uniform speed.
Although many of the court power struggles in the later Wei and Jin Dynasties were unified and simplified to the Sima family in the face of countless enemy soldiers, they were unparalleled and then won (such as the Chaos of Zhengshi, but an action game can’t do this), but this It was quite a novel story at the time.
However, due to the problems of gameplay and script design, the Jin Chuan in the subsequent Seventh and Eighth Generations is somewhat homogenized – this is essentially because of the conflict between the rhythm of romance and the rhythm of history, the “Later Three Kingdoms” looks completely like Another gang usurped the protagonists of the former three kingdoms. The tone of Glorious Three Kingdoms, after all, is Romance rather than history. Although history can be used to “supplement” the missing parts of Romance, under the heroic view of history, we want to tell the Three Kingdoms later while maintaining the integrity and emotional logic of the story. , with obvious difficulty.
The role of Jin forces in 358
But if you put aside the limitations of “Romance”, isn’t the story of the post-Three Kingdoms really worth more writing?
Probably not.
The first three kingdoms are about “juvenile pride”, a story of heroes from all walks of life tearing apart the existing pattern of the late Han Dynasty under the heroic historical view. From the perspective of romance novels, the protagonists of the previous generation have gradually established themselves in the country, and naturally they have to face their respective old age and historical endings. But “Later Three Kingdoms” can also carry the expectation of “the story is not finished yet”, especially the time period when the familiar old characters interact with the new characters who just appeared on the stage of history.
If we take the life of a famous advisor and military general out of the way, the “Later Three Kingdoms” is not only full of intrigue and thrilling, but also has more perspectives worth talking about.
From the perspective of political struggle, the latter three kingdoms not only had direct military struggles, but also had party and political struggles between gentry and clansmen; from the perspective of culture and thought, there were a lot of changes in political systems and ideological trends during the Wei and Jin Dynasties. , talk about culture…
The level of warfare is also not inferior. Deng Ai and Jiang Wei fought back and forth in Duangu several times. They went back and forth between geographical advantages, natural dangers and human resources, and their on-the-spot judgment and strategic vision did not lose the famous battle of the first three countries.
Even if Sun Wu, who has the weakest sense of existence in the post-Three Kingdoms, you may only think of Sun Quan’s defeat in Hefei, Sun Quan’s defeat in Hefei, and Sun Quan’s defeat in Hefei again, but the intrigue of Sun Wu’s court is quite interesting. From the dispute over Sun Quan’s establishment of the crown to the eight-year change in the Second Palace, the whole family and the Bu family have mastered the means of wielding power and eliminating dissidents, even after reading “The Legend of Zhen Huan”. The brutal and bloody power struggle between Sun Wu clans, it is estimated that it will not be worse than “Game of Thrones”.
In video games, I just remember
“three
There is enough description of Sun Wu Quandou in National Records of Jiang Wei Biography
Therefore, the latter three countries naturally have stories to dig.
3
From a purely story perspective, the “Later Three Kingdoms” obviously has inherent potential worth exploring. But obviously, since it is a pioneering road for developers, whether it is Wei Jin Ding Ge or Shu Wu’s later plot, it is rare in video games.
This is more common in fan games. For example, the most famous historical MOD of “Cao Cao Biography” is “Jiang Wei Biography”. The author Ratchet shows the vast history of the post-Zhuge Liang era with his superb historical grasping ability and text level, which has also become a favorite among many players. After the Three Kingdoms Enlightenment.
But when I searched my brain again, the examples that popped up in my mind were already RPG games like “Hanzhiyun” and “Clouds” from “Xuanyuan Sword Gaiden”.
“Clouds of Han” is rarely written with Emperor Wei Ming Cao Rui as an important plot character. Cao Rui is one of the most important historical figures in the post-Three Kingdoms period (as the emperor of Wei, I think so), he was deliberately downplayed in “Romance”, and many important strategic decisions were crowned on Sima Yi.
In fact, the emperor, who has made many victories in his own hands, not only has many achievements against Sun Quan and Zhuge Liang, but Pei Songzhi also speaks highly of him. However, in his later years, Cao Rui was inexplicably indulged in large-scale construction projects, and his improper handling of court affairs also paved the way for the subsequent usurpation of power by the Sima family.
Cao Rui in “Clouds of Han”
The historical shaping of “Clouds of Han” (such as his attitude towards Zhuge Liang) has caused a lot of controversy, but Cao Rui has written a lot of new ideas on this point, making him quite active (“active” is closer to official history. ): Cao Rui secretly set up the “Bronze Sparrow Venerable” organization and personally led them deep into the enemy’s rear; while he was not in the palace, his twin brother Cao Ying, who was interested in civil engineering, served as the shadow emperor.
In the end, Cao Rui died young because he underestimated the enemy, and Cao Ying became Emperor Wei Ming in his later years. “Clouds of Han” uses such an RPG technique to explain why Emperor Wei Ming was so polarized before and after, which was especially impressive to Romance readers who had no impression of Cao Rui at that time.
Of course, this has little to do with the Three Kingdoms history game. To explain the story of “new characters creating a new era” from different perspectives, this is very rare in the current Three Kingdoms history game, and it is more out of context in Zhuge Liang or Jiang Wei. .
In fact, many times, not only the historical script of the Three Kingdoms still has places to be discovered, but also the parts that reflect the complexity and realism. The most influential and glorious “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, the basic system comes from “Nobunaga’s Ambition”, which applies the administrative, economic and political system of the Warring States of Japan, which is obviously very different from the late Han Dynasty.
It was not until the DLC script of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14” that Guangrong first spent a lot of time describing the Wei and Jin Dingge (the change of the beginning of time) after working on the Three Kingdoms for almost 40 years – this may be something to get involved in earlier.
4
In the field of history itself, Wei, Jin Dingge’s research also has a larger scale, breadth and depth.
This aspect is determined by the thickness of the historical documents handed down. The Jin Dynasty inherited the Wei system, and the written historical materials are well preserved. There is a lot of documentary support in the administrative system, bureaucratic system and people’s livelihood economy. The second is Soochow. Fortunately, the unearthed Wu Jian from Zoumalou allows later researchers to understand the social and political life of Soochow in general. The worst is Shuhan, because “the country does not set history”, and even the most basic official system does not have an exact statement.
For the game, Wei Jin is obviously the part of the post-Three Kingdoms story worth digging into. In “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, there is too little brush and ink. For example, the story of Jin destroying Wu spanning 20 years was written in only half a chapter in the 120th chapter. This is the embodiment of Luo Guanzhong’s brushwork and The charm of Romance lies, but when it becomes a video game text, it must be said that it is a pity.
For example, Yang Hu, Lu Kang, and Du Yu, the three important figures of the post-Three Kingdoms, are enough to become stars-like heroes in terms of the length of the previous Three Kingdoms. For example, as the main planner of the war to destroy Wu, in history, Du Yu was erudite and talented. He worked with Jia Chong on the “Law of Jin”. The “big man” of the Wu Temple.
Looking forward to more games that can break through the traditional Three Kingdoms story framework and carry out more daring revolutions. Perhaps it is against this background that players can appreciate the charm of group portraits from the post-Three Kingdoms era in addition to the stories that are not much inscribed in Romance.
This article is reproduced from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/10039
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.