7 Times Game Developers Messed Up Historical Characters

Video games can teach us a lot of things. From Dark Souls, we learn patience and observation while standing across from a boss. Many strategy games teach us, well, strategy, while Counter-Strike teaches us a plethora of colourful swearwords in multiple languages.

But one thing developers really love to teach us is history.

They want us to dive into the past and discover long-forgotten tales, and while many video games are fairly accurate when it comes to settings and social mores, they often miss the mark on specific characters.

A good example of historical accuracy is Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It places us in the country of Bohemia in the early 14th century in the midst of a succession war. The game perfectly mimics the culture of those times as well as the characters you encounter. Other games, however, change historical characters entirely for the gameplay or plot's sake. Sometimes you just want a game featuring Leonardo da Vinci creating a weapon which was entirely impossible for that time period, or giving a classic Italian poet a giant scythe to cut demons and whatnot in to pieces.

Let's look at those times game developers should have spent an extra buck in the research department.

The Call of Duty franchise leads us through most of the military conflicts occurring in modern history. In its second instalment of the Black Ops series, we are brought, amongst other places, in the midst of the Angolan civil war. Here we meet the passionate fighter and leader of the União Nacional para an Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), Jonas Savimbi.

The game drops us off in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1987 with helicopters circling our heads, soldiers charging, and the whole shebang. In the middle of it all a broad-shouldered, big man wielding an M10 grenade launcher. He stands on an armoured vehicle chanting battle-cries, shouting orders, and firing at the retreating enemies.

Activision Blizzard truly presents us with a brutish fella, but who was Jonas Savimbi in real life?

Jonas Malheiro Savimbi was born in 1934 and studied medicine and political science in Switzerland. After his studies, Savimbi supported the anti-colonial movement against the Portuguese in Angola. First, he joined the MPLA and later the UNITA and was supported by the Chinese government in the war. After Angolan Independence, the MPLA took power for themselves and excluded the UNITA. Jonas Savimbi continued his fight but this time against his former allies. He was killed in a firefight in 2002 while being on the run.

Savimbi's children filed a lawsuit in a French court against Activision Blizzard for defamation. They described their father as a smart politician and strategist but the court rejected the complaint and the case was closed.