{"id":1011,"date":"2008-07-30T15:40:42","date_gmt":"2008-07-30T19:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/07\/30\/romance-of-the-three-kingdoms-and-historical-thinking\/"},"modified":"2008-07-30T15:40:42","modified_gmt":"2008-07-30T19:40:42","slug":"romance-of-the-three-kingdoms-and-historical-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/07\/30\/romance-of-the-three-kingdoms-and-historical-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Historical Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s now a demo for the PC version<\/a> of Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI<\/em>, Koei’s strategy\/RPG set in the declining Han Empire.<\/p>\n

I started Luo Guanzhong’s epic novel<\/a>\"\" while traveling back and forth to E3. I just finished one volume and have three more to go.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit to not quite getting the popularity of the book, but this could be a cultural thing. There are a lot of characters going on and off stage, and ancient Chinese geography isn’t my strong suit; getting a sense for who is marching where isn’t easy given the scarcity of maps in my versions. Plus, I would much prefer footnotes to endnotes for a lot of the historical or literary context.<\/p>\n

But the richness of the characters can’t be denied. Yes, Liu Bei, the hero of the piece, is a little too perfect an exemplar of Confucian duty for my tastes. Western epic heroes are people like Achilles, Gilgamesh, Aeneas or David – all divinely chosen and all models for their audience, but all terribly flawed.<\/p>\n

But Liu Bei’s two compatriots in the Peach Garden Oath are vigorous men. Cao Cao is a military hardass with ambitions that lead him away from his natural virtues. The continual tension between staying loyal to the decaying Han Dynasty and establishing a new realm gives every new alliance or revived rivalry a plausibility that justifies Guanzhong’s literary license with history.<\/p>\n

When I last played at RoTK game a million years ago, none of this really mattered to me. It was an historical strategy game and that was enough. That Lu Bu and Yuan Shao had a deep cultural meaning for a few hundred million people didn’t really figure into it.<\/p>\n

But this time will be different, I think. The characters, their stories and their personalities will take on an added importance to me when the game finally comes out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s now a demo for the PC version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI, Koei’s strategy\/RPG set in the declining Han Empire. I started Luo Guanzhong’s epic novel while traveling back and forth to E3. I just finished one volume and have three more to go. I’ll admit to not quite getting the popularity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-gj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}