![]() The latter includes sources like the movie Troy (2004), which is an entertaining flic, but like this Total War entry makes the mistake of claiming to reveal the “history” behind the myth. ![]() The equipment in the game is a weird mix of some archaeological evidence, a lot of Homer, and a healthy dollop of sheer fantasy. Whatever their interpretations of Mycenaean weapons and armour are based on, it has only little to do with any perceived “truth”. I winced the first time I saw pictures of the game and realized what they had done in their misguided attempt to reveal “the truth behind the myth”. Check out the AMA that Roel Konijnendijk and I participated in on Reddit’s AskHistorians to get an idea of popular notions about the Trojan War and its relationship with history. Among general audiences, Homer continues to be associated with the Bronze Age, and a game like this only reinforces that idea. Then a big-budget game like A Total War Saga: Troy comes along and it’s like a plaster being ripped from a wound that was finally healing. There are occasionally scholars who suggest that perhaps there’s a kernel of historical Bronze Age truth in the epics, but even then, this is often couched in circumspect language. This is highly problematic, and a line of thinking that hasn’t been current in academic circles for decades. ![]() The game relies on the “Mycenaean” interpretation of Homer: it subscribes to the notion that the Homeric epics have anything useful to say about the Late Bronze Age. It’s been rough going, trying to get a handle on the game’s mechanics, but overall I am having fun with it. So I have been playing A Total War Saga: Troy, the strategy game that was recently released on the Epic Games Store. This article was originally published on the defunct Ancient World Magazine website and is now re-published here.
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