Le Mystére de Jeanne d'Arc

Hong Kong-based Enlight Studios is making a Joan of Arc game - an action/strategy game which will allow the player to command key battles of the Hundred Years War.

As a young girl I developed a fascination for the historical figure around the same time I fell in love with horses. I saw the Bernard Shaw play performed three times, and read it several times, I amassed a great deal of biographical material on her from my school library. Needless to say, I can't wait to play this game.

The sketch of her life is familiar: when she was a teenaged girl she heard voices telling her to become the savior of France. A few years and some military victories later, she was burned at the stake by English clerics for being a witch.

That's the challenge with making a historical game - if we were awake in history class, we know the outcome. Doesn't that defy the basic concept of a videogame, which is interactivity? How do you make a compelling, interesting interactive experience while acknowledging what everyone knows, that at the end poor Joan will be killed for political reasons and then, several hundred years later, canonized as a Saint?

And yet historical recreation games, particularily military games, have longstanding appeal. There's something exciting about pitting your wits against tactical and strategic geniuses like Napoleon and Hitler that, completely independent of nasty political implications, gives the mind a satisfying exercise. With the same conditions, and the same troops, could I have won Waterloo? What if I hadn't invaded Russia in 1941?

But what I really want to understand about Joan of Arc I'm not sure can be represented in game-format. As a horse-obsessed twelve-year-old with a name that is just another English version of Jeanne, I wondered what Joan's inner life was like. What were those voices she heard, which she believed to be from God? What inner strength guided her from her simple life as a shepherd to offer her sword at the feet of France? How did she learn strategy, riding, combat? Did she ever have doubts? Did she despair? Did she ever wish to go home and be with her family again? Was she excited by battle? Did she fall in love?

I still wonder these things. And I think someday we will be able to explore these sorts of questions in an interactive format not unlike a videogame.

Comments

[Jeff]

I think that using Joan of Arc in a video game is more about getting instant recognition from consumers without having to buy an expensive franchise license.

While I don't quite harbor the same lifelong fascination with Joan of Arc, I do have a passing interest in her story. I mean, my mother's middle name is actually Jeanne D'Arc if you can believe it (thanks in part to wacky Catholic French Canadien traditions).

I certainly don't think that the knowledge of Joan's impending doom will really detract from the game experience. Games like Battlefield 1942 and Age of Kings, while certainly inspired by history, are by no means ver batem records. This is will be a game like most other games in that fun will be at the top of the "features to implement" list, and historical accuracy somewhere near the bottom.

I am interested to see how this game turns out in anycase, considering it's from the same people who brought us the excellent Capitalism series and most recently, the bug riddled but still fun Restaurant Empire.

[Jake of 8bitjoystick.com]

Look at all the games on wars in China and World War 2. I mean we know how those end but they are still fun to play.

[Anubis]

Actually, it is « Le mystre » and not « Le mystre » :-)

[Liz]

Now this would be a great game! I love Joan. What fun it would be to play at her life.

[justin]

Trevor Chan of Enlight talked with GameZone.com about Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc.