Romance Of The Three Kingdoms: Dynasty Warriors

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In American society, a children’s game exists called “Telephone”. In Telephone, words are whispered from person to person in a ring until the one who created the words receives their beloved phrase, now butchered. The premise of Telephone, in which a story passed on vocally is mutated, is certainly not American in origin. To the contrary, it would not be a stretch to claim no civilization lasting more than a generation is a stranger to this phenomenon. Shin Sangoku Musou, or as it is known in localizations, Dynasty Warriors (sans the first entry localized as Dynasty Warriors and of a different genre), is a modern hack’n’slash taking root in Chinese history. Dynasty Warriors attempts to recreate the strategical feel of a battle by presenting …show more content…

Although the series has 7 main games, with the most recent main series installment being Dynasty Warriors 8, the overall plot of each title is unvaried. Instead, it is retold differently from game to game, which morphs the original content. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. The cast and events in the games are actually based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a 14th century classical novel about 2nd and 3rd century China. Romance of the Three Kingdoms uses historical characters, mostly, and follows key events, but also takes from cultural legends and tales about aforementioned topics. As such, it is indeed an embellished novel as opposed to historical record. How much of the truth has been lost over a multitude of recounting? The battle of Chibi, or Red Cliffs, is one of the most dramatized battles in eastern art and literature and too plays a central role in Dynasty Warriors 8. However, said dramatization has resulted in inaccuracies which may prove detrimental to the next generation’s understanding of history. Dynasty Warriors 8 and Romance of the Three Kingdoms concern themselves with a period of Chinese history following the Han dynasty and preceding the Jin dynasty (although the Mimi Ily …show more content…

These three were the Cao Wei, the Shu Han, and the Sun Wu. The battle of Chibi was fought when the Shu Han, small at the time, allied with the Sun Wu in the Southeast. Cao Cao, leader of Cao Wei and controller of the North, demanded the Sun Wu’s surrender on the grounds of having severely better manpower. According to Sawyer (2009), Cao Cao claimed to have 800,000 men whereas the actual number was closer to 200,000. Next to Wu and Shu’s combined 40,000, this number was still formidable. When Sun Wu refused to surrender, Cao Cao sent forces. Dynasty Warriors 8 did not do a complete injustice to this battle. In fact, it contains many of the main points of the battle. The battle was primarily a naval battle, being fought along the cliffs of the Yangtze River. Dynasty Warriors, being a video game in which you control one soldier, did its best to recreate a naval battle. The player, if sided with Wu or Shu, begins on one shore, with all troops mustered on the banks. The player eventually takes a boat to Cao Cao’s naval fleet and traverses amongst the ships. While this may sound inaccurate today, Cao Cao’s ships were actually chained together (Sawyer, 2009), which serves as a key part of his

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