Although it may seem like there are a lot of excellent British TV shows that perfectly represent the culture, like Doctor Who, The Crown, The Inbetweeners, and Downton Abbey, it’s harder to see the same in games. Many games tend to use Great Britain as a backdrop, but not all of them explore the culture as deeply enough.
Well, the following gamesareworthy of that kind of praise for their portrayal of British culture, whether their premise may be rooted in myth, fantasy, Medieval times, or modern-day. From the period to the architecture to the folk characters, pop culture influences, landmarks, and real-world events, these games brilliantly take you across the pond.
Genre
ARPG, PVP
British developer Sumo Digital turned to the 14th-century English folktale of Robin Hood as the key inspiration for its multiplayer PVP gameset in the Medieval Age. Aside from the folk legend, the castles in Hood: Outlaws & Legends are also inspired by real-life ones, such as Lindisfarne and Bamburgh, and the style of architecture is described as taking inspiration from the UK’s Brutalist form.
The game is certainly not your Disney version of Robin Hood, as Outlaws & Legends offers a more violent and darker take on the character and his merry band. Your goal here is to compete against a team of four other players in successfully stealing whatever’s required of you, which also means getting into brutal fights with the Sheriff of Nottingham’s patrols.
City Building, RPG
Yet another video game inspired by the British folk hero, Robin Hood — Sherwood Builders is a bit different from the gameplay of Outlaws & Legends. The main mechanic that sets it apart from the standard action RPG systems is open-world base-building and crafting. That’s right, developer MeanAstronauts is here to show there’s more to the legend than just stealing.
It’s not every day that you get a base-building game rooted in the cultural mythology of Robin Hood, and Sherwood Builders is an excellent foray into that. Characters from the tale like Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, and the antagonistic Sheriff of Nottingham will also appear.
If there’s one PS4 game that receives the harshest criticism, it’s The Order: 1886. If you don’t mind a shorter, more linear game with high cinematic quality, it will be worth it, especially its incredibly well-written story, voice acting, and graphics. The Order also takes its inspiration from Sir Thomas Malory’s legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and puts a unique twist on it.
Both pulling from and adding to the Arthurian legend, The Order: 1886 asks what if King Arthur found a solution for preserving the Round Table of Knights for centuries to come by way of a substance known as Blackwater.It’s now Victorian-era London in 1886, and you are the Order’s Sir Galahad, caught in a seemingly never-ending battle with the Lycans, with yet a larger conspiracy also looming.
The cultural inspiration for We Happy Few begins with its very name, which is taken from a line in St Crispin’s Speech in William Shakespeare’s play Henry V. The story, concept, and visual design were also said to bethe direct influence of dystopian British mediasuch as Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, and Doctor Who.
Set in the fictional alternate-history English societyaptly named Wellington Wells, where everyone wears nightmarish Happy Face masks and takes Joy pills that make them happy, you’ll be a Downer rejecting the Joy and surviving the Wellies and Bobby police officers (inspired by Scotland Yard police). You may also noticecertain retrofuturistic designs resemble Daleksand that the overall mood perfectly fits the V for Vendetta vibe.
Nintendo’s Pokemon is probably the series you’d least expect to end up here, but the 2019 game, Pokemon Sword and Shield, brilliantly embraced British culture when it came to designing the world of Galarand the Pokemon you find within it. Just about the entire game serves as one giant reference to Britain.
There’s a group called Team Yell who are dressed like they belong to a punk rock band, Galar’s version of Weezings are smoking chimneys, the Pokemon stadiums are clearly inspired by grand soccer stadiums along with the crowds, and even Stonehenge, the London Eye, and Big Ben are all there. The way NPCs speak with British slang, Welsh Corgi-inspired Yamper Pokemon, leek and unicorn symbolism, the British Isles map layout, and even the game’s title are further evidence.
The Assassin’s Creed seriescovers a lot of diverse cultural topics and periods, and the 2015 entry brings you to the Industrial Revolution in Victorian London. Not only does the game put a spotlight on the traditions regarding factory culture, technology, recreational activities, chimney sweeps, and the monarchy (which include a knighthood from Queen Victoria herself, the Queen’s Ball, cricket matches, pubs, and steamboats), but the main focus here is also on street gang culture.
You get to play twin brother and sister duo Jacob and Evie Frye, or the Frye Twins,who can be swapped at any point from the game menu. They’re on a quest to build up their own gang known as the Rooks (dressed in green) to take on the Templars, who are affiliated with the Blighters (red clothing). Important cultural figures you’d find here also include Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell, and Karl Marx.
Go even further into Britain’s past with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Although the story is told from the perspective of a Viking invaderand touches upon Norse mythology, the game covers one of the most important eras of Britain’s history, and it’s one that had the most significant influence on shaping the English language and the country’s religious and cultural identity.
Valhalla takes you to the ninth-century period when England isn’t yet unified and is instead divided up into the four kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, Wessex, and Northumbria, which are controlled by the Anglo-Saxons and under siege by the Vikings. King Alfred the Great is one of England’s most important historical figures here, who was responsible for advocating the translation of essential texts from Latin to English to promote more universal education.
A lot of British words and naming conventions emerged out of the Old Norse vocabulary, particularly suffixes such as “-by,” “-dale,” “-thorpe,” and “-son.”
Even though Ubisoft does have studios in the UK, its first Watch Dogs entry set in Britain was developed primarily by the Canada-based Ubisoft Toronto studio. The main inspiration point for Legion was the UK’s official split from the European Union, or Brexit, and the game envisions an alternative future for British society in the wake of itthrough the lens of hackersin a totalitarian surveillance state led by Albion.
The game celebrates modern London and is filled with many cultural references and landmarks. A big theme of the game is anti-fascist protests and resistance, which are very important to Britain’s identity throughout history; just ask the Sex Pistols. And the way the game is designed, you can explore different character backgroundsby becoming any Londoner NPC. David Bowie, Doctor Who, and James Bond references are plenty as well, and there’seven a mission with British rapper and grime artist Stormzy.
Story Rich, Walking Sim, Mystery
Brighton, UK-based developer The Chinese Room is well-known for contributing games rooted in the country’s culture. While its 2024 oil rig horror game Still Wakes the Deep brought an excellent representation of Scottish culture, it’s the studio’s 2015 walking simulator mystery, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, that truly captures a lot of the essence of Britain’s culture.
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is set in a fictional village in Shropshire, England called Yaughton, where everyone has mysteriously disappeared, and you piece together the story by interacting with memory shards and radios.
By using radios to tell the story, it becomes almost like an interactive radio drama, which is very popular in British culture and still around today. The developers also drew inspiration for the story from ’60s and ’70s British apocalyptic sci-fi like The Death of Grass, The Tide Went Out, and The Day of the Triffids.
Another Japanese studio that made British culture proud and wonderfully represented is Square Enix, given the direction they went with for Final Fantasy 16. It’s no secret that the game is trying to beas close to Game of Thrones as possiblewithout copying it directly, and its period setting, fantasy elements, and characters ultimately reflect what the HBO series captured.
While Game of Thrones may be a fantasy narrative, it’s heavily inspired by the medieval history of Britain, including the Wars of the Roses. It’s also so big in the UK that the Queen made trips to the sets and visited the Iron Throne.
Most of all, Final Fantasy 16’s crown achievementis the authentic British voice acting, which features a variety of regional dialects specific to the different areas in the game, like Northern folk being Geordie. The environments, locations, and naming are other clear homages to Medieval England.
