Best Games About Revolution, Ranked

Throughout most of recorded human history, a minority of kings, dictators, and tyrants have ruled over the majority through violence, religious edict, and more recently, divide-and-conquer tactics. Oppression is, sadly, the norm, as there are depressingly few moments in the tapestry of humanity where, through blood, sweat, and sacrifice, the people have stood up and overthrown their masters.

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The desire to see justice in the world is still strong today, even with the threat of tyranny growing as the collective will to fight it falters. Nowhere is this more evident as the revolutionary themes spread across all eras of gaming. The games that made this list are not necessarily ranked by quality but by their power to deliver the experience of mass revolution via gameplay mechanics, their capacity to give players a satisfying way to punch up through story and narrative design, and their willingness to depict the good, the bad, and the ugly side of rebellion.

7

Fable 3

From Royalty And Rags To Rebellion And Riches

Systems

Released

October 26, 2010

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To Use of Alcohol, Blood, Sexual Content, Violence, Language

The Fable series is ostensibly about a family line, and by the time of Fable 3, the people decided it would just be best to put a hero in charge of the kingdom. However, sometimes apples fall far from the tree, and Albion falls under the oppressive clutches of the player character’s older brother, Logan, as the crown is passed down to him. After Logan forces the player to choose between their avatar’s love interest or innocents, the race is on to raise a rebellion and usurp Logan.

Starting a rebellion means interacting with the people, which Fable 3 at least allows in some rudimentary ways, after which the hero can count on them in the battle against their brother. However, only half of the game is about leading a revolution, as the player then takes control of the kingdom, and it turns out that Logan’s recent heel turn was motivated by something more than a thirst for power.

6

Jak 2: Renegade

Ecopunk And Orange Lightning Versus Autocracy

Action-Adventure

Third-Person Shooter

Systems

Released

October 14, 2003

ESRB

t

In one of the most dramatic tone shifts in video game history, Jak 2 drops the one-part heroic, one-part motormouth duo into a dystopian nightmare run by a brutal autocrat, Baron Praxis. After years of torture, Jak emerges darker (and mouthier) into the crumbling streets of Haven City, hungry for revenge.

The pair soon fall in with the underground and begin undermining the baron’s operations, including blowing up his armaments, battling the Krimzon Guard, and (inadvertently) destroying his statue with an eco beam. Between classic platforming and GTA-style zoomer-jacking and vehicular combat, the game takes on darker, more mature themes as the one-sided war for freedom boils over.

5

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Rome Rises Up Against The Borgia

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

Released

November 16, 2010

ESRB

M for Mature – Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence

The 1500s was a time of great upheval both culturally and technologically. Assassins in the Creed series care little for dictating how the future should look and are more like reactive agents of change, but their eternal enemies, the Templars, are fully invested in planning for humanity, even if the order they crave virtually means enslavement. In Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Ezio finds himself deep in Templar territory with his connections severed, his forces reduced to rubble, and even his old knees creaking.

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The Borgia family not only has Rome under their control but also an artifact of the Isu, a powerful tool for controlling the population. By using stealth, murder, and networking, Ezio must turn the city against the family by destroying their towers and symbols, recruiting sympathetic citizens into the ranks of the Brotherhood, and foiling the plans of the Borgia. While undermining tyrants would come later on in history, the spirit of fighting against oppression is appropriate and well-executed in Brotherhood.

4

Just Cause 3

A One-Man Flying Revolution

Successful rebellions against oppressive forces are usually the result of painstaking planning and the coordination of countless brave souls. Not so in Just Cause 3, a game about a one-man flying revolution, Rico Rodrigez, smashing up the stuff of General Di Ravello, the dictator de jour, with guns, tanks, and high explosives.

Just Cause 3 is a freeform theme park designed to empower players with the ability to cause as much havoc as possible with a grappling hook and wingsuit. While a strong story is somewhat absent, the chaotic and cathartic gameplay always takes precedence and more than makes up for the emotional hook.

3

The Saboteur

Liberating Paris One Street At A Time

Action-Adventure

Open-World

Released

December 8, 2009

ESRB

m

There is perhaps no cause with greater power to unify people of any political leaning than the brave fight against fascist forces (excluding the fascists themselves, of course). The Saboteur is a game about liberating German-occupied Paris one black-and-white block at a time.

Players take control of Sean Devlin, a mechanic, driver, parkour expert, and all-round badass as he works with the Resistance to smash the fash and put color back into the City of Lights. Once an area is freed, the noir and red filters lift, and a full spectrum of colors, free of the bleak authoritarianism melancholy, returns.

2

Tonight We Riot

Punching Back Against The System

Indie beat-em-up Tonight We Riot depicts a dystopian mirror of the real world, where billionaires have the politicians of every party paid off, the media cranking out oligarchy apologia, and workers fighting amongst each other, blind to the real source of their torment. As a result, life for the average person has become untenable as costs skyrocket, society atomizes, and the ecosystem falls apart, all to allow a group of ultra-rich psychopaths to continue making their record-breaking profits.

7:14

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Players take control of a crowd of workers united as a collective as they smash their way through agents of the system in a pixelated world doomed to permanent exploitation and ecocide, should they fail. Players must forge alliances between groups long divided by artificial differences to rebuild a more hopeful world where humanity has a chance to reach its true potential. As the uprising grows, so does its power, as every worker that joins increases the crowd’s stopping power.

1

Watch_Dogs: Legion

Everyone Plays A Part In The War Against Oppression

Released

October 29, 2020

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol

Designing gameplay for a video game about revolution can be tricky. Most games find their sales on marketing themselves as power fantasies. However, overthrowing an evil regime for actual, democratic change requires not the work of a secretive few but the consent of the many. Watch_Dogs: Legion understood this implicitly, making every single inhabitant of a corporation-occupied London a potential main character.

By uncovering a fellow Londoner’s grievances against Albion, players can recruit new members and build an uprising made up of the most diverse cast of playable characters in gaming history. Each member brings unique traits and special abilities, from the mundane (owning a personal scooter) to the marvelous (advanced hacking skills). While the game suffers from some balancing issues along with a missed opportunity to explore the relationships between recruits, the sandbox nature of the everyman recruitment mechanics makes Legion a fascinating game about collective action.

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