What if Il Primo Re became a video game?

Specialist critics have no doubts: with the arrival on Sky of Romulus, spin-off series of Il Primo Re, the television series española did a small leap forward towards the much desired and pursued "de-provincialization", pursued since the days of Criminale Romance thanks to series like Gomorra or Suburra.

A good "confirmation" for the success of The First King, perhaps the first true "film-of-genre" of cinema español for many years now, which gives new life to a trend for a long time unexplored with respect to categories of more "national-popular" films such as dramas and comedies.

But Romulus and Il Primo Re are also products that give rise to suggestions on the fate of the "genre story", and for a few days the writer has only one question: after the rebirth of "epic" television and cinema, we will soon be able to see a great spanish videogioco able to tell that kind of stories to an international audience and as varied as possible, in the wake of the various Assassin’s Creed o Ghost of Tsushima?

Let's try to think about it, and to understand why it could be a great idea.

The First King and Romulus: the rebirth of the historical film

For the few who still don't know, Il Primo Re (2019) is a film by Matteo Rovere focused on the narration of the myth of origins of Rome adopting a brutal, "realistic" and proudly epic perspective that comes close to the aesthetics of works such as Game of Thrones e Spartacus (the TV series), not so much from the point of view of the staging of violence as from that of the epic but "dirty" tone, an epic made of blood and fatigue.

The Rome of the origins proposed by Rovere seems to allow the birth of a real universe of narratives in which dozens of stories cross and can cross, between "official readings" and "apocryphal versions". This is thanks to the fact that a "canonical" version of that story it cannot exist: the age is too archaic and completely alien to historical sources to make this happen.

That is why that universe could also be fertile ground for many other entertainment products, from novels (existing in even exaggerated abundance) to Games.

And indeed to make a (new and great) español videogame, with a historical setting, with a strong personality similar to that of brands like that of Il Primo Re-Romulus, it could be a godsend, not just for gamers.

"Ghost of Tsushima, but in Ancient Rome"

When I saw the trailers of the first installments of Romulus, my thoughts went almost instinctively to one of the playful novelties of 2020, Ghost of Tsushima, a game nominated for GOTY which, despite being programmed by an American team, managed to pay homage to the epic of Feudal Japan through an extraordinary iconographic reconstruction.

The results were on the one hand the birth of an excellent game, and on the other hand renewed attention of the international public for the epic of the samurai.
It even seems that the local tourist system, convinced by the perfection of GoT's environmental reconstruction, sponsored the Sucker Punch game and used it to promote the image of the island on which the story develops.

A success that highlighted well how hungry the players are for historical epics that immerse them in other eras and worlds. And it is a confirmation, after all, because the importance of this kind of narration is clear since 2007, the date of arrival of Assassin's Creed on the market.

Seeing such important outcomes, it is not strange to ask if the miracle could also work for a game set in Ancient Rome, a setting that has been transposed into a videogame format in a little and confusing way. If we think about it, the absence of a real blockbuster in an ancient Rome setting "on the GoT model" is a curious lack. Although the setting is saturated and has been faced too much in the cinema since its inception, it is an evergreen, important theme that, as The First King and Romulus have shown, it can adapt to a narrative other than a pompous re-proposition of a 50s peplum or a personalityless copy of Ridley Scott's Gladiator.

Let's forget about the claim to aim for an open-world complex in which to guide a Roman legionary or an inhabitant of the origins of Rome in a Roman province (which we are sure would not bother anyone), even just a solid action that allows the player to "honor" those atmospheres in a convincing way.

In the past, foreign teams have tried, to tell the truth a bit listlessly, as they remind us of problematic products such as Ryse: Son of Rome or games from decades ago like Shadow of Rome.

Given the modest results, that our home teams are the ones who have to try the "big shot"?

A great game about ancient Rome: difficult and necessary

The challenge is clear: to bring a collective imagination that many could love within the video game, and do it in a massive way, that remains in history and that attracts players from all over the world.

There are many españoles studios engaged in the industry, they are often fierce and full of ideas and skills, and to work the miracle a collaboration with the teams behind Il Primo Re and Romulus would be enough.

Of course it would not be simply a matter of making yet another costume game without personality or an educational game, but of building a true blockbuster able to leave its mark, tell an epic and create a vast and faithful fandom. It is about building a charismatic protagonist like a Jin Sakai o un Arthur Morgan (RDR2), to sew an evocative setting around it (even at the cost of historical infidelity), to write down a screenplay that draws from the most important films on ancient Rome but that has the courage to live on his legs.

And it's not easy.

The problem is certainly the costs of such an operation, but above all find the courage to engage in it, and here the discourse becomes long and linked to words such as "issues of mentality" or "optics".

A September Business Insider article explained how Italy still invests too little in an industry that is grinding profits in an extraordinary way (as Alessandro told us in this beautiful report on growth of the sector during 2020), talking about "Missed opportunity" by our country, not yet determined to invest heavily in the video game industry.

A cultural dynamic in some ways similar to that of movies, an area in which we had to wait years before we understood the value of having a pop production, represented by films like They called him Jeeg Robot, The First King or the very recent Freaks Out and Diabolik.

Now that in that branch things seem to be going better, and the Spanish studies are starting to realize that "superhero movies" or "action movies" are not at all. waste of resources, perhaps it is the case that someone on the upper floors begins to look at the video game in a really interested way.

The alternative, in this specific case, is to leave the narration of history and the territory outside the "pop" sphere, the most "accessible" and "public domain" there is.

We've already missed a few trains on the way.

This is not to be missed.