TOKYO: The Middle East has not been treated particularly well by games. The problem isn’t that our medium has a tendency to depict what is a rather large, diverse region as a big battleground though that’s certainly not a good thing but that the protagonists are invariably from the West. Games set in the Middle East don’t bother giving a voice to the people who actually live there.
1979 Revolution, whatever else it ends up being, does. It’s an episodic adventure series with a fair bit of stealth and action, too that takes place during the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that ousted the last Shah, replacing the pro-Western monarchy with an Islamic theocracy. So it’s not the usual setting for an adventure game, then.
Apparently based on real testimonials, 1979 Revolution puts players in the shoes of Reza, an photojournalist in Tehran when, after two years of tension between the Shah and his loyalists and what would become the new regime, the city finds itself the stage of full-blown revolution.
It’s an undeniably bold subject for a game, and a complex one, given that the Iranian Revolution is rather unique in history. And it will be interesting to see how its subject matter is received, given the rather strong opinions that many have about the revolution, and the current strained relations between Iran and the West.
