Writers did Chen Gong dirty. They should be fired.

[Doctor Gitgud]

His character, motivations, and story arc are ridiculous and literally the opposite of what really happened.

In real life, Chen Gong sees Cao Cao murder his own family member and is so repulsed by this act that he abandons Cao Cao while he is sleeping. Cao Cao later captures him while in Lu Bu's service and offers to spare his life, but Chen Gong is of such high character that he literally chooses death before dishonor.

In the game, Koei is so desperate to make Cao Cao sympathetic to "modern audiences" that the murder is completely omitted. Instead the writers made up a fake "betrayal" subplot where Chen Gong abandons Cao Cao for Lu Bu even though in real life, Chen Gong had left Cao Cao a long time before and was never serving under him as a general the way he is depicted in the game. His rationale for this in the game is to "seek fame" and "surpass" Cao Cao, even though in reality he is disgusted with Cao Cao. Also glossed over are all of the civilians Cao Cao massacred in Xu, which provides even more moral authority to those who were fighting against him at the time.

The writers should be fired for this. The "everyone's a good guy" treatment of the three main factions is pathetic pandering to "modern audiences" and it's sad that the true story (which is much more complex and interesting) isn't being told.

[Bakamusa]

no one really care in a dw game. or any video game that based on a historical time period.

[Yian Yan]

You say real life and true story but you're talking about events that come from the romanticized novelization. Which is still a fair thing to talk about but I just want to point out that teaming up with Mr. I Betrayed And Killed My Adopted Dad, Twice isn't exactly the most noble paragon thing to do. Especially when you're doing so because of people killing their own family.

[koinzell]

history is told by the winners.
i recall the 3 kingdom novel was created by a decedent of Shu, so he probably wrote them in a better light in the novel.

ether-way, not the first time DW games rushed and simplified historic figures.
they all died a long time ago.

here's how i saw it in DW back when i was a kid, and also thought they were like that in history.

-Shu/green faction/liu bei=benevolence, the good guys.

-Wu/Red faction/Sun family=war obsessive fanatics or warlords, the bad guys.

-Wei/Blue faction/Cao Cao=evil conqueror, the bad guys.

-Yellow Turban Rebellion=overly Religious brainwashing cult that uses hallucination magic.

[Mikeblade]

Originally posted by koinzell:

history is told by the winners.
i recall the 3 kingdom novel was created by a decedent of Shu, so he probably wrote them in a better light in the novel.

ether-way, not the first time DW games rushed and simplified historic figures.
they all died a long time ago.

here's how i saw it in DW back when i was a kid, and also thought they were like that in history.

-Shu/green faction/liu bei=benevolence, the good guys.

-Wu/Red faction/Sun family=war obsessive fanatics or warlords, the bad guys.

-Wei/Blue faction/Cao Cao=evil conqueror, the bad guys.

-Yellow Turban Rebellion=Religious brainwashing cult that uses hallucination drugs.

really you thought shu where the good guys lol neither shu or wu or wei are the good guys there all trying to take over the country for there own reasons there are no good guys because no matter what the people suffer.

hell mister benevolence is not a good person either he ate some dude's wife for supper his one sworn brother fled before he could be tried for murder after he murdered someone and the other sworn brother is a rapist

[Aoitenshi]

Originally posted by Mikeblade:

really you thought shu where the good guys lol neither shu or wu or wei are the good guys there all trying to take over the country for there own reasons there are no good guys because no matter what the people suffer.

I had the same impression back then too because of how DW5 depicted things (my first exposure to the Three Kingdoms). The child me was easily impressed by the three men who swore brotherhood under the peach tree, then rose up from a nobody to gathering all the "good guys":
- Guan Yu had the chance to kill Cao Cao but decided to let him go to repay his debt.
- Zhao Yun stormed through the battlefield alone to save Liu Bei's child.
- Zhuge Liang was depicted as the most brilliant strategist who decided to choose Liu Bei after his three visits.
- Liu Bei himself was portrayed as the only leader of the three factions who cared for peasants, so much as calling them 'his country' and brought them along with him during his escape.
- Zhang Fei was portrayed as the valiant warrior who fended off an entire army by himself during said escape. (That said, I don't really like him because he was also depicted as a drunkard who couldn't control his emotion and was assassinated in his sleep by his own subordinates.)

Also, it's human nature to root for the dark horse.

[Eut]

I mean, the game purposefully avoids dark themes both in story and gameplay (lack of blood, KOs instead of kills). The writing is just bad in general especially when you consider the hypotheticals for shu (non existent), and wu (basically non existent). They can't think of any good hypotheticals and just choose to stick to the canon route while removing any dark themes along the way (its just how it is for the target audience).

I mean if you are gonna nitpick, might as well mention the whole guardians of BS the game inserted with bailuan being the main culprit of some of the characters deaths instead of their canon deaths. The whole storyline is pretty garbage and the game would be better off with a truly backgroundless character instead

[koinzell]

really you thought shu where the good guys lol neither shu or wu or wei are the good guys there all trying to take over the country for there own reasons there are no good guys because no matter what the people suffer.

yes. i did. at least from what iv experienced, they never showed the people suffer under Liu Bei. it always the fault of cao cao or other bad evil warlords.

when i was a kid, we also had this anime air on our TV. it was my first exposer to the ROT3K, DW6 was my 2nd exposer. (both the anime and DW6 ended right after the battle of chibi, so i thought it was the full complete story).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JvC65KNC64
they also depicted shu side as the good guys gathering together to protect the weak and fight in the name of justice & everyone that isn't shu(the protagonists) are the bad guys.


it was in DW7 main story is where i learned that the story is much more different and chaotic.

[Drunio]

Well, if we are going with history.

Diao Chan is a fictional character.

[Tomn]

The thing about Liu Bei is that for all that the novel likes to talk up his benevolence, if you pay attention you'll notice that he seems to spend quite a lot of time worming his way into the service of someone else and then MYSTERIOUSLY somehow ending up in control of that guy's' territory, what a coincidence! Because they're all so willing to give him control of their territory because of his incredible benevolence, of course. No other reason.

Also on that note for all that Zhuge Liang is talked up as the world's greatest strategist it's interesting that he spends so very much time trying to attack Wei and failing.

I'll note by the way that history is NOT written by the winners - or rather, it's written by whoever is influential at the time. The novel form of Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written during the Ming dynasty, a time when a Han Chinese dynasty managed to overthrow a foreign Mongolian dynasty (the Yuan, AKA the dynasty of Genghis Khan) and thus Liu Bei's narrative of "The rightful heir to the Liu throne returning from the wilderness to restore justice" was in vogue. But previous dynasties tended to prefer Cao Cao's narrative of "A wise man assembles a collection of talents and establishes good governance and a strong nation with which his heirs overawed and united the nation," which appealed to any dynasty with less bloodline legitimacy but based their rule on "We managed to unite the nation by force."

Heck, this continues on into modern times - the Communist Party of China originally preferred Liu Bei's narrative of the righteous underdog fighting for the prosperity and well-being of the people, for obvious reasons, but as the government steadily abandons any pretense to actually being a communist government in anything but name and justifying their rule based simply on "We're doing a good job making a strong and rich China," the narrative is shifting more towards "Cao Cao wasn't so bad really, he was just a wise pragmatist working to build a strong nation."

[Yian Yan]

Originally posted by Tomn:

The thing about Liu Bei is that for all that the novel likes to talk up his benevolence, if you pay attention you'll notice that he seems to spend quite a lot of time worming his way into the service of someone else and then MYSTERIOUSLY somehow ending up in control of that guy's' territory, what a coincidence! Because they're all so willing to give him control of their territory because of his incredible benevolence, of course. No other reason.
...

This. So much. It's kind of hilarious how they address that it happens in this game. Every 5 seconds Liu Bei is under a new lord who 5 seconds later dies and leaves him their land.

[Weldon]

I've been playing Dynasty warriors since DW2 on the PS2. The only part I don't skip is the battle council. I just want to slaughter thousands and hear the others sing my praises in battle.

Also kinda hard to harp on historical accuracy when the story already went off the rails with a main character that apparently gets violated by every other male character in the game.

Those points aside, I totally agree with OP. I'm tired of being force fed baby food stories all the time, I want some Steak.

[DorkSparce]

Remember, Dynasty Warriors historical accuracy is depicted based off "Romance of The Three Kingdoms" which was written by a subordinate of Liu Bei long before he founded Shu.

The other reason is because of how old the Three Kingdoms Time period is. Much of the official history of that era was lost due to how violent things were during the final years of the Han, Yellow Turban Rebellion and the original Capital Luo Yang being burned to the ground, you have to take the novel's depiction of history with a grain of salt as much of it is exaggerated. But the history of the Fall of The Han, Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Raising of Luo Yang are all historically accurate.

The only other game that give you slightly more historical accurate lore of the time period would be Total War: Three Kingdoms though it's still largely based off the novel as well.

So we can't know for certain if Chen Gong, Liu Bei or even Sun Jian being a supposed distant descendant of Zun Tzu are true or not because there stories are based off the novel.

[Tomn]

Originally posted by Phat Moist Doinks:

Remember, Dynasty Warriors historical accuracy is depicted based off "Romance of The Three Kingdoms" which was written by a subordinate of Liu Bei long before he founded Shu.

The other reason is because of how old the Three Kingdoms Time period is. Much of the official history of that era was lost due to how violent things were during the final years of the Han, Yellow Turban Rebellion and the original Capital Luo Yang being burned to the ground, you have to take the novel's depiction of history with a grain of salt as much of it is exaggerated. But the history of the Fall of The Han, Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Raising of Luo Yang are all historically accurate.

The only other game that give you slightly more historical accurate lore of the time period would be Total War: Three Kingdoms though it's still largely based off the novel as well.

So we can't know for certain if Chen Gong, Liu Bei or even Sun Jian being a supposed distant descendant of Zun Tzu are true or not because there stories are based off the novel.

This is not quite accurate I think. Dynasty Warriors is mostly modelled off the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, yes, but that was a Ming-dynasty era novel written over a thousand years after the Three Kingdoms era, which itself was largely informed by folk traditions about the Three Kingdoms period (songs, plays, etc.) prior. Said novel was very clearly fictionalized and adjusted elements for drama.

What you're thinking of, I believe, is "Records of the Three Kingdoms," which WAS written by a former Shu subordinate, but only well after the Three Kingdoms period ended, in service to the Jin dynasty that had succeeded the Three Kingdoms. Unlike Romance, it was also written specifically as a historical text rather than a novel, though like all ancient Chinese historical texts it's important to remember that Chinese historians (much like many of their ancient Western counterparts) were much more interested in finding moral lessons to present from history than strict fact - noting the ways in which this or that virtuous individual upheld the dynasty while this or that evil individual brought about its downfall. Note that this extends to a belief that heaven will punish an unvirtuous ruler by sending earthquakes and famines, so the tendency is to say "Oh, a dynasty fell? Clearly it is because the ruler lacked moral virtue as can be seen in his...let's see...ah yes, spending too much time dallying with concubines. Let's ignore the fact of generations of population growth during times of peace causing a massive expansion in the needs of government services to account for them all along with concomitant shortages of food, it's all clearly because the ruler was too horny."

Records, however, tends to be somewhat laconic - often they'll mention that a character existed and maybe did something, but left it at that. Romance on the other hand frequently expands on these minor characters to create narratives, explain their thinking, or even occasionally spins up stories out of whole cloth. Dynasty Warriors is very clearly drawing on Romance for the bulk of its storylines and characterization, but it's interesting to note that they sometimes draw on Records as well for additional trivia and to expand their character details for the lesser officers who don't get their own portraits.

I will note, going back to the whole OP, Chen Gong's entire subplot related to being disgusted with Cao Cao's ruthlessness is an invention of the Romance, and was clearly placed in order to vilify Cao Cao in accordance of with the author's pro-Shu sympathies (which in turn weren't because of his blood ties to Shu but because of the historical parallels between the Ming and the Shu, see above post) and wasn't really mentioned in the Records. In fact, in the Records, Chen Gong did in fact serve Cao Cao before betraying him to serve Lu Bu instead. So funnily enough, Dynasty Warriors may in fact be more historically accurate than Romance of the Three Kingdoms!

[Rudymeow]

According to book of the Later Han, Chen Gong did served under Cao Cao's and did backstab Cao Cao along with Zhang Miao for Lu Bu because "Now the empire is a mess, all hero have a chance, why be a little guy under Cao Cao, Lu Bu is a badass, we might have a chance if we raise our flag with him."
And at the end Chen Gong was quite badass too indeed, Cao Cao asked if Chen Gong worry about his family, and Chen Gong be like "I don't worry about my family because a hero like you won't do that, go ahead and kill me." Cao Cao tried to convince him and he refused, Cao Cao did shed a tear.
I don't think Chen Gong placed himself higher than Cao Cao in terms of moral, it just because he too want to be in power, if book of the Later Han are to be trusted.

[Rudymeow]

Also it doesn't help that according to Records of the Three Kingdoms, Chen Gong might even behind one of the mutiny against Lu Bu, tho there were no solid evidence and Lu Bu didn't believe that (or simply didn't care), if that was true we can be pretty certain all those backstabbing was about power and not about moral.