I never intended to mainline the entire sweep of human civilization on a Tuesday night, but the Gaming subreddit had other plans. User ucankabak posted a sequential timeline of more than 20 games that starts before written history and ends after humanity has properly embarrassed itself, and I decided to follow it like a caffeinated time traveler with a save-state problem. Even in 2026, the timeline still circulates like a digital fossil with excellent taste. The result was less a history lecture and more a historical fondue pot: dip in a crusade, a shogun, a plague rat, and a rogue android, then see which existential flavor sticks to your brain.

Of course, the easy move would have been to drop Spore or Civilisation on the list and call it a day. That would not have been a particularly interesting post, and frankly my attention span appreciates the chaos. Instead, the timeline treats Assassin's Creed like connective gristle between historical eras. Revolutionary Paris, Ptolemaic Egypt, Ancient Greece—if Ubisoft has visited a century, there is probably a haystack with my name on it. It is the closest thing gaming has to a time machine where you can parkour through an ill-advised assassination instead of just reading about it.

Prehistory is represented by Far Cry Primal and Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, which means I spent several hours being hunted as often as I hunted. My caveman died more times than a mayfly at a bug zapper convention. There is a special kind of humility in realizing your ancestors survived sabertooth cats while you cannot survive your own poor jump timing. This section is basically an ancestral panic treadmill: climb, flee, eat, repeat, and occasionally discover fire before a giant owl erases your lineage.

Then we hit the Medieval period with A Plague Tale: Innocence, where I learned that rats are not just unpleasant subway roommates but can become a biblical nightmare if provoked. On the non-Western side, Ghost of Tsushima gives you honor, wind, and sword duels, while Yakuza gives you organized crime and surprisingly emotional karaoke. The list unwittingly reveals how much game settings overrepresent America and Western countries. Japan is one of the few Asian societies getting substantial time in the spotlight, though at least it gets to show up for both historical drama and modern neon chaos.

There is also a cultish mention of 2009's The Saboteur, an action adventure from Pandemic Studios set in Nazi-occupied France. This game is like a Raymond Chandler hangover with a resistance fighter's moral compass: part noir, part color-drained art direction, part 'please stop driving into that checkpoint.' I respect its inclusion because deep-cut historical games deserve more love than the blockbuster franchises usually allow.

Moving into more modern times, Red Dead Redemption 2, Mafia 3, and GTA 5 suggest that crime is a permanent side quest of human society. They also taught me that punishment and regret are often the real final bosses. One minute you are bonding with your horse, the next you are contemplating the moral weight of a heist while the wanted system hums in the background like a judgmental refrigerator.

From the present onward, the timeline becomes science fiction, which is either prophecy or a warning depending on how much cyberware you currently want installed. Detroit: Become Human and Cyberpunk 2077 show tech-augmented humans wrestling with identity, inequality, and the eternal question of whether glowing eyes improve your personality. Then Outer Wilds dreams of a spacefaring race and turns the universe into a resetting museum of curiosity. Finally, Horizon Zero Dawn offers an ominous future where humanity had to reboot because we wiped out much of modern civilization through hubris and unseen technological ramifications. In short, the game says: 'Congratulations on the robot dinosaurs. You earned them by breaking everything first.'

Playing this timeline back-to-back is like trying to fill a swimming pool with a thimble while the past keeps firing history facts from a leaf blower. You will not retain every date, but you will feel the weird continuity of human appetites: violence, exploration, ambition, rebellion, karaoke, and the stubborn refusal to stop building things that can explode.

Let's hope crime, dystopia, and assassins are not the only fate of humanity. But as long as those things stay in the safe fictional worlds of video games, I am happy to keep pressing the button that makes history look cool. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to ice my thumbs and apologize to my ancestors for how badly I represented them in the Paleolithic. 🎮🧠