Corsica in Video Games: A Journey Through Virtual Landscapes

Video games are my great passion. They were when I was a child, and they still are today, over forty years later. Ignoring the cliché of a pastime that dulls the mind, or that of a vector of violence among the young, I find video games a formidable ground for escapism, discovery, and sensations. And also a ground for learning. How many of us have intensified our work in a foreign language in secondary school for the sole purpose of unveiling the mystery of an untranslated adventure game? Yes, my passion for the English language and my current intensive learning of Japanese owe a lot to video games (as for Italian, it is more about food and football).

Corsica in video games, a world to develop

However, it must be said that with age everything becomes more serious. Even the relationship that a player has with video games. One begins to seek new experiences, sometimes more realistic, and ends up putting together ideas that have no apparent connection, which leads to strange questions, such as how is Corsica represented in video games? From memory alone, I have been able to identify two things. Firstly, the logical presence of the Bastia and Ajaccio football teams in some editions of FIFA and/or Pro Evolution Soccer in the years when the two clubs played at the highest levels. Then there is the inevitable Napoleon Bonaparte, a figure in several strategy/management games, including the excellent Total War: Napoleon.

It is rather limited and for now does not meet the initial request, namely the representation of Corsica as a land. Like Assassin’s Creed 2 for instance, which paid tribute to Italy all the way to Monteriggioni. Or Shenmue, which imprinted the image of a street in Yokosuka on millions of minds. So I asked myself if it was possible to travel to Corsica through video games? Some research led me to two relatively current titles. Two experiences of the same family (the simulator) but with a significantly different approach. They are Microsoft Flight Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2. So, while we wait for the release of a hypothetical Total War: Pasquale Paoli, I took a look at Corsica through the eyes of the developers of these two video games.

Euro Truck Simulator 2: more fun than realistic, but very enjoyable

Let’s talk about the older of the two games, Euro Truck Simulator 2. Available on PC and first released in 2012, this truck driving simulator is a true benchmark in its genre. It might seem strange to think that people play video games to faithfully reproduce a serious professional activity, but it has been a very popular genre for many years now. There is something relaxing about this type of game. An institution in Germany, the “Simulator” genre has now found a place worldwide, and Euro Truck Simulator 2 is certainly one of the architects of this success. Over the years, the game has seen a series of expansions, with the addition of new countries, roads, and trucks, finally arriving in Corsica in 2019.

Corsica is now available for those who own the game and the expansion called… Vive la France! We don’t always get what we want, don’t we? The game takes inspiration from the island to offer kilometres of roads, mainly along the coast and a few main interior routes. It is possible to drive through Bastia, Ajaccio, Porto Vecchio, Calvi, Isula Rossa (L’Ile Rousse), and Bonifacio. Although Euro Truck Simulator 2 does not offer a faithful reproduction of the roads and places crossed, it manages, as in every other place in Europe, to capture the essence of the atmosphere, the specific characteristics of the roads, and the small visual elements of the landscape that make us feel like we are in the place where we should be. It is a real pleasure to travel the island’s roads at the wheel of a truck.

Here’s a video published at the game’s release by the publisher/developer SCS Software that gives a good idea of Corsica in Euro Truck Simulator 2. Special mention to Aleria!

Microsoft Flight Simulator: Corsica from the Sky is Magical (and so is the Rest of the World)

Coincidentally, Microsoft launched Flight Simulator on PC and Xbox Series X|S in 2020. Releasing a new edition of the greatest video game journey in history during the pandemic year is, we must admit, rather… uncanny. But perhaps this is precisely what added a bit of magic to the Flight Simulator experience, given the impressive nature of the flight simulator developed by the French company Asobo Studios. It must be said that rarely has a video game provided such a realistic view of the world, with the feeling of actually being there. From the very first minutes of gameplay, we obviously wanted to fly over Corsica from north to south. And even if the island doesn’t boast the advanced level of detail that the developers have dedicated to the most famous destinations in the world, the result is no less impressive.

We tried it all. Flying from Bastia to Ajaccio, from Calvi to Figari. Then we admired the island’s contours starting from the airports of Pisa or Olbia. Another reason to regret is that there are still no real air links between these cities and Corsica. Flight Simulator has mapped the world with varying degrees of accuracy (some data is not updated for a few years) and offers a real feast for the eyes, even in areas where we least expected it. It is worth noting that the game is based on real meteorological data recorded over the past months/years, so the experience can be enjoyed from different angles. Even though it’s just a video game, I must admit that I was moved when I flew over my village and the rest of the valley.

Flight Simulator is simply the pinnacle of virtual travel and offers a truly real sense of well-being. We invite you to take a look at some fragments of this experience through a video discovered on YouTube that shows a flight from Rome to Ajaccio, Bastia, and Pisa. The video is divided so you can select directly the passages related to one area or another.

This concludes our brief journey through Corsica via video games. If you think of any titles we haven’t mentioned (or even some mods) that are worth discovering, feel free to send us an email!

–

The original version of this article (which I authored) is available in Italian at this address.