Hey; I’m playing a game called Dynasty Warriors 8, based on Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.
I’m wondering about the overarching plot. Lui Bei, Cao Cao, Dong Zhou, Lu Bu, etc. Were they all real ppl? Did these events really happen? Or it’s more like tv series Reign, a sort of “fantasy fiction” ?
Also I realize it’s a game and they’ve probably taken GREAT liberties with the source material (at least I assume great Chinese lords weren’t going into battle with attack hoops and boxing hundreds of peasants to death).
So the Good News
I have also read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and studied the history (as an amateur)
Or that AH is victim to an elaborate prank where I and professional historians am just faking this era completely. One of the two.
Bad news
TDLR: Three Kingdoms was real and most of the roster were real people, battles will tend to follow some sort of historical structure but the personalities, the way the era unfolds, the faction motivations are fictional. It leans more towards the novel rather than history and even with the novel, I think the words loosely inspired on might work rather than being accurate to the novel.
The Basics
In 190, long-running tensions at the capital exploded, the imperial in-law He Jin was assassinated by desperate eunuchs, He Jin's officers saw the chance to overthrow their political rivals (and He Jin's soldiers were furious at his death) and massacred the eunuchs (and He Jin's half-brother because why not). This left a vacuum into which stepped the long-serving general Dong Zhuo. Soon the land descended into a long-running and brutal civil war with the Han authority shattered. Eventually, as local powers were conquered, three claimants to the mandate of Heaven emerged with Emperor Xian abdicating late in 220. After a long stalemate due to terrain and resources, the land would be united under one in 284 though peace would not last long.
Our main historical source for this era is the Records of the Three Kingdoms by Chen Shou, who served in the history department of Shu-Han, as a Jin officer compiled and edited records from each of the three kingdoms. A work so good that Xiahou Zhan burnt his own history work because it wouldn't be able to compare. Later the Liu Song historian Pei Songzhi would add annotations drawn from historians of the three kingdoms era and later and writings of figures like Cao Pi that had survived. It is a well-regarded work of history, it has its biases and its flaws (Shu-Han's records department was less than ideal and they never had a major history project, it tells when you read the records) but you get that when humans write history.
Over time, with more civil wars to come and invasions from abroad, the memory of the three kingdoms was kept alive. Rulers drew comparisons and legitimacy from either Wei or Shu-Han, stories were told, plays made. From early on, people seem to have loved stories of kindly sandal weaver turned Emperor Liu Bei and his as close as brothers (with Zhuge Liang turning into a strategist) overcoming the odds of the wily powerful Cao Cao (or his representative). Guan Yu became a figure of which many works were written and who was worshipped by different religions in a tug of war for followers.
Over a thousand years after the actual war had ended, a novel came out by Luo Guanzhong called the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It took plays and fictions of the past, added some of its own and created a (mostly) cohesive narrative around the whole era. It had moral lessons, epic duels, strategies of heavenly wonder, big characters with character arcs that played out over their lives. It sold in big numbers across Asia and is a cultural masterpiece, the three kingdoms that most people know of is the Romance version, not the records.
Is the novel historically accurate? No. Characters personalities and roles change, people's death dates can either happen earlier or later, campaigns are cut, a few (only a few) fictional campaigns are added, power dynamics and attitudes are changed, fictional characters are added. For Shu vs Wei to be the main dynamic, Wu has a lot of wars cut out completely or squeezed into one chapter so the focus can be kept on the multi-chapter efforts of Shu-Han. Warfare of the romance with its duels and complex strategies are different from the historical one: weapons like Guandao hadn't been invented yet, very few duels (the Sun Ce vs Taishi Ci duel is historical) and while strategy was important, some of the novel ones would simply be impossible given the state of armies at the time.
However, in a historical campaign, the novel would usually (I say usually) follow a historical structure. Guandu sees the split of Yuan camp, early kill of Yuan officers, attack on Cao Cao's position of Guandu, Xu You's defection and Cao Cao setting fire to Wuchao supplies. Chibi sees naval warfare, Wu win early skirmishes, epidemic, chaining of ships, fire attack and chaotic retreat. Lots of details were changed, deeds swapped around or invented, lots of fiction thrown in but the structure is there and the winner was the faction that won.
Dynasty Warriors more follows the novel than the history though sometimes, like the Liang campaign for Wu was not included in the novel, it will borrow from history. It keeps novel things like Zhuge Liang's main opponent being Sima Yi, Lu Bu at Hulao Gate (or the existence of that battle at all, the novel reworked the coalition into Dong Zhuo completely), Shu's role at Chibi goes from troops under Liu Bei to Zhuge Liang at the alter.
It also does its own thing, modernizing to suit its audience of now. Each kingdom has a narrative that has almost no connection to the historical or novel self and in Wu's case, a family motif is perhaps not the best thought through (incest, killing of relatives, the crown prince affair, Sun family members wanting to surrender to Wei). Jin's theme of intellectual superiority rather ignores that Cao Shuang's regime was considered the highpoint of intellectual life in Wei thanks to philosophers like He Yan.
The Han goes from a major role in history and novel to "Cao Cao rescuing Emperor is important but now the Emperor backs him, we will talk no more about this". Meanwhile ignoring the plots, the killings, Emperor Xian's plea to Cao Cao soon after the rescue before said plots and killings. The build-up to the civil war is simplified and the use of the term warlords to help Han against the Turbans is... ignoring there were no warlords.
Like the novel, Dynasty Warriors battles will usually follow some sort of historical structure (unless borrowing from the novel and the odd "doing it's own thing"), this side won, there was a fire so get that started and so on. Just shaped around the needs of the game to ensure your officer does it or tries to prevent the event.
Leaving aside the hyperbolic presentation, which is an element of artistic licence, the franchise is based on the fictionalized and dramatized accounts found in Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, rather than the official historical records of the era found in Records of the Three Kingdoms by Chen Shou, so no, you shouldn't consider them historically accurate, even when putting aside the flamboyant presentation style. Some of the games in the series, Dynasty Warriors 7, for example, even include relative synopses of both the Romance and Records, providing a comparative lens. DW7 even provides a quiz minigame based on the Records to help you memorize them. None of which, of course, is a replacement for reading the actual history. Now as to the specifics of points of divergence (which itself is a difficult task in that each game in the series retells an adaption of Romance differently each time), and arguments as to whether even the official history is authoritatively reliable, I leave to others.