Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

King Lear is about a really messed-up family. You know what else is about a really (really) messed up family? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Okay, so Renoir isn't an egomaniacal king who banishes his one good kid after she refuses to exaggerate his glory. The other kids don't rebel against Renoir and gouge his eyes out, and he doesn't lose his sanity or have a spectacular monologue in the rain while a jester watches. And Alicia isn't hanged as a traitor like Lear's banished daughter, Cordelia. She is the family scapegoat, though, which is a pretty compelling connective thread between the two works. Anyway, Billy would've loved it.

Call of Duty

Most of Shakespeare's historical plays, like all the Henrys and the two Richards (especially Richard III), were not, in fact, that historical. The wobbly Tudor dynasty, very aware of its tenuous (technically illegitimate) claims to the throne, commissioned Shakespeare to write plays that made them and their family history look good at the expense of their political enemies. Shakespeare wrote propaganda, in other words. Call of Duty has its own complicated relationship with promoting the military-industrial complex and a certain kind of worldview, so I'm sure Shakespeare would feel quite at home here.

The Last of Us Part 2

Shakespeare scholars have argued for decades about the value of Macbeth, the tale of a Scottish noble and his wife who murder their way to the throne. The general consensus among those who dislike the play is that it offers little value for humanity, being only a study of evil and a "tale of nihilistic despair." Well, that sounds just like The Last of Us Part 2. The arguments against Macbeth often get it wrong, just like the criticisms of TLOU 2's trite cautions against revenge miss the point. Life isn't all happiness and rational behavior. If you never explore the darkest sides of the soul and what people can do when pushed to extremes, then you don't understand humanity at all.

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Shakespeare's plays occasionally dabble in magic, though usually as a thing of questionable morality (Macbeth) or something confined to the realms of whimsy (A Midsummer Night's Dream). Magic just is Tempest. It's the tale of a wizard in exile who sets up shop on an island that’s probably Bermuda (or inspired by it) after he's cheated out of his rightful inheritance. He conjures up a storm that wrecks the ship of his noble brother, who's traveling with the king of Naples and his entourage. There's a genie and all manner of enchantments and illusions; a whirlwind romance; and a benighted kingdom put to rights by the play's end. It all puts me very much in mind of Dragon Quest 11, with its noble kingdoms brought low through treachery, its mermaids, and its insistence that everything will, eventually, work out right. Granted, the themes of racism and colonialism that plague The Tempest are absent in Dragon Quest, but it did have a bigoted war crimes denier for a composer. I guess that balances out.

Crusader Kings 3

There's not really a strong parallel to any specific play here. But I imagine the man who wrote farces and the Tudor equivalent of sitcoms and screwball comedies would appreciate some of the unhinged stories you can come up with in Crusader Kings 3.