Incredible...

[Danosh32]

How culturally insensitive some people are. Now I am not normally this sensitive but the premise of this game is incredibly racist and ignorant. The Conquistadors or Conquistadores where the scum of Spain shipped off to the New World to literaly rape and pillage without any consideration for human life. Read about Pizarro and Cortes and what they did to the native tribes of Central and South America, they treated them as sub-humans. These scum of the earth wiped out centuries of culture with disease and warfare for gold to cart back to the disgustingly corrupt Spanish monarchy.

Making a game like this is similar to making a game where you can be an early settler in the U.S and you are either allowed to "make diplomatic ties OR crush the pagan Apache!" Yes crush the native american tribes, I am pretty sure that game wouldnt go down well in the states these days.

Or maybe make a game where you can be a Nazi and crush some jews if they dont comply.

Again, I've never posted like this about a game, but being originally from Peru and knowing a little about what the conquistadores did to the Americas I find this game incredibly insensitive and I hope you dont support it.

The Jews, Africans and the North American Indian tribes weren't the only people that suffered under the hands of ignorant Europeans.

[WillieWonkaSauce]

OBviously you haven't played the game, it is nothing like you describe. The game is tastefully done and does NOT paint the natives as mindless savages and evil pagans. And you don't play some whacked out Spaniard looking to cleanse Mexico/Hispanola. You have choices in game on how you act. As you could probably tell if you have read what anyone has posted that has played the game.

And they routinely make games where you have to kill off people to win, ever play a Total War game? Or any historical RTS or TBS game? This game gives different peoples a ton more credit than those do because you can side with them and treat them like humans instead of just killing them.

[Xara]

Oh look. It's this thread again. With an OP who is ignorant or trolling.

[Danosh32]

Sorry but you're clearly not getting my point. I dont care whether you can be a nice Conquistador or not, the reason that there's a game about it is my problem. I am sure you could be a nice Nazi, or a nice African slave trader. Yes I am not denying that there are plenty of historical games out there, but not about Nazis killing jews for example. Its called being culturally sensitive.

Plus this sentence "Forge diplomatic alliances with the natives... or crush the savages and bring civilization to the pagan tribes!" straight from the game abstract. Crush the savages....is clearly NOT tasteful.

And no why would I buy the game support the developers and play it if I though the whole point of it was wrong.

Look you won't get it and that's the problem.

Answer this simple question, if there was a game where you could be a Nazi, good (if that's at all possible) or not and either help or kill jews? To clarify, yes you had the option to kill jews. Would you support that game?

Because this is pretty much the same thing.

[Danosh32]

Also change the game title to Expeditions : Nazis and you'll see what my point is....

[Crosswind]

Get over yourself. This game doesn't glorify the past, in fact, if anything it sugarcoats it way too much. It offers far too many ethical and politically correct choices to the player that realistically would not have been commonplace in the period. And don't even get me started on having female soldiers in the game. The reality is that these things happened, and if you want to censor that, then you're just as bad as they were. Rewriting history to fit some biased worldview or agenda does a great disservice to us all and no one will ever learn from past mistakes if people are too cowardly and immature to let it speak for itself.

[Skull Punch]

Empire total war - Europe takes over North American killing off indians, Age of Empires 3 kill indians, red dead redemption kill off mexicans etc.. Thats just a quick 3 games that were pretty big sellers. There are tons of games about genocide out there, wars, murder etc..

[Big Boom Boom]

You obviously haven't played Colonization. No, not the new one, the original one, the classic one, one of the most universally well received Strategy games that Sid Meier has ever made.

[Amycus]

So, THIS game isn't ok because you have the OPTION to play as the conquisitors were historically through text messages, but this scene that FORCES the player to do this below (short of shutting down the game) is ok?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z44VWLOvQJk

Originally posted by Danosh32:

Answer this simple question, if there was a game where you could be a Nazi, good (if that's at all possible) or not and either help or kill jews? To clarify, yes you had the option to kill jews. Would you support that game?

If it actually made me think WHY I'm making these choices, yes I would. That would actually even be a GREAT idea, since it would show how easily something like Nazi Germany could happen again if we don't remember our history. Unless of course you think that Germans simply are inherently evil, it was of course due to propaganda, and social pressure. Ever seen the movie "the wave"?

Even in this game I was aiming to play "as I would have in real life" - and that was hard. It happened that I did some choices that I otherwise would never have done, due to the social pressure from the NPCs that expects you to do something else. Or simply because the "good" choice hurts yourself significantly, like leading to a much tougher fight.

[elfypooh]

Danosh32, first of all, this is a game. Second of all, it is an RPG and from what I've heard you can make multiple choices.

Don't be afraid of the past and don't try to censor it. Movies that portray history incorrectly, in my opinion, do far more damage. Also, if you try censor something, you will undoubtedly fall prey to your own words and become a hypocrite.

[Danosh32]

I am not afraid of the past, I am very aware of the past, I just think that its a tad insensitive to make it a GAME. The fact that some people would take the option of being Nazis and kill jews is disturbing to me.....

[Amycus]

Originally posted by Danosh32:

I am not afraid of the past, I am very aware of the past, I just think that its a tad insensitive to make it a GAME. The fact that some people would take the option of being Nazis and kill jews is disturbing to me.....

That depends on how it is being handled. There is a huge difference if a game has an extra highscore for every jew killed, and another that tries to emotionally show you the madness of it.

[elfypooh]

The only reason why there isn't a Nazi game like your describe is because WW2 is still recent history. I also think it is a tad bit insensitive but at the same time, for whome this is directed to, I dont think Native Americans care about this game?

They'll always be people who choose to be the bad guy in games, but I prefer them being bad guys in the games, not in real life.

[Danosh32]

Anyway, enjoy your game and hopefully it teaches players a little about what the conquistadors REALLY did to the Americas and doesn't glorify them....scum of the earth...

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by Danosh32:

Expeditions : Nazis

If it was made with the quality of this game, I would totally buy that.

Let me give you an example why:

After I finished the first campaign (Hispaniola), I decided to wander around to stock up on supplies and explore a couple of corners of the map which I hadn't yet gone to.

In one little corner, I encountered a small band of native merchants. They were too scared of me, so they didn't want to trade. I was offered the choice to leave them alone or attack.

Now, up until that point in the game, I'd played the "good guy", siding with the natives when possible, etc. But at this point, since the "story" part of the campaign was over and I was just going around for supplies, I was in "game mode" mentally (that is to say, my focus had shifted from a role-playing one to a mechanics/acquisition one).

So I attacked them. To see what would happen.

After killing off the merchants' armed escort, I realized that there were two civilians left on the map, and that I had to kill them as well. By this point, I had already decided I would be reloading a previous save once the battle was over, but I decided to finish off what I started just to see what would happen.

Honestly, it made me feel ill like no game has ever done before. Mechanically, from a purely binary and gaming-related perspective, attacking those merchants and stealing their loot was by far the best decision; I got xp, resources, gold.

But as a player, I couldn't bring myself to do that, so I reloaded. I've been playing video games for many years, and I've -never- encountered one that's succeeded in making me back away from an in-game reward purely for how it made me feel as a person--outside of the game--as well as this one. I think that really says a lot about how Logic Artists has handled the setting.

So, if there was a similar game where you played Nazis instead, would I support that as well? Absolutely. I would love the opportunity to play something else that could elicit such a strong emotional response from me as a gamer and as a human being; that's something you just don't see enough in games, IMHO.

Plenty of games give you "moral choices", but they rarely (if ever) actually mean anything. They're just a game mechanic, but they fail to make you -feel-. In this case, there was no "moral choice" mechanic, but simply by how the encounter was presented, I was faced with emotions I've never felt in a game before.

Can you play Expeditions: Conquistador as a conquering, racist ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that just goes around killing everything that moves? Sure. But I don't see that as being any different from... well, almost any other video game.

But you can also choose not to follow that path (even if the game is not very historically accurate in that respect), and this, honestly, is where this game really shines and stands out for me.

[Dax__B]

Originally posted by Danosh32:

Answer this simple question, if there was a game where you could be a Nazi, good (if that's at all possible) or not and either help or kill jews? To clarify, yes you had the option to kill jews. Would you support that game?

Because this is pretty much the same thing.

You are being hypocritical. You yourself support games which let you play as German forces during the war.

Does it bother you while you are playing?