Will Anti-Semitism Be Addressed?

Story & Setting
#22

Well, in Witcher it is like that mainly because Sapkowski wrote his books that way. But some elves are also terrorists and brutal murderers in Witcher. I really liked his books because of that, being fed up with the high fantasy stereotype of elves as some kind of übermenschen :slight_smile: .

Also, jews were not exactly liked by the general christian population and there were occassional pogroms but most of the time it was not that extreme.

If there is a visit to Prague in Act II or Act III, they might just add a visit to the jewish town. Jews had their own law embedded in the law of the land, their own courts and basically semi-autonomy (the local christian and muslim rulers in Europe and middle east found out it is easier to rule over jews that way as they got the reveneue from taxes anyway and fewer disturbances) so jewish town would be quite a change.

I can imagine some jewish organizations having a problem with a character participating in a pogrom or something like that. Otherwise I don’t see how having would offend anyone (except for nazis :smiley: ) and raise any controversies that could stifle sales.

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#23

There is a very big difference between having jews and all the other ethnicities you mention. Jews have been a part of the European world ever since Diaspora and there were strong jewish communities in lots of bigger European cities during the middle ages (and pretty much until WW2). It makes no sense to have Chinese or blacks in medieval Bohemia, but if you went to Prague (and probably some other bigger cities around) at that time, the chances of encountering some jews would be quite high.

So adding jews is not “for the sake of adding jews” but because having a big city like Prague without jews would be quite unrealistic.

6 Likes
#24

Yeah yeah, I am aware of that. That’s why I wrote devs/authors. Didn’t want to generalize this that much but I think the point ist still valid. I also like the way how the normal humans are pictured in this kind of fantasy. Being absolutely standard in everything but still suppressing all the other races. Very interesting view I think :wink:

#25

Well, the point is (If I recall the books correctly) that humans breed much faster than the other races, so by the sheer numbers they were able to push them back when they arrived in the world (it is sort of mentioned that the elves did something similar to gnomes and dwarves before as all the races except for gnomes and maybe Vrans and those cat-like people who however only appear in the one story about Geralt’s parents and are probably extinct by the time when the rest of the short stories and the saga take place).

Oh, well, enough about that, it is highly off-topic :smile:

edit: I got carried away in the semicolon and lost my thread…so in order for that sentence to make sence - I wanted to say that just the gnomes (and those other two races) were actually native to that world.

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#26

Hmm… Jewish people for the win!

#28

In the period that the game occurs Bohemia became the intellectual center of Judaism. Many rabbis settled in Prague in the fourteenth century. Also Bohemia Jews showed much sympathy and supported to the Hussite.

#29

Does anybody else smell a quality Easter Egg in the local well?

1 Like
#30

This is an issue I always pondered when I was dreaming of my Crusades RPG. I swore I would include the issue in some way (I’m a software engineer by the way, so thinking about making games isn’t tooooooo far fetched), so I’m for including an anti-semitic conflict of some kind or another in the game.

The problem might be how the player is allowed to react in such a scenario. The usual options would be to help, ignore or abuse, but the latter both would be just too wrong. Having the choice taken from you or being forced to passiveness would also be bad. It’s a difficult dance, wouldn’t like to be the poor devil who writes this part.
Anyhow, it’s difficult but I’m very much for it!

4 Likes
#31

The Witcher handled choices rather well in this respect, i’d say just give someone the options someone like the character would have in real life and let the player decide.

#32

Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done,
in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.

Religion will be one of the main themes of this game. Not for the sake of it but inevitably. We want to make authentic historical game that takes place in HRE of 1403. Medieval society was die-hard religious. Church controlled many aspects of normal life, it was very powerful. It was even suffering from Papal Schism at the time and the Church was being heavily critized. People were expecting the world to end any time soon. Religious turmoil are to come soon, lutherans are just few decades ahead.

But out of curiosity. How many games tackled religion in some serious manner? I can think of only one - Honest Hearts, the DLC for Fallout: New Vegas (BTW I translated it so I have very deep knowledge about it). That’s not much and definitely not enough to call for keeing games without religious themes. So I wonder, what is it you really ask for?

18 Likes
#33

@MadSmejki

Damn straight. Religion isn’t tackled genuinely in a serious matter in games of this genre. But also, you couldn’t attain any degree of realism -without- religion. It walked (and still walks) hand in hand with politics (e.g. crusades), monarchic disputes (modern british monarchy still outlaws a catholic king/queen) and day-to-day existence of the lowest beggar to the greatest lords.

5 Likes
#34

If you are going to start adding Jews & Black people for the sake of it why not include Chinese, Indian and other Ethnic backgrounds as well as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism as well just to make sure you do not offend a whole lot of people.

Nobody is suggesting this but you. We just would like a historically accurate good human drama.

#35

Although realistically this game should include this, I don’t think it’d be worth the developer’s attention due to the issues it might create from public reception in the game and the lack of real purpose it would have in the story - since I don’t really think this game’s story is about anti-antisemitism. And if it is…well then surprise to me.

#36

That’s just the point: developers or storywriters avoid such topics, so they don’t need to fear any unpleasant consequences, because somebody feels always offended. Of course it is not easy to implement such a difficult topic in a respectful way. But somehow in movies it works fine too. Maybe the gaming industry isn’t that mature yet or isn’t seen to be that mature from outstanding people. It doesn’t have to be part of the main story or a side quest, it could just appear within the world like most actions carried out by npcs and there don’t need to be explicit statement explain the happening.
For me, it isn’t a must-have of the game, but it would be just nice that there are (maybe subtle) things which aren’t nice but makes you think about.

#37

Aw man… I think you may be in for some disappointing “Revelations”. zing

But seriously… a game set in realistic medieval Europe and you don’t want it to involve the church…like come on man… the church WAS medieval Europe.

#38

All the stuff about offending people is getting cumbersome. Just be historically accurate. If someone is offended by historically accurate, that’s their problem.

#39

Yeah except that can effect sales if it is a large number of people offended…

#40

Yeah indeed, look how bad the sales of the previous five GTA (grand theft auto) games were…

#41

That’s true as well…on the other hand making the game deliberately insensitive can also contribute to its success.

#42

If “offensive” stuff that happened in the middle ages is portrayed historically in-game, Warhorse is not in any way supporting it. Being offended by someone who is telling true, relatively unbiased, history is very immature (I’m not saying you are). By the way, GTA is not a very relevant example because it is not historical.

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