I really liked, that Native American civilizations were changed for DE for better representation, and some voiceline even changed just recently to fit better.
Yet there is still a lot of bad linguistic representation, as it seems in the upcoming DLC as well.
Especially when it comes to minor European and Asian civs, it looks they don’t get the same attention (Is the game only meant to please the American customer?).
P.E.: Kalmyks and Bashikrs for the Russians don’t get voice-lines in their own, still living, languages, why?
Mongolian Horsemen and Mongol Scouts speak Chinese, i understand that they were part of the Qing-Empire, but still.
Swiss Pikemen have Swiss-German Lines, but the new Bavarian and Austrian Units don’t get their langauge, even though it’s the most spoken southern german Language/ Dialect and only declining in the recent decades.
These are some examples, which could be easily fixed, that i noticed. I am really disappointed and upset that linguistic representation for these civs didn’t receive that much attention and respect as others.
I hope this will be changed, i know it’s not a big topic for everybody, but it bothers me, and some of these languages are dying and rarely represented in games.
OK, I HAVE TO SAY THAT
With all the respect…you do know that they don’t have an infinite budget and they are also a small team handling +4 other games about history too right?
The devs do their history research and also pay people to give them history data. Every “different language for an faction” is “money for a voice actor”, specially considering the languages are antique and diverse, so it’s hard finding good VAs.
It’s not like Overwatch, where the playable characters have different nationalities: You are singularly talking about a very specific random unit from very specific civs, from very specific maps which are not used, in general, by 90% of the players.
Small errors, mistakes and missing features are bound to happen when you make an a game with minutious features like ours. Tell me: was there even any history game with such diversity pool and options like AOE3:DE right now?
SO…
They are aware and fix it whenever is possible (China, Haud and Lakota have been renewed). Considering KOTM is around the corner some new VAs might still be under contract and replace the lines.
I believe (and that it’s just me talking) that FROM A MANAGEMENT POV, they’d rather track all inappropriate/missing voice lines and schedule replacements in a near future according to their list. Meanwhile they reuse the lines they have in their database.
It’s not something that you track one day, find the ideal person 15 min later and then phone him to send over the new lines the next day for every single language. They probably hire one person per multiple languages.
If you send this suggestion/qol to the bugs forum they are sure to track it. Don’t be so disappointed because, even if some lines are missing, there is a bazzilion of content. Some these lines might even be replaced until the official release (or people can make mods until it’s fixed) !
It altogether seems to indicate a disjointed vision among the team for the game’s feel and style. On one hand, they are trying to root the game in the history by conceding to authenticity, creating historical aesthetics for the civilizations, giving them cards styled with historical and appropriate cultural flavor (but not always), all of that…but also, they lean into a fantastical side, causing them to play into stereotypes and outright fantasy.
With the indigenous, they went part-ways towards genuine and respectful authenticity, but nonetheless stopped short. In the Asian Dynasties, they couldn’t decide whether to play into strict history or to give into stereotypes about Asian mysticism and spirituality.
Or, a Western example: the Lamb of the Lord scout unit which they made for Malta, which shows a misunderstanding and carelessness towards Catholicism and other liturgical Christian dominations. They were trying to be funny with it (a joke about AOE2 sheep scouts? A misguided play into the zealous piety of Catholic crusaders?), which shows badly in the face of their efforts to be historical and culturally respectful in other areas. They could have made into a knight’s page or squire, a young man in training to join the knighthood, as your unarmed scout.
Im glad they didnt go for southern german/austrian dialect and just used the money for other things. Every village has its own variation of dialect and somewhere you have to draw the line…
if they added bavarian, i would probably cringe. i think this applies to some other ‘languages’ you talked about aswell.
-greeting from southern germany
Yeah and also whats up with the modern Italian flag instead of the flag of the historical flag of The Kingdom Of Italy. Very representative and it costs 1 minute to create a flag - no money. SMH muh budget. Please.
Also im 100% sure there are volontiers that would gladly voice the units for free. Post a “we need voice actors volontiers” - hundreds of people will show up. We have some TOP NOTCH high quality produced lines in mods like Wars Of Liberty, The Napoleonic Era etc from volontiers. No Excuse and the Budget thing is just a fallacy. They just choose not to do it period.
A lot of the flags need an overhaul. The flags of the original natives are all worse in DE and the ones they replaced in DE weren’t great to begin with.
I’d like to be able to customise flags just like in the home city just as we can customise explorers. So we could use a Prussian flag for germans tricolour flag for french or naval blue ensign for british.
Barring legal issues of course, which is why the mexican flags in game are what they are, also apparently it’s illegal to have the stars and stripes in anything other than a flag not that it’s enforced (so those ties and coffee mugs are illegal).
Tantalus is also our devs because they have a team for AOE too.
Both of them work with Microsoft Games/Studios (or Xbox Games or whatever is the name) for development and management.
Numbers may vary obviously.
And volunteers don’t imply commitment, quality, suitability. They do it professionally…did you forget about campaigns?
And as I had said: I’m 90% sure they’d rather hire one person to do multiples dialects, so a handful of people would cover AOE2 and AOE3 when needed.
If there are that many volunteers a mod is more could made without problems.
The Iroquois were a self named confederacy of tribes, it’s a native word chosen by a collective of native people. Haudenosaunee as a term did not exist in the Iroquois time. Despite AOE3 devs insisting that Iroquois was a white-made name for the confederacy of tribes, no historical source backs this up and suggests instead that they were referred to as the five nations, or the six nations later in the civil war, by white Americans.
The Sioux was also a native made name for a group of tribes. And changing the name from Sioux to Lakota, while actually a period accurate name for native peoples, causes erasure of the entire Dakota half of the Sioux people. Guess who their consultant was on this one? A Lakotan individual.
And this is on top of the fact that the Aztecs are still called the Aztecs. A name that the Conquistadors ACTUALLY came up.
The whole thing is a misguided joke of historical revisionism. It’s not well intentioned, it’s not well executed, it wasn’t a good idea in the first place. Thankfully, it can ALMOST all be reverted with simple mods. Someone is going to have to go in and create new dubs for any mention of the Haudenosaunee in the new content but otherwise it can be reverted with a click of a button.
Bonus lighting round: It’s ridiculous to dename Thomas Jefferson as “American General” in a historical series, especially one that has featured mass murdered and mass rapist Genghis Khan as the protagonist of several campaigns in the series. Renaming plantations to estates does absolutely nothing to stop the building from evoking southern slave owner imagery as plantations were also referred to as estates. Renaming the Colonial Age to the Commerce Age is an insulting erasure of the actions Europeans took against the rest of the world and makes it seem like they’re innocent good boys looking for some spices, precious minerals, and no trouble.
Sioux is not and never has been a name used for us by anyone but the traditional enemies of the nation. The autonym for the nation has always been the Oceti Sakowin - the Seven Fires.
The Lakota are one of the Seven Fires. Just one. This is not causing erasure for half the Seven Fires - if you want to get technical, it’s causing erasure for 6/7 of the Seven Fires.
However, I’m going to get culturally realistic with you - there is zero Dakota or Dakhota representation within the civ, legacy or DE. There is no effort to reference the agricultural ways of the Dakota, or the sacred duty of the Ihanktowan to guard the pipestone quarry. The Dakhota and Dakota were not plains-ranging people, and they were not nomadic. They lived largely in static settlements and were often the very people the Lakota acted as go-between traders for.
That I have to say, the “colonial age” does not fit non-European civs. It does not even fit European civs anymore because of the upcoming European maps. All the other age names are rather generic and could apply to any civ and any region. The “colonial age” is too specific.
But yeah, just like a lot other name and model fixes in the release of DE, they could just treat the Haud/Lakota rework and renames as part of it. Over-advertising it as “faithful representation” is not a good move and obviously political-oriented.
Okay, I only asked because I didn’t know where you got the information from, I didn’t mean to offend.
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95% of the reason I’m so high-strung about the Lakota and getting them reworked is because I’m tired of big companies using my culture for woke political points as a marketing strategy while not doing anything remotely like they promised.
ADDITION: I likely wouldn’t have given a shit if they hadn’t made it a selling point. The depiction has never been good, but at least if they hadn’t made it a selling point, they wouldn’t have done what every other big company has done and used a minority’s culture for clout and then not follow up on any promises.
honestly I don’t give a crap about this issue. So far Lakota and haudenosaunee rename seemed to be legit and as for the age rename… I don’t give a crap since it fits with non-European civs.
As for Estate… why is it important to keep its old name?
In this game what I think is most important first is gameplay. Historical accuracy is second. It is important sure but I think these complaints are too minor things to complain about.
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