I just had a look at the original version of Filthydelphia’s Temujin level, as it was brought up that the Xi Xia and Jin are in it and it might hold clues.
And as it turns out, there are some things to note.
The notes about the Xi Xia in the original mentioned that they were once Tibetan nomads, and have now settled. This line of text has been changed to no longer mention the Tibetans (I will get to my thoughts at the end).
Meanwhile the Jin have overall had their passage trimmed, to say that they conquered settled peoples rather than conquering the Chinese specifically. Now, this is true, as the Jurchens defeated the Khitans to take northern China, not just the Chinese.
But, that’s not all. The Tatars have had their text changed as well, to go from calling the Xi Xia and Jin Chinese kingdoms, to calling them settled peoples. Even the hints section has all mentions of the Xi Xia and Jin being Chinese scrubbed, and replaced with “settled peoples”.
Now, what does this mean? Initially, it looked like the devs were avoiding mentioning China being conquered, but then I saw the Tatar changes (keep in mind, not all text was changed. The Naiman, Merkids and Khamag for example have had none). So every change here was clearly for a purpose, and not to just smooth out sentences that perhaps didn’t flow as well.
It seems that specific mention of China and Tibet was altered respectively. But the big one is that calling the Xi Xia and Jin Chinese was removed. I’m not saying this is a smoking gun…but this is very interesting. I feel much more confident that a Chinese DLC is coming, and that the Tanguts and Jurchens will be part of it, and possibly the Tibetans and Khitans as well.
Let’s get onto the monk in the room, the Xi Xia change in mentioning Tibet. This I feel can go three different ways.
1 - My theory about the devs holding back a China-set DLC until after the Spring was correct, and they were being cautious.
2 - Tibetans are being added, and so are the Tanguts. So mentions of them as the same were removed.
3 - Tanguts are being added, but Tibetans are thought to be a hot topic, and are being avoided wholesale.