The sjw review by eurogamer on Kingdom Come: Deliverance

[SuperNova]

DonFerrari said:

SuperNova said:

Yes?

What I'm saying is they clearly didn't want to make diversity a priority, or they would have chosen a diffrent 16 square km piece of european land. And AGAIN it's fine that they didn't.

If they wanted to tell a diverse historically accurate story, the options are there. They didin't take these options, because it didin't fit with what they wanted to do. That's ok. It has however all to do with design decisions and very little with historical accuracy.

So we are in agreement in so far as I also don't think this debate is about historical accuracy. I'm also not trying to impose anything. The only thing I am saying is that instead of using an excuse of historical accuracy 'We didn't want to' should be sufficient enough explanation.

One aside about the black death point: European cultural contact and trade with Arabs was well established by the time and it was by no means only indirect and by invasion. Heck there was a sizable enough Arab population in Spain that the Spanish King (who was technically austrian) had to establish diplomatic relationships with them, since they were the former ruling class.

Nope, again. The way it is (since it would be a very very very specific scenario for it to be historically right, but still have a female protagonist or black NPC) is that they would have to force a situation where that would be accurate... but if someone wants to tell a story using black people it would be more practical to use something from Africa history books.

You fail to see it isn't an excuse, it was a decision to portray a period.

Since you ignored my last reply to you, this is the last one I'm going to give you.

They would not have had to force anything. The historical context is there, they would just have to set their game accordingly. They didn't. Because it wasn't a priority. Those points arent really up to debate.

Games don't just 'happen'. Like you said yourself, there's concious decision making behind all of this. They made the game they wanted to make.

You're failing to see that there's tangible proof that these people existed in Europe at the time. Hence why they could be included in a 'historically accurate' game about the period. By setting it in an area that had very little contact to outside influences, the devs made a concious decision. Maybe they just really wanted to set it there, because they like the area. That does not make them racist or anything, but it does mean that the aerial setting of their game was more important to them than having diversity. See? Decision making.

Pretending like there's anything else going on here is just dishonest and would probably also make for a bad game.  They have every right to make this decision. There's no need to hide behind a flimsy argument.

Lastly, we tell stories about extraordinary people because they are interesting. That's how most of all storytelling works, especially hero stories. A game can only benefit from having an interesting cast of characters that face unique challenges.