As Fåhraeus puts it, “You’re this despot, you don’t have to worry about pleasing your vassals in the same way. This detailed research notwithstanding, interviews here and here with the leader of the Sword of Islam project, Henrik Fåhraeus, show him parroting some hair-raising orientalist tropes, including that old bogey, Oriental despotism.
Crusader kings iii vs civ 6 plus#
On the plus side, we get to see some obscure historical actors entering the limelight, including the Marinids and Wattasids in North Africa. It is a shame that such small and interesting groups with distinctive creeds are flattened and denigrated as “heresies”: divergences from a larger “orthodoxy.” This is, indeed, a rather medieval way of looking at the world. It has, however, some weird mistakes: “Sunni Islam has two playable heresies, Yazidism and Zikrism.” Yazidism is very definitely not a sub-sect of Sunnism, or indeed a sect of Islam at all. Muslims are not presented as homogenous, but include Sunnis, Shia, and Kharijis – each of which has further subdivisions. For Once.” The reviewer lauds the game for going beyond just using Muslims as the bad guys for Europeans to beat up.Īnd I have to say, the level of detail in this game is truly impressive, as its detailed wiki makes clear. A review of the 2012 Sword of IslamĮxpansion of Crusader Kings II was given the breathless title “Play a Game as a Medieval Islamic Ruler. Think of the opening song in Disney’s Aladdin (1992): “It’s barbaric, but hey! It’s home!” Videogames are no exception: even the most nuanced, such as the Crusader Kingsįranchise (the third edition of which is coming out in a few days) reproduce nineteenth-century stereotypes. We all know that representations of Islam and the Middle East in the movies tend to be woefully prejudiced.
0 kommentar(er)
