Expeditions: Conquistador

Recently I've been playing Expeditions: Conquistador which is a great turn based strategy game in which you control a small group of Spanish Conquistadors in their search for fame and fortune. It suffers from a little lack of polish, graphically, but for the most part it shines well in the dialogue and the historical sensibilities it displays. It by no means is a historically accurate game, but for the unique perspective that the time period offers there's a lot of interesting development that can come into play.

But point and center is it's approach on colonialism, or rather subjugating anything that moves. Although the question could potentially be presented as something a little more refined - historically accurate, for example - it's something that video games regularly come into. Videogames like any other media depict a variety of content, some of it controversial. But I suppose there's another question here.

Should players enjoy the variety of choice? The ability to perform as historically accurate Conquistadors? Or to break off historical semblance and side with the native South Americans?

There's a nice side-quest about mutiny interspersed in the tutorial.

Bop*

It's a difficult ting to answer as there's a certain amount of responsibility in the player's choice, but also in the range of options presented. Expeditions gets around this by providing a reason for every action, or a reward, as well as presenting a range of options which are argued for and against by the members of your Spanish expedition. In this the game gives a neutral area for ideas where nothing is presented as particularly enticing, and that all ideas are presented as rather equal. At least that's the hope of it's presentation, I think. Civilization III with it's inclusion of slaves provides much the same defense of why it can have historically unsettling aspects to it's gameplay. There isn't a blind acceptance of slavery in either game, but it nevertheless shows the effect of slavery, as well as the option to participate. Which in terms of providing a responsible history is great, but also in the realm of freedom of information makes sure to include these aspects for the player to encounter - why should it be hidden?

Last option reads "FILTHY SAVAGES KILL THEM ALL!"

There's some arguments towards the fictious nature of the game being a good platform to present a softer history of the world (if it's already altered why not alter it some more?). Towards a stronger responsibility of developers (circa Mortal Kombat). And the age old since there's an interaction in it there's more of an impact or agreement by the player (do videogames make us more violent).  Although something to be wary of here, there's not enough space (or for me personally time) to get involved in all the arguments for and against these points. But to put it simply, there's some truths you can't leave out, and players aren't that impressionable (we hope).

It seems that there's a bigger push to present these types of problems of slavery, racism, human-sacrifice, sexism, into fictional worlds, rather than to present them as realities withing videogames. Fiction sells more than truth within videogames. I mean one only has to look at the depictions of race and the surrounding dialogue in The Witcher III, Dragon Age and other RPGs to see that while developers want to deal with these sorts of issues - just from a distance.

Expeditions though seems to cut as closely as it can to the historical "truth" and difficult topics to give the best sort game around to play. Fun, smart, with a side of history, and just the right amount of respect to get it out of trouble.