Expeditions: Rome demo out

It bothers me to no end that the first NPC you come across pronounces “centurion” as “kenturion”.

edit: And the second NPC is apparently “Gaius Julius Kaesar.” Wonderful.

Ah, so pronouncing them correctly then. :p

Prekisely.

I’m glad it’s finally historical accuracy’s turn for once. Far too many years of Brutii and Scipii. :)

Yup, I just fact checked it, and in ancient Rome they spoke English but pronounced consonants weird. Historically accurate! Can’t wait to find out if it’s visually stunning and fun as well.

This trailer for it made me laugh:

So did this news about the developer:

That is too and really. I really enjoyed the demo for this. It felt like they were hitting their stride for this series.

I think I’ve finally come around to agreeing with Tom on the use of Rome as a setting in games.

I know what an NFT is but what is an NFT game and why would I want to play one? If the game play isn’t there, I’m certainly not going to care about any game related NFT’s, whatever those are.

I assume the idea is that the player will ‘own’ an NFT which they then use as a unique avatar/character in the game.

Aaaaaah crap. Well, I guess they’re following the opportunity to make money (NFTs being the novelty, there’s money to be had in that “field”), but that doesn’t make me very confident that the game will have proper post-launch support, which makes me less inclined to buy the game and/or support them.

It’s sad, really. Understandable, at a certain level - making a living making games isn’t exactly easy, and it’s hard to pass a chance to make some big bucks even if it’s with something as terrible as NFTs - but sad. Sigh.

Thats my thought as well - I was about to purchase it today, but I think I’ll wait…

You jest, but this is a recurring conundrum when using ancient languages in modern media - how to pronounce and present it to the viewers.

I recall in one of the early seasons of Vikings, when the Vikings arrive on an English beach, and they have the actors speaking 2 different languages, both subtitled in English, to represent the lack of understanding.

I thought it was very well done, can’t vouch for the accuracy though obviously.

Less well done imho was a scene from Spartacus with the Germanic gladiators all speaking what to my ear was pretty normal German lol.

And there is the ongoing challenge of reconstructing pronunciation. Afaik the main technique scholars use is to analyse known linguistic drift (i.e. that which can be proven) such as the divergence in English and German over pronouncing Apple/Apfel. Apparently they were the same word once, but in Britain we ended up emphasising the P and in Germany it softened to a pf sound.

Similar stories with gut/good, one/ein etc.

And then extrapolate that backwards to reconstruct an ancient language.

Now I see a big problem there with something like Latin, in that the descendant languages, although clearly related, often have very different pronunciations, so which thread to follow backwards? Italians don’t sound anything like Portuguese!

So, kudos to a studio for even hazarding a guess at latin pronunciations.

One of the few shows I’ve seen, that has actually tried using real latin, was Barbarians, a german show about Romes foray into Germania.

A great example is here

In classical Latin we have a large enough body of work remaining to be able to use direct sources as well to derive how it was pronounced. For example, common misspellings indicate a similarity of sound between the swapped letters.

But did they or did they not all have British accents?

If they’re evil, yes.

image

Been curious about this show. I know it wont be as amazing as Rome, but I am craving something like it.

I enjoyed it well enough and it’s not a huge time investment to get through the one existing season.

So, the Expedition Rome PC game; I’m having pretty mixed feelings. The historical side of it is pretty strong but as a game, I’m honestly not sure. I just finished one of the first chunks of main Quest “Trial by Fire” including a big ambush battle, and I managed to get Julius Caesar killed. I guess I have rewritten history. Also, I don’t know how that happened - I was told to save as much of the legion as I could and I thought I did a good job but a huge chunk of that battle was automated and out of my control. From a gamers’ perspective that sucked pretty hard.

It’s not really a true member of the CRPG glade as typically defined but has other stuff stuck into it in a not-always-smooth way.

Also in addition to losing Caesar, I seem to have had a side quest removed from my list with no explanation (it involved Caesar). I get that it may have to do with the death of Caesar, but I would like an explanation.

Also, I can’t get over getting him killed without knowing what was up. He was not a controllable character and I didn’t notice if he got killed onscreen or not.

I think my biggest beef is the game’s lack of communication to the player. Feedback to the player seems VERY unpolished and incomplete, which is sad given how much polish and depth other aspects (like the historical background) have.

In theory I should be enjoying this but I’m very ambivalent right now.