Brancaleone
Prophet
I broadly agree with the expectation to see a well-rounded variety of weapons and armour from all of the Middle-East eras.
Look, I want the DLC to introduce types of armour covering ground from various types of middle-eastern periods, my issue is that it shows armour from tail-end of medieval period in a design from gunpowder era. If they are going to show more plain mail and robes, or the heavier lamellar and mail that is appropriate for high medieval post-mongol middle-east as well, I am completely fine with it.
I am supposedly nitpicking here but I am getting responded with "actually it fits the whole of middle-eastern theme because it was present in what is essentially closing years of medieval middle-eastern period brought with central asian invaders!". Answer me this, do you think of Ilkhanids and Timurids when someone says "Medieval Middle-east based on Arab and Persian cultures in the scorching deserts!" or would you rightfully consider it to be based on Islamic golden age Umayyads and Abbasids perhaps even Al-Andalus?
This argument is basically "arr rook the same" tier with foundation in complete ignorance, feigned or otherwise. It is disingenuous to claim that it is just loosely general middle-eastern style when it is not, it is a very specific and narrow style from a period that is not what people would think of when talking about "medieval Islamic world" or "medieval Arab world".
Here is what actual thematically representative armour would look like:
If you want to include a broader Middle-eastern style including the post-mongol Ilkhanid, Timurid and Mameluke visuals then include them too but also don't pretend Turkic and Mongol influence is what people are thinking of when the 1001 nights aesthetic of medieval middle-east is invoked. That would look partly like what I posted above of that heavy Golden Horde cavalryman but also these:
There are quite of types and variance here to be source for several types of in-game arms and armour different from just mail in the game. Including scale and lamellar types as well as much later plated-mail. Importantly also various types of swords aside from "lmao CURVED. SWORDS!"
However as I said above, this latter is not the theme of Arabian and Persian influenced medieval middle-east and you know, it is not the 1001 nights it is not the "islamic golden age" and it is not the crusades. The second of all, even if we were aiming for wider middle-east including the post-mongol era which is completely unfamiliar to most audiences there is so much more to include before skipping directly into 16th century Ottoman-type light plated mail wih small circular plates with Ottoman style vest on top. Including heavy plated mails that would be different from the mail in the game like I posted before of the Golden Horde cavalryman.
There is just no reason to do this, except pure ignorance and a lack trying to even explore the vast variety of arms and armour from this era. It is not just the devs of this game though as I won't blame them solely but all types of media that allegedly takes its themes from medieval middle-east will use anything but medieval middle-east obsessing over extremely narrow types of most superficially obvious curved swords and late Ottoman, Mameluke and Mughal armour as that was what was most readily available to display to European audiences in 19th century which carried over all the way today.
It's disappointing. Especially when I see one game I thought would deep diver than what every other game is doing when they are doing "middle-east" that is "Allegedly medieval Arabs in the desert except with post-mongol weapons and armour" because this game has variety of European arms and armour from wider medieval period. All the excuse for this lack of creativity and depth is "it is not a history game!!!" as if that is an excuse for being so shallow. If it is not a historical game and has no ties to history how about people use something other than early modern mirror plates and curved swords like every other single game?
But, we haven't seen anything yet: even if the mirror armour they chose is quite close to the Ottoman kind, I just see it as representative of the type of armour more than the distinct type.
And I wouldn't worry too much about the tail-end period thing: we got a 15th century billhook in
TL;DR: I've never expected this first artwork to be especially representative of most of the stuff we'll get in the expansion, and I expect to get a lot more varied weapons and armour, mostly from earlier times. But maybe I'm
