Hello, this is Martin Klíma, Producer at Warhorse Studios.
Firstly, I would like genuinely to thank you for taking your time to write about our game. Even if we don’t agree on everything, I am glad that people are interested in the game and who knows, maybe we can eventually find something we do agree on. I hope you don’t mind if I try to sum up your post into several points: 1. Game is not historically accurate because its plotline is implausible; 2. Therefore, the purported historical accuracy cannot be used to justify exclusion of PoC and women from the game; 3. The exclusion of PoC is inaccurate anyway, as the region in question was frequented by various non-Caucasian groups, even if the presence of black people cannot be ascertained; 4. Ditto for female characters; female warriors were more frequent than is generally assumed. 5. Furthermore, words ‘knight’, ‘bard’ and ‘rogue’ are either misleading or inaccurate. Please feel free to let me know if I understood your post poorly and take issue with any mischaracterization of the gist of your post. I would like now to address these points in order.
Ad 1: I agree that the story is implausible. However, I don’t think that it invalidates the claim of historical accuracy or effort to stick to it. Is the story of Jean of Arc plausible? A farmer’s daughter leading an army to free her king? Surely, that was not a common occupation of medieval farmer girls. Is Wolf Hall inaccurate because it deals with a rise of a blacksmith’s son to the ranks of king’s chief minister? Sure, our lead character is not real, but of course he is exceptional. What would be the point of a game where your character’s life is poor, nasty, brutish and short? However, there is a difference between implausible and inaccurate. The world the game is taking place in, the people who inhabit it, their lives we try to portray as accurately as we can – and I freely admit that we are going to make mistakes, either unwittingly, or because of technological constraints, or sometimes deliberately, to make player’s experience better. As an aside, I would take an issue with characterizing the pre-1950’s world of consisting of mud and lice exclusively. I have no doubts that people in that era were no less able to perceive and create beauty than we are; to focus on the facets of the life that we find unpleasant or abhorrent can give you a smug sense of superiority, but no real understanding.
Ad 2: I have already touched upon this in my preceding point. I believe that unlikely or implausible plot does not invalidate historical accuracy as such. Of course, we are going to make mistakes and compromises, but one error does not exculpate another one.
Ad 3: The discussion is exclusively about black people. We have always maintained that there were other ethnic groups in Bohemia at the time, some of them are also in our game; the Cumans you mention are actually the main opponents of your character. However, nothing I have seen or heard about the topic convinced me that there were black people in Bohemia at that time, certainly not within the area our game is taking place in.
Ad 4: We have always said that our game does not have a customizable protagonist; in this respect it’s more like Assassin’s Creed or Red Dead Redemption than Skyrim or Dragon Age. You cannot modify your character’s name, hair color, backstory or anything else, including gender. This is not a comment on the role of women in HRE, it’s a design decision.
Ad 5: As others have pointed out, we were using these monikers as a ‘standard’ class names in many RPGs. Your character is not going around our world saying, ‘Look at me, I am a bard.’ I accept it might be confusing and we are grateful to you for pointing it out.