ITT egregious historical inaccuracies (and general retardation) in games, film, etc. Specifically in terms of clothing...

ITT egregious historical inaccuracies (and general retardation) in games, film, etc. Specifically in terms of clothing, weaponry, architecture, etc.
Post counter-examples too if you can.

No race-related shit because that gets the thread deleted and we've all seen it before anyway.

Anyway, look at these fucking "Ptolemies". Look at all those retarded trinkets they're wearing. Random animal bits all over the place? Looks dumb as hell.
Also look at the scraps of plaid shit and the trousers. Is this Ubi's idea of a Galatian? I mean fuck me, there are scraps of dirty cloth all over the place just to make them look extra-fucking stupid.

In addition to all that, we have the typical leather biker gear in the place of armor. I don't understand it one bit. Is that supposed to look good? Cool? Practical? It fails in all three of those things miserably. It doesn't even look evil. They look like they're on the way to a gay fetish party.
I mean for fuck's sake. I can halfway understand it when some TV show does it due to budgetary constraints. THIS IS A FUCKING VIDEO GAME. YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY MORE TO MAKE METAL THINGS.

The weapons are fucking stupid too. Why the fuck is the left dude's Thureos, the fucking epitome of a center-gripped shield, strapped to his arm? And look at those straps, literally no effort was put into making them look remotely OK.
The swords are, as is always the case in AAA games, as thick as a fucking cricket bat. Why they can't just make weapons look as sleek and elegant as they were IRL I never will understand.
And that's not even mentioning the historicity. No effort was made to make them look even vaguely Hellenistic or Celtic. They even strapped random shit to them too, and added spikes for the extra retard points. What the fuck.

Man I could go on, but even my autism has its limits.
Stupid, ugly, and historically inaccurate. What the fuck they were thinking when they were designing these characters?

>khopesh
>in the 1st century BC
lmao

A better depiction of a Hellenistic occupying force would be to depict them as overly clean, snooty and covered in shiny shit.

Galatian mercenaries flaunting their wealth with their clothing and armour. Bright colours, metal trinkets, you name it.
Definitely no frayed, unwashed clothing. No self-respecting occupying force would stoop to such levels, they can use their subjects to clean that shit for them.

For the inaccuracy to be egregious does that mean it has to lack a valid excuse? For example, the vast majority of portrayals of fire arrows in films are inaccurate - but since they're used because they look cool it doesn't generally trigger me.

For that matter
>Corinthian helmets
>in the first century BC

Yeah, think like the bondage armor on the Assassin's Creed guys.

It's halfway understandable in movies where giving everyone authentic armour might cost too much, but in a video game it's unforgivable.

The minor one that triggers my autism is getting the pre-1801 Union Jack wrong in films. I know it's a minor detail, but it's really not that hard to get right.

Pic related, it's the flag on Barbossa's ship in the shitty last pirates film - set in the mid 18th century.

Also - portrayals of ancient cities (notably Rome) as consisting entirely of glaringly white marble. Honorable mention to HBO's Rome for not doing this.

The Last Kingdom.

Apparently Anglo-Saxon nobles dressed themselves in pale rags and didn't wash their faces.

At least it not that gay "King Arthur" movie with Keira Knightly, where the Saxons are literally Nazis and talk about muh pure bloodline and genociding.

The portrayal of Saxons warriors in this show and in Vikings was awful as well.

For that matter:
>kopesh
>two handed
>steel
For fuck's sake.

Isn't that helmet literal renaissance helmet from Vatican or somewhere in Central Italy?

Not my area of expertise, so I'm not sure on the exact origin of the helmet, but it definitely does look like they borrowed the Wessex uniforms from a Renaissance period film.

That's without even mentioning the fact that Wessex and Mercia have uniformed regular armies in the show.

what the fuck, that's a fucking renaissance burgonet

The only movie which I have watched and had accurate clothing was Alatriste and that's a poor movie itself.

Yes. It could be renaissance English though. Italian helmet styles were everywhere.

remember black, Christian, 4th century AD centurion Hannibal?

Yeah, and they all have it.

...

For Christ's sake, that's right up there in the "not even fucking trying" department

Well what else do you expect from the ancient aliens and Hitler channel?

...

Not to mention making the Saxons some kind of cowardly, weak and peaceful people when they were pretty much the same people.

You could buy a period-appropriate helmet for like 45 quid on The Knight Shop, it's not like these things are hard to get a hold of. In fact I would've thought that a renaissance helmet would be more expensive to make.

According to Ryse Son of Rome, the Celts were basically a cross between north american natives and Vikings, and had Germanic names.

really makes you think

I'd imagine these helmets were already lying around from a previous film/TV show. It's like portrayals of generic barbarians in any ancient film - there must be some big pile of furs and leather bits lying around that extras are just told to pull costumes from.

And who could forget how much the Romans loved art deco

I think it's generally more because these shows (and in the case of the Last Kingdom - the Bernard Cornwall books) do that to differentiate the pagans and Christians, rather than Saxons and Danes.

>that pitiful shield

wait what

is this real

What is this, a shield for ants?

remember the movie "The Eagle" where the Picts are literally Australian Abbos?

What time period is this Assassin's Creed game meant to take place in?
From the picture it could be pretty much any generic ahistorical ancient period.

Look like white people dressed as
stereotypical injuns to me.
Ptolemaic Egypt around the time of Cleopatra's ascension to the throne.

I get that the artists really like to be creative, but if you want that make a fucking fantasy game Jesus Christ.

>Super heavy iron greaves
>exposed toes

Wow good job

Wut? Are those enemies meant to represent everything between celts, romans, crows, hellenes and the gaypolice? How can a game be this inaccurate and waste such a good period?

You just say the game was "inspired by history" and you're clear.

As I said in the OP, I'm assuming they're supposed to be Galatians because of the (poor excuse for) pants and the random strips of tartan

They are making a Fallout New Vegas sequel?

"History" Channel's Vikings has the worst wardrobe and battle scenes.

>do that to differentiate the pagans and Christians, rather than Saxons and Danes.

I mean i understand that, but the levels Vikings went is absolutely disgusting, i stopped watching after the Saxons massacred the peaceful pagan Viking women and children, there was literally a close up of kid running away and getting shot with an arrow, shitting on Christianity and making the Christians weak, pathetic, emasculated cowards who pick on women and children is the fucking norm nowadays and its pissing me off.

As for the armor, they could save tons by being historically accurate, since those Saxon militias the Vikings attack wore no armor apart from maybe a helmet, and a shield. But the plebs would think its a documentary.

AC1 had reasonably accurate armor. What happened since then?

Made me giggle

Holy fucking hell that would've been an amazing game. Fallout New Vegas set in Egypt with an ancient period meets post-apocalypse theme in dresses.

Then again, we have no clue if those are actual Ptolemaic soldiers. They could just be scavengers, bandits, or tribesmen who stole the helmets from dead ones (considering the horns strapped to the helmets). Maybe they're just mercenaries or something. It's too early to make a call on it, considering how we have next-to-no info on this beyond a trailer and 5 minutes of gameplay.

Well-made armor for a proud descendant of the Phoenicians.

I'm proud to say I'm the one who first noticed it.

>unforgivable

Unless the purpose of the game is not to act as a history lesson but to create an enjoyable game with an aesthetic they like.

General point for the thread: an error is when you get something wrong because you didn't know what was right. A design choice is not an historical error.

Once again, probably a deliberate differentiating choice. Making the Saxons uniformly dressed and armoured gives you that evil empire vibe - or perhaps was intended to make them appear more 'civilised' than the Vikings? The whole thing is really just a dumb play on the noble savage trope.

There's nothing cool about Van Darkholme in a Corinthian helmet

What really annoys me too is that many people inevitably will think these things are historically accurate. I'm speaking from experience here.

OP said 'egregious historical inaccuracies', not historical errors. We discussed this earlier in the thread, it's an inaccuracy with no/very weak justification.

Take the first Pirates of the Caribbean - historical inaccurate as fuck, but totally forgivable because they were obviously just trying to create a general piratey theme and drawing on a lot of elements from the Pirate mythos and well-known aspects of that period. An egregious inaccuracy in that case might be the Black Pearl being steam powered without explanation.

I do wonder if there's an argument to be made that it doesn't matter if it gets people interested in history?

I know my interest in history probably started when I played Age of Empires as a kid, and the representation of the various civilisations in that game was far from accurate. It still acted as a launching pad for my interest though.

Though I guess Ubisoft can't really plead the same tech limitations and has a fuckton more resources than the studio that made AoE back in the day.

Does this fill either of those criteria?
It doesn't look badass, it doesn't look sophisticated, it doesn't have an "evil empire" vibe either.
It only succeeds in looking god damn retarded.

I'm not justifying their decisions or saying they nailed the execution, just offering explanations of why they maybe made them. Ultimately, I don't know, but it's a pretty safe bet that a lot of it comes down to budget and historical advisors not being allowed into the wardrobe department.

Maybe it just comes down to them wanting to offer what they think people "think" Saxons would look like? That's pretty much the reason Lorica Segmenticata is so ubiquitous in portrayals of Romans.

AoE doesn't have actively fantastical designs. It just has generic designs that everyone uses.

That scutum looks small like my penis

Meanwhile historical Anglo-Saxon armours were pretty intimidating

I hate grim dark shit historical shit.

It's like everything that happened before the present day was done by absolutely filthy peasants and nobles who raped and murdered at every single opportunity and never once washed.

Art imitates life. Our modern world is hopeless and has no future, so society likes historical portrayals that are just as lifeless.

I didn't like the saxons neither, the vikings literraly with a wall shield they fuck like 150 armored soldiers like nothing, its like they are super humans and saxons got the jew to actually win something

>I do wonder if there's an argument to be made that it doesn't matter if it gets people interested in history?

the problem is that after a while it strays so far people will look at the real thing and go "wtf i hate history now", i've seen it happen. It's not like accurate hellenic armors and set pieces would be boring, or dull, it's that they don't actually WANT to show things in different times and places looking differently and working differently. It's coat of paint over the same old.

AoE broke into the strategy genre bringing a lot of interesting concepts of civilization-building in general, the logistics of resources and military expansion, it's not accurate to a specific setting but it's a very good game that carries the theme of building a civilization and makes it interesting through it's gameplay.

this is just "what if this fantasy renaissance ninja game we had was exactly the same way but further back in the past?" none of the politics and social issues of the period are reflected in a compelling way, we're expected to believe the kingdom of the Ptolemies is an invading force in the years of Cleopatra, and that the player is justified in fighting them.

That style of helmet with the chain veil is possibly the most intimidating looking ever. Widely popular in the East.

I don't think there is any preconceived notion in pop-culture regarding the appearance of Anglo-Saxon warriors.
People who know a tiny bit of history will think round (later kite) shields, nobles in mail and fancy helmets (depending on the exact period), and of course the seaxes they're named after.

Frankly I just think it was a total lack of effort and nothing else.

better historical team.

Now that you posted Rome 2,

Credit to Creative Assembly for actually fucking trying.

>people will look at the real thing and go "wtf i hate history now", i've seen it ha

Where have you seen that happen before? Do you mean to say people build up this idea of what they think a period/event was like, then feel disappointed when that's wrong? I can imagine people thinking actual Roman Legionnaires are less impressive looking than some pop culture representations of them I guess.

you forgot
>the history page where you had a ton of details about the history of the civilisations

You're probably right, most audiences don't care and I guess why would they invest money and time into getting it right.

Rome 2 got a lot of unfair hatred. Rome 1 is a fantasy game with terrible, shallow, gameplay. Rome 2 attempted to be historical and also had some bad gameplay bugs, but not really worse than 1 in that.

CA actually gave a shout out to the EB team for making such a fantastic mod.

Unfortunately the outfits in vanilla Attila were pretty bad

Did you play it at launch? It was pretty terrible and some of the decisions were bad from a mechanics point of view (burning down gates for example - which I'm pretty sure was just a band-aid fix because they couldn't get the AI to use siege equipment properly). The lack of unit cohesion, the blobbing, and the insta-routs at launch were pretty bad.

Is it worth coming back to after being patched? I played it for a while with Divide et Impera - great mod, although, and to my eternal shame, the accurate battle speed eventually bored me out of the game.

Luckily the Fall of the Eagles mod team was able to make a massively more accurate version even with their limited resources

Frayed mail on top of skin? That's some grimdark worthy of a bad TV show.

This, Rome 2 probably has the best units of most total war games. I mean Sherwood archers and medieval Scots in kilts? I think Rome 2 got hate because the engine was shit.

Looks horribly uncomfortable

I really disliked how the WRE became less 'uniform' and more rag-tag looking the further you progressed up the tech tree.

thank god for Fall of the Eagles

The AI uses siege weapons very well. The game had one very good idea at launch where armies had control points on opposite ends of the map that were supposed to simulate baggage trains that you could capture or lose.

isn't it dead now?

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense historically. Roman units in the 5th century sourced their arms from local state-owned factories. Even if different units would've looked varied, the soldiers in one unit would basically look the same, except maybe for their commander who might have custom made gear.

This is what i hate about Attila, it just assumes that your empire is decaying even if you're playing the empire and not decaying at all.

It was buggy at launch. But I feel it was exaggerated. I mean, compared to Empire, where the AI couldn't even maintain a front and basically every aspect of the game didn't really work.

As for DeI, I tried it recently and I think the speed has been increased somewhat. A battle with pikemen was a long slog (as it should be), but with a Roman Army against barbarians, I rolled up their flank and broke them. Having to occasionally use the fast forward button is better than having to often use the slow botton.

Yeah they stopped before they got to do the Celts and Slavs. I thiiiiiiink there was one guy on the team still trying to do the Celts by himself but that was a few months ago now.

>medieval Scots in kilts?
Unfortunately the treatment the Celts got in Attila and to a lesser extent in Rome 2 was way less accurate than even Medieval 2.

Do those boots have rubber soles? What in the hell?

>watching documentary about the Late Roman Empire
>pudgy Roman reenactors with 1st century gear haphazardly thrusting against Germans dressed in raggedy bits of fur

the entire point of the game is to survive against the doomstacks that attila brings
Which is why playing as the slavs is comfy.
>burrowinging and settling in the phosphate rich ash that the huns have left behind.
>wewuzzing as rome with your poison arrows

Medieval 2 is fortunately less egregious than Rome 1 in that most factions have a very generic looking roster. I really only play it still because you can do 1v1v1 multiplayer. Which for some reason the Warscape engine can't do.

>Where have you seen that happen before?

anything with vikings for one

>a fantasy game with terrible, shallow, gameplay

it was far less shallow than 2 in many ways. Moving units around without a general made a constaint train of reinforcements possible, you could have armies led without a general so they could actually perform as governors, you could have those armies perform well enough that yoru family would adopt the captain of that army into your family, the ability to pour resources into building up a city right up or fortifying even the smallest village due to strategical importance, and the actually larger map, with many more towns and terrains so that the different factions wouldn't immediately anhilate eachother right off the bat, made the campaign gameplay much more compelling.

also being able to spread out the formations on units so the skirmishers could actually filter through, and having a more functional pull & push mechanics made battles far smoother.

Rome 2 is still okay if you mod it but in vanilla it's a fucking chore to get anything done.

It was a deliberate design decision. I mean TW:WH2 is going to have it.
>it's a wrong sandals autist.

>and having a more functional pull & push mechanics
>when people are literally too retarded to know that rome 2 units have mass and push each other because they see an autistic video on youtube.

the helmet is from the army of Stannis Baratheon, by Right and by Law the King of the Seven Kingdoms. Game of Thrones.

>when you repeat damage control but the battle of Cannae still doesn't work in-game because the middle of the line can't fall back without turning tail and getting fucking rekt right away

I should have mentioned, for reasons that I could never figure out, the fast forward buttons on my Rome 2 were broken (I uninstalled and reinstalled tons of times to try and fix it). It was pretty unbearable.

Both systems of governors are annoying, really. In medieval 1 every single unit was let by a commander, and you could apply titles or governorships to them. It was simple, easy to manage, and fun. As for the map; to this very day, the Total War AI cannot understand a 3d map.

It didn't work in the original game either. The romans run into your pikes and get machine gunned down.
At least they could make up their own aesthetics in the show. Even that took a nosedive in later seasons

the map in the first 2 games was incredibly dull.
>can't fortify strategic locations on the map.