Heniek
[13] Hero
The second option is definitely something more likely to come out from Namco but personally I absolutely don't mind that kind of designs at least in the setting like SC
What kind of characters would you like to see in future SC games?
- Thread starter Nyte
- Start date
sytus
[14] Master
Well sugarcoat my fookin man tits, there really were ethnically dark skinned people with pharaoh iconography.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
This is most likely the birth location of Zasalamel, I'm surprised Kush gets overshadowed by Aincent Egypt, but I wouldn't be surprised it's because of Egypt's relationship with the Roman Empire.
Nubia - Wikipedia
Kingdom of Kush - Wikipedia
This is most likely the birth location of Zasalamel, I'm surprised Kush gets overshadowed by Aincent Egypt, but I wouldn't be surprised it's because of Egypt's relationship with the Roman Empire.
Tikal
[09] Warrior
I'm actually kind of disappointed I didn't think of Nubia possibly being Zasalamel's birthplace. Nice catch!Well sugarcoat my fookin man tits, there really were ethnically dark skinned people with pharaoh iconography.
Nubia - Wikipedia
Kingdom of Kush - Wikipedia
This is most likely the birth location of Zasalamel, I'm surprised Kush gets overshadowed by Aincent Egypt, but I wouldn't be surprised it's because of Egypt's relationship with the Roman Empire.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Yeah, I was about to launch into an overt discussion of the here of the history and paleogenetic research here, but that seems superfluous now; it suffices to say that, notwithstanding the multiplicity of ethnicities in Africa, there most certainly are dark-skinned peoples in North Africa (indeed, they are by far the most common phenotype in that region, and the skin tones would have been even more uniformly dark in the era before arabic hegemony). Now, it is true that studies have tended to suggest that the earliest populations of Lower Egypt (that is, what we would today call Northern Egypt) tended to be more directly descended from the people of the Levant. But bear in mind that Ancient Egypt was the original metropolitan/synchronistic culture and that its history spanned thousands of years, and involved the assimilation of fairly large numbers of people from both the near east and northern Africa. They had, in short, a fairly strong assortment of skin tones, at least for a society in that epoch of history. They simply varied in how much these groups had a franchise on power (and thus made it into the archeological record) at various different times in the culture's history.Well sugarcoat my fookin man tits, there really were ethnically dark skinned people with pharaoh iconography.
Nubia - Wikipedia
Kingdom of Kush - Wikipedia
This is most likely the birth location of Zasalamel, I'm surprised Kush gets overshadowed by Aincent Egypt, but I wouldn't be surprised it's because of Egypt's relationship with the Roman Empire.
Anyway, all of these tangential matters put to the side, I 100% agree with you as to your original assertion: that is, I share you suspicion that Zasalamel is at least somewhat inspired by a generic Egyptian motif: the clothing, the tattoos, the "from the mystical origins of time" trope that is his character, and even his weapon (the scythe was not a reliable weapon of war for Egyptians, but it was a part of the iconography, and a number of the ceremonial accoutrements that one sees in classical Egyptians pictographs, and indeed that one finds in tombs themselves, are related to scythes).
Unfortunately (and this is relevant to the broader discussion going on right now), by SCIII, PS seemed to have given up on making characters that were strongly linked to real-world cultures and instead turned towards a habit of making new characters either vague as to their origins, or citizens of completely fictional nations. It's actually kind of a watershed change in the development of the franchise's design and aesthetics--but bluntly, also one I wish they would reverse, as I would much rather we had characters representing actual historical fighting styles and cultures over the kind of vague, hand-wavy, anime-generic quality that most new characters in the franchise have represented since SCII. Of course the cultural match-up/internal consistency/logic were not exactly great even in the early franchise, but I'll certainly take a vaguely defined 'Korean' like Hwang over some Bleach reject like Groh.
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sytus
[14] Master
It's worth noting that it still doesn't make them black in what we call black people today. It's why I say it's better to use Bantu as the majority of blacks in the western world originate from west Sub Saharan Africa that is thousands of miles away from the River Nile which is the location of the Kingdom of Kush. A similar thing happens to white people, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Semitic all get branded in the same category which is completely wrong and lazy, especially when it comes to Germanic and Semitic considering a certain event just under a hundred years ago. I've got a map here showing migrations of people across the world, it is a handy image if you're looking for peoples, their culture and influence in their region in a pre globalist world.
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Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Indeed, although once you start down that path, you're just as well dropping all preoccupation with classic ethnic distinctions, since they too have very limited empirical rigor when viewed through the lens of modern science. The truth of the matter is that, as a species, we have built a completely convoluted (and more or less unnecessary) scaffolding for the purposes of dividing people up in ways that make very little sense and have very little practicalt utility (other than their classic use in attempting to bolster various racist or eugenecist notions). It's a quirk of our psychology and neurology that developed in a hunter-gatherer context when clan affiliation was much more critical to social norms--but like most things that are best understood through evolutionary psychology, these inclinations are cause for more trouble than benefit in our modern context.
WuHT
Premium Moderator
Groh ending up as from Scandinavia is a mystery to me. I guess thats how Namco views Nordic people as anime superheroes considering both Lars and Groh are so similar.
Despite his canon stats, he's in the shortest height bracket for male characters in-game.
Aren't nordic people statistically taller than average? I guess at least Groh has some furs in his main 1p costume so thats better than nothing
Despite his canon stats, he's in the shortest height bracket for male characters in-game.
Aren't nordic people statistically taller than average? I guess at least Groh has some furs in his main 1p costume so thats better than nothing
sytus
[14] Master
Yes, though it's mainly the Dutch that are the giants of the world. Ever since sufficient nutrition became available, the Dutch just keep on growing. I'm 6'1" and even I can feel a short arse next to them when I've been to festivals in the Netherlands.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Mostly! It looks like the Swedes and Icelanders actually rest a little higher on average--exactly one half in (out of 72) to be exact. ;P But they do beat the rest of Scandinavia (Norway and Denmark) by roughly similar amounts.
The Dutch aren't Scandinavians nor are they Nordic.
sytus
[14] Master
I never said they were. Looking back at my comment it does look like I said that, but I assure you that wasn't what I was saying.
Sorry, my mistake.