I was wondering something, are all natives primitives? It's just that the game draw into racist discourse (not a criticism, just raising awareness) made up to justify these expedition. There was plenty great civilisation, it would be cool if there is some aspect of it into it. I'm a bit disturb to see the last image and see a clear civilized/uncivilized made by skin color when it was inaccurate. It's like depicting dark age europe with only lowly peons with pitchfork and no king, clergy or warrior. Especially when part of the renaissance has root with influence from africa's civilisation (chemistry came from egypt which was name kheim >> kheim mystery >> chemistry, also evident with the apparition of the black madonna prior to modern age conception of ethnicity).
Just putting that here for you to consider.
Yes, racism will be a topic in our game.
We want to confront the player with the racist mentality of the late 19th century. Will he fall into the same mentality as so many explorers of those days, or will he treat the land and its natives with respect?
None of the natives will be primitives (except the neanderthals, maybe).
We want our natives to have a rich culture of their own. They own this land, they have their stuff sorted out - that is, until you come in. This does not mean that the game is only about exploiting and destroying native civilizations; it's up to the player and his decisions how he will treat the natives.
You can very well manage your expedition with respect to not only the natives, but also their land itself as well. However, one of our goals is to have the player make hard choices, and potentially shock him with the dire consequences of something he may not have thought through so well, or didn't see the ethical aspect of his doing in the first place.
I have to admit we are still exploring the full scope of this aspect of the game.
We are very aware of it being a very difficult topic to tackle in a game, but in our opinion you cannot make a game that loosely is based on expeditions in the late 19th century without having the racism in it. I've already had a very personal and intense experience with how much this can offend people, so all I can say is that we want to approach the topic with the greatest respect to the real history behind it.