“That wasn’t our intention at all, obviously,” Gameloft Brisbane’s creative director, Jarrad Trudgen, tells NW News. Huettl says Native American trappers at the time the game is set were more likely to have carried rifles, making bows an outdated stereotype. While the team had originally seen bows and arrows as a fun game mechanic, developers soon learned that these weapons weren’t realistic for the historical moment depicted. Game designers also removed stereotypical flute and drum music. “And I think we suggested, maybe they don’t all have to have braids.” “Initially, all of the Native people had braids,” Margaret Huettl, a historian at the University of Nebraska who helped advise the team, tells Anna King of NW News Network. Developers hired three Native American historians to help design the virtual figures’ appearance, speech and roles. The game now features playable Native American characters.
“For Indigenous Peoples, westward expansion was not an adventure but an invasion,” they write.
The new game opens with a message from developers acknowledging that earlier versions of “The Oregon Trail” failed to depict Native American perspectives and cultures. Players struggle to keep people and oxen alive in the face of starvation, dysentery and other dangers. First launched in 1971 as a computer game, “The Oregon Trail” lets users step into the role of wagon leader. The iconic video game “ The Oregon Trail” is back with a new version-and a more nuanced approach to the story of white settlers traveling across the American West in 1848.Īs Kimber Collins reports for WKRG, the updated iteration, created by Gameloft, is now available through the Apple Arcade subscription service.
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