Who is this?

[Al B. Sure!]

I love how Albert feels the need to give us examples of black people. Then again he is a bit justified by Plomp's ignorance.

Not just black people, HC. Those are specifically people from the city of Timbuktu, the center of the Songhai, and preceding Mali, Empire.

As you can see though, there are a lot of not particularly Black looking people due to admixture with North Africans but from the data that I have seen, Tauregs, Berbers, and Moors are in the minority (less than 10%) and the majority of the population of Mali is more characteristically West African.

I'll say it again if anyone's interested, if you go to the Civ 5 website, you can see concept art of Askia of Songhai.

[Robert]

Well, he's not caucasian.

I saw the concept art on the civ5 site, and got the idea he's not Askia.
But I saw no alternative. That's why I asked. From all concept art this guy was most close to Askia. (most close as in, the others were even more different).

[Al B. Sure!]

You can't be serious. Either you're joking or you have absolutely no conception of race (which I guess wouldn't be a terrible thing).

Look at that face. Nevermind the fact that he's pasty white (I had edited my post; earlier I said that it's possible that guy in the video could be a Berber especially since he has somewhat of the nose for it, but after l was reminded of how pale he is, I edited it. That guy couldn't even be a Berber. He is way too pasty.). His facial features are all very caucasian (long, prominent nose, thin lips, etc. everything about his face screams caucasian even if he had black skin), his hair is most definitely caucasian, etc.

Really, Cybershy. This is embarrassing. Have you ever seen a Black person before? And how is that guy possibly not caucasian?

[Al B. Sure!]

And the others were even more different?

Look at that guy in the video and look at:



They look different but Julius Caesar looks much more similar to that guy than this guy does:

[Robert]

This is not about races, this is about who the guy on that video is. And since it's an animation, not a 'real person', made by people who in the past were very wrong as well, the question isn't weird at all. Especially since we still don't know who it is after all. It can still be Askia.
This is not about how Askia really looked like, it's about the question how Firaxis will depict him.

[Al B. Sure!]

Yeah but there's no way they would depict the ONE Black leader in the game as anything but Black. It would be unfathomable for them to portray Askia as anything but Black.

As precedence, take a look at Zara Yaqob in Civ 4:


Now who knows what Zara Yaqob actually looked like but they portrayed him way too Black and too West African looking to be an Ethiopian ruler. I personally know three Ethiopians and they are very light and have different features than most Blacks.

Consider:

Haile Salassie has more in common with Saladin than Zara Yaqob:



So even though Ethiopians tend to look more like Arabs than Africans, they portrayed Zara Yaqob as very much Black.

Songhai was a successor empire of Mali. Expect Askia to look like Mansa Musa:


There is NO WAY that that tribal elder in that video is Askia. He's not even wearing African clothing to begin with. He's wearing a tunic. Oh and he's freaking WHITE!

[Robert]

Then who is he?

[Al B. Sure!]

No one.

I'm actually curious as to why you selected that music. At first I thought it was from the clip somehow but the clip is from the Machinima E3 special thing and there's no music there.



Also, it says Lead Designer Jon Shafer. Why does that name sound familiar?

[Nikolai]

Trip is Jon.

[Robert]

No one. ?

You say that Firaxis puts that much resources into such a clip, while it's about nobody? Why would they do that? I don't believe that.....

I wanted to include him in that quiz I created. I just picked music youtube offered.

[Dinner]

No one.

I'm actually curious as to why you selected that music. At first I thought it was from the clip somehow but the clip is from the Machinima E3 special thing and there's no music there.



Also, it says Lead Designer Jon Shafer. Why does that name sound familiar?

This video really worries me. It says "users can even check out leading civ sites right from the game". That sounds good but right now we can't even get 2K to post over here at the Apolyton Civilization site even though we're the oldest civ fan site on the web as well as one of the largest. We know they're supporting CFC and I suspect they'll even be supporting the panda rapists but why the hell aren't they here? We have 10 times the traffic of the panda rapists and are easily the second largest civ site on the web.

Rob, do you think you can PM Fraxis and 2K games and see if we can get some official support over here at poly? I've written them twice and they ignore me but maybe you will get through since you are the owner. Failing that maybe speaking to MarkG or DanQ will get them to introduce you to the right people in Fraxis and 2K games. We need to get poly on that list of websites which get linked to from the launcher.

[Nikolai]

You say that Firaxis puts that much resources into such a clip, while it's about nobody? Why would they do that? I don't believe that.....

I wanted to include him in that quiz I created. I just picked music youtube offered.

Where do you have the clip from? The short clip isn't enough to know if it is leader art, wonder movie, another kind of movie or whatever.

[Robert]

@Oerdin: I can assure you that Firaxis is not ignoring Apolyton.

[Robert]

Where do you have the clip from? The short clip isn't enough to know if it is leader art, wonder movie, another kind of movie or whatever.

It's near the end of the E3 video. It's a part of the long (6 minutes) clip. It doesn't explain what it depicts.

[Brael]

I don't think he's anyone from the list of civs. So unless the list of civs isn't right, he's no one. What if he's a leader they originally planned but cut later on? It would explain having the model for him.