First of all I would like to thank Devs for being able to make content about Chinese communist guerrillas, which is an admirable task. Many Chinese players like me have been waiting for a game about the Sino-Japanese War for more than twenty years.
I found these amazing new art assets in the test server. In fact there isn’t much more information other than the filename to know exactly which unit’s equipment this belongs to and from which time period.
But there are some issues in there that are clearly not right for Chinese players. I know these are undisclosed assets, but I’m still going to bring them up if need be.
The first and most obvious mistake is the shoes. The shoes seem to be a direct adaptation of the Japanese leather military boots. This was an absolute impossibility in China at the time. The communist guerrillas were always a poor army that had always come from the countryside, and leather shoes/military boots never made it into the ranks of army outfit until after 1990.
Throughout the first 50 years of the 20th century, both the KMT and the Communists, from the lowest soldiers to the top leaders. With the exception of some senior KMT officials and the Burma Expeditionary Force, which used all American equipment, everyone else wore cloth shoes (布鞋) or straw shoes (草鞋).
The New Fourth Army in southern China, another communist guerrilla force. The same standard mix of straw and cloth shoes.
Two Chinese soldiers and a captured Japanese soldier, the contrast of the shoes clearly visible
This color photo was taken by a Soviet journalist in 1949 during the civil war, and even by this time cloth shoes were still standard wear for the Chinese army.
Communist leaders wearing cloth shoes
The proper case is white socks/bare feet + black/gray cloth shoes
The second problem comes from the top. Based on the model of the blouse that I see in the editor, there doesn’t seem to be any additional markings livable accessories. However, the 8th Route Army actually wore red lapel badges. Some of today’s Chinese TV dramas would seem to forget this, but plenty of historical photos prove that the Communist Party retained its iconic red lapel badge even after entering into a partnership with KMT.
Meanwhile, another iconic element for the 8th Route Army is the emblem worn on the left arm. Theoretically, there were different variants for different units at different times, but conventionally before 1937, the marking of the 8th Route Army was “八路(8th Route)”.
After 1937 when the KMT restructured the organization, the 8th Route Army was reorganized under the 18th Group Army, the armband became the “18GA”. And conventionally we can choose the most widely used marking of “18GA” to denote it. The most widely used marking is the “18GA”.
Communist soldiers wearing armbands
A rare color photo of an Eighth Route Army soldier in Shanxi Province in 1944. The armband and collar insignia are clearly visible.
The last bit of a minor issue comes from the shape of the hat. In fact due to the fact that it was produced in small rural workshops, the 8th Route Army field cap does not support a shape like the German version. He fits his head snugly most of the time. More like a baseball cap than a field cap. The version available in the game seems too upright.
Of course it’s relatively the most trivial one, it’s just that I’ve seen it mentioned by more than one person in the chinese gamer community, so I’ll pass it along here.
All in all, thanks again to the developer team for making the content about the Sino-Japanese battlefield.