How many of the places in the games are real places? I know that Jackson Square and Lake Ponchartrain are real (though sadly, you will not be able to hear that beautiful music when you visit the latter). Is St. Louis Cathedral real? St. Louis Cemetary #1? Napoleon House? Dixieland Drug Store? The Voodoo Museum? For the record, is St. George's Book Shop a real place?

Also do people in Lousiana speak like the narrator? Or do they speak like Gabriel? Or do they speak like Mosely? Or do they speak like Cazanoux?

Is the great snake mound in Benin a real place?

Is Rittersburg a real city? Are the background in GK2 real photographs of real places?

Is Rennes-les-Chateau and its surrounding locations real?

For the record, are there really more English speakers in France than in Germany? Every German I've ever met speaks at least 3 languages fluently.

Google is your friend :)

I can only say about the first game. As a rule of thumb, any New Orleans location that displays some year-specific historic information exists in reality. Those include the lake, the cathedral, the square, the cemetery and Napoleon House—all of them are adapted to fit the requirements of a video game locale, as in they're compressed and their tourist presence is significantly downplayed. The museum, Gabriel's bookshop, the drug store, not to mention other pivate estates (that of Geddy's, Magencia's, Grandma Knight's and so on) are entirely fictious.

It's difficult for me to talk about the accent accuracy—very few of the voice cast actually hail from their in-game characters' homelands: Mark Hamill's Californian and Tim Curry isn't even American, for instance. The narrator's probably fairly accurate as Viirginia Capers is from South Carolina. Susan Silo (Cazanoux) plays the part of a Creole fairly convincingly even though she's from NYC and she's actually a fairly prominent voice actress, active till this day.

Just from my limited knowledge on Louisiana in general and New Orleans in particular, it seems that the game highly overestimates the level to which French culture and even the language penetrate daily life there. But someone from the area would have to verify that.

No place like Rittersburg (named after the Ritter family that's of course a game invention in their entirety even though there are Germans named Ritter) exists in real life Bavaria. The game background of Benin is a mixed bag. First off, while the republic stopped being "people's" in 1990 so three years before the game takes place, everybody still refers to it as such and even though that would be understandable in the case of common folk (as in, there are still people who dream of traveling to "Czechoslovakia"), it's a little bit weird a man like Hartridge is still not up to date on political developments in West Africa, seeing as the region is his field.

As for the lore part, the Fula tribe that's mentioned in the game is indeed real whereas the Agris, understandably, are not. History knows of no "Red Basin" there that's particularly nasty: all of tribal Sub-Saharan Africa was as far removed from pacifism as imaginable. West Africa in particular is the spot in which the most advanced African civilizations arose but that didn't really happen until the Middle Ages, parallell to the ascent of Islam to the North. Before that, this part of Africa knew how to make iron but that was about it. There is no snake mould in Benin or anywhere else in the region and we have absolutely no reason to believe there was some sort of great civilization there that became lost to history: African archeology produces an unbroken cycle of events that we can somewhat coherently put together, even if we have no written records from before the Arab period (and only in the Northernmost part of Sub-Saharia) and extremely few of them until the European colonization. There most certainly have been some sun worshipping cults there from the earliest days but that's hardly unique: every single religion on Earth started from a cult of the Sun (I have a theory that's where the custom of avoiding eyesight while addressing an authority originates from: shielding your eyes from the sunlight). So for real life historiography to identify just one of them as "THE sun worshippers" would be a little bit silly.

I've been to Rênnes-le-Château many times, it's definitely real. It's smaller than in the game and it has a different layout. The hotel doesn't exist, but there is a castle instead that looks very similar (which you can't visit because it's a private property and the owner is half crazy and the place is crumbling). Rennes-les-Bains has all the hotels; it's much bigger in real life than in the game. Couiza has the nearest supermarket, even an ATM, but the train station is closed. The Fauteuil du Diable is real, the Château de Serres is real, Bugarach, Blanchefort, Roque Nègre, l'Homme Mort, Pech Cardou... It's all real.

In real life, going from RLB to Blanchefort is a two-hour walk in a thick rocky forest; it's good that the game ignored things like that.

I'm from MS, currently working hitches in AR, Have family in NOLA, live about 1-1.5 hr away from NOLA.

The southern accents in MOST tv and movies is TERRIBLE, and GK is no exception. What most people consider to be the authentic "southern" accent is way too drawn out and overdone, and I think maybe it's actually a West Virginia accent. People in the rural south CAN have a more drawn out vowel speech pattern, but I don't remember any movie or show where the southern accent is well done (True Blood has TERRIBLE southern accents!). Matthew McConaughey has a decent accent. And it seems that most people don't realize that New Orleans folk DON'T REALLY HAVE A SOUTHERN ACCENT!!! They sound more like people from New Jersey with a Cajun/Creole vowel sounds. Most south LA people have a "Cajun" (colloquially known as "coon ass") accent, and the narrator actually has what sounds like an authentic Cajun accent (except for painfully mispronouncing a few common Cajun French words; good thing that the game didn't have anything on Tchapatoulas St). This girl has a mild to moderate Cajun accent and does a good job explaining the accents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeR7Ljv_tPc . (For the record, I LOVE the coon-ass accent, and associate it with fun and kind people). "Swamp People" on the History Channel does a good job showing the different accents of the region.

There actually IS a Marie Lavoux Voodoo Shop on Bourbon, but from 30+ years of memory of the area, I can't recall ANY bookstores. Bourbon is primarily bars, a few restaurants, and tourist-trap type shops. There IS a pretty big bookstore on either Decatur or St Peter, but it is (or was, haven't been there in a while) a chain. Napoleon House is real. St Louis Cathedral is VERY real, and we would always attend mass there when we were visiting family. It probably doesn't have a basement, however; NOLA is primarily swamp and mostly below the water table, and you could NEVER build such a compound under a building as large and historic as the cathedral. I doubt most people would even want to try, even with modern engineering tools available; most NOLA residents would not want to put the cathedral in danger. Royal Street has high-end expensive jewelry and art boutiques. There ARE a bunch of very talented street artists of all kinds in the quarter, although not many rada drumers; most street artists seem to play drums on buckets. St Louis Cemetaries are also very real, as are their depictions; the mauseleums are used because the coffins really would float out of the ground and Marie Laveau has a tomb there, although I've never taken the tour or explored them myself.

I can't speak to the other locations.

I literally went to New Orleans just to see the locations - and for the New Orleans stuff - it's all pretty spot on. The only thing I think that was off was the telescope thing where you can use it to look into the park...

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