PlayStation The Verge: Final Fantasy XVI has a medieval approach to diversity

[Scrawnton]

Well then maybe they should've said that instead of "We don't think that forcing diversity is good".
Also, the white main character taking hours to consider that "Wow, maybe slavery is bad, actually".

Tales of Symphonia lacked characters of color too (like most of the Tales of games until Arise) and did tackle slavery and racism ; it was the main theme of the story, even adding grey characters and sides. FF 16 team had to watch all of Game of Thrones (seriously).

I'm currently playing through Tales of Symphonia again and definitely noticed the lack of PoC, but on the flip side it seems to be telling its story about slavery and racism with much more depth and maturity than what FFXVI is (so far), which is crazy because Tales of Symphonia is a very jovial game overall.

 

[Koren Lesthe]

I'm currently playing through Tales of Symphonia again and definitely noticed the lack of PoC, but on the flip side it seems to be telling its story about slavery and racism with much more depth and maturity than what FFXVI is (so far), which is crazy because Tales of Symphonia is a very jovial game overall.

Yeah, my cousin was quite shocked when I told him that this cutesy JRPG with cell shading had multiple extermination camps with nazis convinced that what they were doing was the right thing (Glory to the coming age of Half-Elves !).

 

[JorgenRaft]

It's weird because there are PoC in the game particularly in the Sanbreque region. But I guess they wanted to avoid black characters specifically because of the subject matter. I guess a damned if you do damned if you don't situation? Idk.

 

[Mekanos]

Yeah, I think they felt the slavery storyline would be too controversial if they had prominent black characters in it. That said there are still fantasy series that have class conflict like that and also feature black characters. So it still feels like a bit of a cop-out.