Current Events > Final Fantasy XVI Developers: "Here's why there are no black people."

(+) Yeah! (+)

IGN: In regards to diversity in the game, can we expect to see Black characters in Final Fantasy XVI, or people of color (non-white characters) in general? To clarify a bit more, theres been discussion around the trailers to date featuring mostly white characters, and I wanted to get clarity on whether we can expect the final game to be more diverse.

Naoki Yoshida, Producer: This is a difficult question, but not one that was unexpected, seeing as diversity in entertainment media has become a much-discussed topic as of late. The answer I have, however, may end up being disappointing to some depending on individual expectations.

Our design concept from the earliest stages of development has always heavily featured medieval Europe, incorporating historical, cultural, political, and anthropological standards that were prevalent at the time. When deciding on a setting that was best suited to the story we wanted to tellthe story of a land beset by the Blightwe felt that rather than create something on a global scale, it was necessary to limit the scope it to a single landmass one geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world in an age without airplanes, television, or telephones.

Due to the underlying geographical, technological, and geopolitical constraints of this setting, Valisthea was never going to realistically be as diverse as say a modern-day Earth...or even Final Fantasy XIV that has an entire planet (and moon) worth of nations, races, and cultures at its disposal. The isolated nature of this realm, however, does end up playing a large part in the story and is one of the reasons Valistheas fate is tied to the rest of the world.

Ultimately, we felt that while incorporating ethnic diversity into Valisthea was important, an over-incorporation into this single corner of a much larger world could end up causing a violation of those narrative boundaries we originally set for ourselves. The story we are telling is fantasy, yes, but it is also rooted in reality.

Honestly they have no obligation to put anything into their games

But "We can't make our FANTASY game have non white peeople because reality medievil England didn't." is such bullshit and they know it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syLPNzV8gD4

Christ Final Fantasy 9 had goddamn fish people in it

I wish there just honest and said "We don't care"

I wonder how people would react to the fact that medieval Europe had BAME people in it and not just white people.

Good thing I'm sticking with Fire Emblem and Triangle Strategy. PS5 owners can have their modern FFs.

This seems weird but more than anything, the fact that they thought so much about the detail of "geographical """realism"""" makes me even less interested in the game than I was. It looks and sounds so boring.

He implied that it's story related. So maybe it's a racist country?

Oh come on guys are we really tryna call Square racist though?

tl;dr: "We're Japanese, piss off!"

"mediaeval Europe was only made up of white people"

Yoshida is very eloquent. They also probably thought theyd get more shit for putting token minorities and it wasnt worth the hassle in the age of twitter trying to cancel you if things are not 100% how they want it to be

That's pretty much what it is. "Your Western PC-ness has no power here."

I wonder how people would react to the fact that medieval Europe had BAME people in it and not just white people.

This man and his team have worked unbelievably hard to make final fantasy XIV a massive success, a game that has an incredible amount of racial and ethnic diversity.

Well when you explain it like that...

but that also opens up the potential need to create lore based around other countries as well.

What a complete joke of a response

I can't believe people actually praise this guy so much, just because he made a mediocre WoW clone

I don't think that's what he was saying at all. If anything you can tell he's put a lot of thought into the setting and this is the conclusion that came from it and even further explained how rich and diverse the world at large is which you can see in Final Fantasy Tactics, 11, 14, etc. Isolation seems to be a big theme of the story in 16.

I'm not sure I understand the argument of "FFXIV is diverse, therefore FFXVI doesn't have to be".

a country that is 99.99% ethnically homogeneous

Im just trying to say yoshi p is not racist

hes a god

How do you think that happened?

can we examine how pressing our 2022 american standards for diversity onto a country that is 99.99% ethnically homogeneous might be problematic in itself or is that further down the terminally-online twitter reply chain

What, like Iceland, where the vikings were the only people to bother going there?